Flickr and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport

This entry was posted by Laura on Sunday, 28 November, 2010 at

Flickr is a photo sharing site owned by Yahoo. According to Alexa, it is the 36th most popular site on the Internet and 30th most popular in Australia. Flickr has made it easy for people to upload their pictures on the move by creating mobile applications that allow sharing from phone’s camera.

To get an idea for the popularity of Flickr in Australia and New Zealand, a search was done for Australia in the pictures search section. It had 5,856,165 results. A search for Sydney had 2,678,431 results. A search for New Zealand had 2,136,668 results. The interest in taking pictures of both countries is high.

Interest in sport is also high. A search for all the AFL teams results in around 200 to 500 images each. There are several groups on Flickr specifically dedicated to the league and its teams. The generic term surf Australia has 73,441 results, demonstrating that interest goes beyond traditional professional sports and into niche sport and participation sports. Sport organizations inside Australia have begun to realize its value: Canoeing Australia has set up its own Flickr account to upload pictures.

Why are picture sites like Flickr important? What can they tell us about Australian and Kiwi women’s sport? They are important because they help grow the visibility of the sport. Well composed, beautiful pictures can help really sell sport in a way that text, the primary method of sharing on most of the sites referenced so far, cannot. This visibility could translate into ticket and event sales: These women play so beautifully I should check them out in person. Beyond that aspect, Flickr can also help identify what type of content that people are interested in based on the type of pictures they take. This group can thus be catered to more by creating events or providing similar content on a team or athlete’s internet stream. If there are a lot of event pictures, have a meet up for Flickr and Picassa users during a practice session where they are invited to take pictures of athletes in motion. If there are a lot of pictures that are like head shots and traditional promotional images, then a consideration should be made to include more of that content and make it available where online users can access it. Both of these require a bit of content analysis but a most people will be looking at only only team or a few athletes, this becomes much more feasible.

Pictures can also be useful in terms of identifying potential employees. If there are one or two people who take beautiful pictures, they might be worth contacting to see if they can be brought in in an official capacity. Their work sells the team or athlete already, but by doing that, you help add validation to their work which might get them a bigger audience. This in turn can lead to increased visibility for the team or athlete as each party gets the benefit of the other’s audience.

Beyond the issues above, another way of understanding photographer interest in women’s sport involves the total search results, which when compared to other teams can be useful. It gives another perspective on the comparative interest amongst the more creative classes of Internet users and the kind who get out into the real world to engage in the things that they love. Group results and total members to those groups provides perspective on the total comparative audience for the work of photographers.

The table below includes data from all the total search results found by searching Flickr for total number of images related to a keyword. It is sorted by league and then team. It highlights the popularity of swimming in Australia, though the search results rarely refer to Swimming Australia sanctioned events or Australian swimmers who compete internationally. The W-League results are extremely high and undoubtedly include pictures from the American league with the same name. When looking at individual teams, it appears that the ANZ Championship, W-League and WNBL all have comparative levels of interest. The Australian Women’s Ice Hockey League has zero results and there is obviously much less interest in it.

Date checked League Team Keyword Pictures
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds Adelaide Thunderbirds 24
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship ANZ Championship ANZ Championship 154
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens Melbourne Vixens 39
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts New South Wales Swifts 3
28-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Northern Mystics Northern Mystics 10
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Queensland Firebirds Queensland Firebirds 20
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship West Coast Fever West Coast Fever 17
27-Nov-10 AWIHL AWIHL AWIHL 0
27-Nov-10 Cycling Australia Amy Gillett Amy Gillett 10
27-Nov-10 Cycling Australia Anna Meares Anna Meares 27
27-Nov-10 Hockey Australia Hockeyroos Katie Hollywood 20
27-Nov-10 Hockey Australia Hockeyroos Hockeyroos 117
28-Nov-10 Netball New Zealand Netball New Zealand Netball New Zealand 2
27-Nov-10 Swimming Australia Stephanie Rice Stephanie Rice 73
27-Nov-10 Swimming Australia Swimming Australia Swimming Australia 1299
27-Nov-10 W-League Canberra United Canberra United 31
27-Nov-10 W-League W-League W-League 1143
27-Nov-10 WNBL Perth Lynx Perth Lynx 21
27-Nov-10 WNBL West Coast Waves West Coast Waves 84
27-Nov-10 WNBL WNBL WNBL 101
27-Nov-10 WNCL Western Fury Western Fury 28
28-Nov-10 Women’s World Cup Soccer Football Ferns Football Ferns 5

The table below includes the results when searching for groups related to Australian and New Zealand women’s sport. The total search results is small and there are no relevant groups. This suggests a couple of possible things. First, that while people are interested in taking pictures of women’s sport, they do not see their primary interests being focused around organizing people around women’s sport. Second, being photographers of specific women’s sport is not part of their internalized identity in such a way that they need to continually affirm it. Third, that Flickr may not have a large audience for specific Australian and New Zealand women’s sport that the upload totals might suggest is there.

Date checked League Team Keyword Groups Relevant groups
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds Adelaide Thunderbirds 0 0
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship ANZ Championship ANZ Championship 1 0
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens Melbourne Vixens 0 0
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts New South Wales Swifts 0 0
28-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Northern Mystics Northern Mystics 0 0
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship Queensland Firebirds Queensland Firebirds 0 0
27-Nov-10 ANZ Championship West Coast Fever West Coast Fever 0 0
27-Nov-10 AWIHL AWIHL AWIHL 0 0
27-Nov-10 Cycling Australia Amy Gillett Amy Gillett 1 0
27-Nov-10 Cycling Australia Anna Meares Anna Meares 0 0
27-Nov-10 Hockey Australia Hockeyroos Katie Hollywood 0 0
27-Nov-10 Hockey Australia Hockeyroos Hockeyroos 1 0
28-Nov-10 Netball New Zealand Netball New Zealand Netball New Zealand 0 0
27-Nov-10 Swimming Australia Stephanie Rice Stephanie Rice 0 0
27-Nov-10 Swimming Australia Swimming Australia Swimming Australia 1 0
27-Nov-10 W-League Canberra United Canberra United 0 0
27-Nov-10 W-League Canberra United Canberra United 38 0
27-Nov-10 W-League W-League W-League 2 0
27-Nov-10 WNBL Perth Lynx Perth Lynx 0 0
27-Nov-10 WNBL West Coast Waves West Coast Waves 0 0
27-Nov-10 WNBL WNBL WNBL 0 0
27-Nov-10 WNCL Western Fury Western Fury 0 0
28-Nov-10 Women’s World Cup Soccer Football Ferns Football Ferns 0 0

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