Flickr Testimonials
September 26, 2006For a website that seems to have made absolutely no missteps, I confess I’ve never understood the purpose of Flickr Testimonials. It’s like the idea occurred to them that it would aid in the “community” aspects of the place, so they went ahead and implemented it without stopping to consider if it really made sense. I mean, who pauses before viewing someone’s photos to see if a third party had good things to say about that person? The testimonials all have to be approved by each user, so it’s not like you’d see a brutally honest one like “jrouse’s photos are absurdly trite, nothing but babies & pugs, with the occasional urinal shot thrown in to break up the monotony”.
Nonetheless, I feel that it’s only common courtesy if someone adds me as a Contact (it’s like the flickr version of subscribing to someone else’s photo stream, or joining an extended MySpace network), the least I can do is write them a Testimonial, even if it is completely useless. The problem is, in many cases, the testimonial just sits in their in-box, unapproved for months, since the system is so poorly implemented. Here’s a list of testimonials I’ve provided to date. I’m running out of nonsense, and may need to borrow a cup or two from my neighborhood purveyor.
