Minimal Competence: Data Access, Data Ownership, and Sharecropping. ⇒
19 May 2010, lunch time
Flickr developer is trolled by her friend who works at Google. This is her comeback. It’s all kinds of “Oh Snap!?”
This link was found via Daring Fireball.This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
I like Flickr. I often wonder if it will stagnate (due to Yahoo’s management issues).
Have you see Google Dashboard?
by Ryan on May 19 2010, 7:00 pm #
They’ve already lost a lot of key developers and people since being bought. (Both founders are gone, for example. Heather Champ, who more or less managed and fostered the community there, has left.)
I saw the Dashboard when it launched. I think the author of this post is correct in her criticism of Google. They clearly have a lot of data about their users which they keep to themselves.
by ramanan on May 19 2010, 9:45 pm #
isn’t Flickr right now allowing access to referrer data (which the article says is available in its entirety, forever) for a limited time, after which it won’t be available? The related FAQ seems to say that the Stats API will get you only the last 28 days’ worth, which really sounds like the “most recent N” the post said it wasn’t.
I still love Flickr, but I have to admit I really missed the referrer data when they stopped making it instantly available.
by Weiguo on May 19 2010, 10:22 pm #
Isn’t the referrer data instantly there? They have one column with yesterday’s stats, and another with what’s happened thus far today. (“Referrers, so far today…” is what I’m thinking about.)
I had forgot they are getting rid of the CSV/Excel files soon. It sounds like you can’t pull down your entire history on Flickr after June 1st. They talk about that on the stats FAQ. That said, the stats API launched, so you could generate these files yourself if you were so inclined. There are already apps that do so.
by ramanan on May 20 2010, 8:57 am #
it’s instantly there, but only for today’s data and yesterday’s data (it used to be today’s data and all-time data on that page). The stats API (according to the FAQ) only accesses the last 28 days’ worth of data, so I guess you COULD generate those files yourself…if you kept snarfing the API. I don’t consider that the same as having all the data available in its entirety, forever, which is what the post claimed.
it was just a comment in the post that stuck out to me, and only because I saw the CSV thing recently. (If Flickr hadn’t done the CSV thing at all, it’s not as if I would have cancelled my account.)
by Weiguo on May 20 2010, 1:43 pm #
Oh you’re right. I had totally forgotten. I wonder if storing all that stats information is simply too much information to keep around. Anyway, doing it yourself certainly isn’t ideal, but it is doable. For most services on the web, you can’t get close to the level of access to your data that you do with Flickr.
by ramanan on May 20 2010, 3:05 pm #
Statsr will let you track your stats for longer periods of time than Flickr currently does. It does other random stuff too.
by ramanan on May 31 2010, 12:06 pm #
ah thanks!
by Weiguo on May 31 2010, 1:34 pm #
I read the API group and noticed it a little while ago. I think it went public recently. Seems well put together so far. (Though in places it’s a little bit ugly, I guess.)
by ramanan on May 31 2010, 1:48 pm #
Flickr Stats Backup help you download all the CSV files which will disappear today.
by ramanan on June 1 2010, 2:07 pm #