Motivations for image publishing and tagging on flickr

Changes in photographic and internet technology have revolutionised the way people create, process and share digital images. This paper investigates people’s motivations for image publishing and tagging on the web 2.0 site Flickr. Using an online pilot survey, 33 participants answered questions about their uploading and tagging practices, and whether or not they hope to make a commercial gain from their images. The results show that most people have two main motivational reasons both for using Flickr, and for the tagging of their images. However, whilst a person may be motivated to use Flickr for both personal and social reasons, tagging motivation tends to focus more exclusively on either one or the other of these two factors. Overall it was found that social organisation and social communication are the most popular motivational factors for both using Flickr and for tagging images, suggesting that Flickr is enjoyed for the community environment it provides rather than as a place to store images. However despite people’s desire to share their images, most users are not hoping to make a commercial gain from the items they upload