Oh dear. As if I need any new Flickr goodness to distract me from catching up after returning from BlogHer. Flickr has gone and released interestingness, which uses an algorithm full of "a whole bunch of secret sauce" to analyze user behavior around photos and present the most interesting in a given time period. For example, check out the most interesting photos from the past 24 hours. As if that weren't enough, they've also introduced clustering, which is a new way to explore some of the finer distinctions within tag clusters — e.g. the nature cluster is broken down into tag sets such as:

• water, lake, river, reflection, rain, bridge, view, boat, drops, window

• tree, trees, sky, sunset, blue, clouds, leaves, leaf, forest, sun

• flower, flowers, green, macro, landscape, yellow, red, garden, spring, plant

All the various clusters surrounding each tag are grouped into one page so you can browse the most recent photos in each of the tags in the cluster, plus see combined sets such as photos in the nature cluster tagged green, landscape and lake. In other words, where there were already way too many tag/set/group/contacts/etc. pathways to get lost in, we've now moved from the merely ridiculous to the ludicrous amount of ways to lose hours days formative years on Flickr. You people are lucky I'm even able to finish this blog post. I mean, what's the game here, Flickr folk? Are you aiming to bring all productive work to a grinding halt, or is that just a happy byproduct of all your infinitely curious ludology?

[Via danah boyd]