Why not? But to be serious again - it´s nice to follw people and see their latest works. Makes only sense though if you only follow people whos work you like :o) and if you check on the activity stream.
It's about being friendly. It's about the possibility of networking. It's about seeing what others, where you like their work, are doing. If you follow someone else, they may even follow you. They might even like your work and share it with others.
Isabella Shores55 Minutes Ago
There are 25 criteria for search placement. How many followers you have may be one of them. Of course, it may not be........
everything helps, if he didn't want it there, it woudln't be added. followers are people that see your work as its uploaded. so if you have a buyer and they have an account they can follow you. you can follow people back, but i don't like getting stuff in my feed. its the reason i don't really follow anyone. my mother is there, as an experiment to see if anyone leaves my page to go to her... they do not.
At present I follow the people whom I have a professional relationship with, whom I've talked with and the like. I'm not not social media much anymore, so I'm trying more to use the social tools on the website. Including the Pixels app. https://pixels.com/showmessages.php?messageid=3947737
But Followers s part of the social aspect of the website. How many followers you have may, or may not, be a criteria for search ranking, but I do know making comments are ... and when you follow others you can comment on their new uploads and help rank their works. When you give sincerely it always comes back to you in some way.
EDIT: What surprises me is that a dozen or so members hers, I'm the only person they follow.
I like to follow folks to see what they're doing. I follow those whose work I admire. Others are close to me geographically and some are fellow train shooters. It takes almost no time to add and attract followers, so my question is why not?
I like to say occasionally: the door swings both ways :o) Same here - follow, visit, like - if it´s not too single sided it can be fun :o) I met a lot of very nice and decend people here by that.
Isabella Shores5 Years Ago
Search takes into consideration many different factors when determining the sort order of the images.
It takes into consideration:
1. the relevance of your image keywords
2. the number of times an image has been sold
3. the number of times an image has been favourited
4. the number of times an image has been commented on (by others. Your own comments on your work do NOT count)
5. how long an image has been on the site
6. the number of times an image has been featured in a group
etc...
There are more than 25 different criteria that the search engine evaluates.
This is exactly the same thing that Google do. You have to have good rankings to be in the first pages of Google. They also have a limited number of pages and some sites never see the light of day.
No way would there ever be a random showing of work on the first pages and I am sure you can understand why if you look at some of the images. Sorry, rude but true.
On this site the keyword is KEYWORDS
On Google and beyond it is titles and descriptions
It's not like Facebook where we get notifications (the little red number) for every time someone makes a post. People who follow you can decide if you're clogging up their feed or not. I somehow have 385 followers and I've actually gained a few in the last week where I believe I have loaded literally more than a hundred train images. Don't worry if you're being "too prolific."
Followers are an indication of popularity. Everyone wants to be in with the "in crowd" so don't miss out following the popular ones. BTW - I need 60 more follower to reach 1,000. Thank you in advance.
Fellow Support. We like to think others like us and/or what we do. It's also a form of networking. Everyone likes to have some support. We like to think we're not alone.
You could fill a page with reasons, but I don't think some of these threads are really started because of concern for the answer do you?
As a point (maybe widely known) There is a way to upload a ton of stuff without ultra bombing your followers activity stream.
If you create a password protected file and it is the default (for you) folder for uploads, it won't show in their activity streams. Then you can just transfer the images to the proper collection folder. Or just unpassword the folder.
Here's a good answer to your question, found on the Sell Your Art page
Professional Networking --- Build your professional network by interacting with hundreds of thousands of artists, photographers, graphic designers, and brand respresentatives who participate in the Fine Art America social network each day.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to this topic. Seems there are many reasons to follow and to be followed. Please feel free to start a continuation of this topic if so inclined.