If you are a flickr addict, you’ve probably seen the news that video has arrived on the photo site. Now while many have lamented the fact that you are only allowed 90 seconds as a limit, I see it another way. It’s a challenge. Have you ever tried to make a video make sense or tell a story in several minutes? Much less one and a half?
I must admit that when I first heard the name flickr, I thought it was a video site – flicks afterall – but no it was a photo site.
And while there will be many 90 second goof videos that are going to be posted to flickr as they are to youtube and the social networking site of the day, I think we’ll also see some amazing art just as we see with the photos. It should be interesting to see how it develops.
Well it seems that the din has died down a bit over the Yahoo/MS thing, but it still seems to be there when it comes to Flickr. There are people posting all sorts of defiant images before anyone knows what (if anything) will actually happen when the two elder Internet companies collide. But C|Net points out something interesting when it comes to the social space. Flickr is the only social networking site that seems to be really working between the two, combined with the chat clients that both have, there might be something there that the two could build on. If Flickr does die at the hands of MS, there are many other places that people could go – Picasa web could have possibilities if Google pays any attention to it and there is always pBase and other gallery sites. But none have that community feeling that Flickr seems to inspire, and (because I haven’t looked) they don’t have the “coolest thing” that Flickr has – Explore and it’s related Interestingness… maybe that is what MS might be after.
It seems that there is quite a bit of buzz online over this,
photophlow is the super concentrated crack filled with chocolate and then drenched in ambrosia that you get paid for even thinking about… ok, maybe that is a bit over the top. But this tool is an amazing addition to the mashups that surround flickr. Yahoo bought up flickr as likely as not to gain access to a strong community and through the commenting (that was there before) allows people to explore and comment on the work of others. But this has been asynchronous and largely a slow process. The time that it took to get exposure to a photo was, or could be, significant. The community element was something that would give some incentive to purchase the Pro account to give/get more exposure and store more images.
But now, this all can happen in real time with people interested in a wide range of photography, facilitating faster feedback to the work that you have posted. But because things happen much quicker, all of the sudden, you have a reason to go pro. I’m thinking Yahoo should give these people a massive cheque pretty quick.
So, why would your average Jack/Jill be interested? I’m not sure, unless they want to learn… and being an edtech blog… this is the kicker for me. This system allows you to create your own rooms, creating a great learning environment that would allow a group of students to collaborate on an assignment (photo or art based) or for an instructor to provide feedback to student work.
Now this is not the first, and it won’t be the last collaboration system for photos or any other kind of content, but the big difference here is the nature of the interface. It works very well for images, just as wikis are ideal for text, this, especially now that there are systems/accessories that will allow automatic uploading of images to flickr, feels like a real milestone. You can now collaborate in real time without investing in a system to facilitate it.
Yeah, it’s certainly turned on lights and I had to rip myself away from it to write this and get on with my day. But as the closing comments… if you are teaching anything that deals with images and that would benefit from the conversation that might surround them, sign up for this system. Oh yeah, the developer is from Edmonton (I think).
I think it’s great that Flickr’s added editing now through Picnik, but here is my question. Why make pro users pay twice – once for Flickr and again for Picnik? I would think that Yahoo would have negotiated some offer for their users to get full service from both.
Another Explore!
Originally uploaded by idarknight.
Well it seems that I’ve actually attained positions in the coveted Explore. Over the past couple days, Scout has found a couple of them. Interestingly enough, neither is my top interestingness photo.
I keep going back and forth with regards to going pro on Flickr, but as of yet, I’ve yet to pony up the dough (though if someone wants to gift me, I’ll accept 
). But while I ponder what to do with the smaller sets of photos that I take now (I used to go out and take a series every month, but haven’t in about a year), I’ve been posting the odd shot or two per week to Flickr. In this process, I’ve found an interesting game to play.
Flickr has some system for determining interestingness. I don’t know how it works, but you can see what photos are interesting in your own stream. What I know about this rating is that it depends in part on a ratio between views, comments and favs. So the game is to farm your photo out to different groups or get it blogged to get it more exposure and get it rated higher. You also have to get more contacts and gain exposure that way. I’ve been able to get my recent picture of Grumpy as my number 2 (as of right now), second only to my long exposure of Paradise Pier. I guess the goal of the game is to get something into Explore.
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