Flickr is one of those web services that almost everyone uses, yet it feels like no one talks about. Before Apple had PhotoStream or Google had Picasa, people shared photos via Flickr. Acquired back in 2005 by Yahoo, the image and video sharing site was slowly been getting eclipsed by newer, flashier services. Until yesterday, that is.
Yahoo brought the sizzle back to Flickr, with an impressive update. For starters, Flickr is getting more mobile-centric, following up December’s iOS app with an Android solution as well. With photo sharing baked into both of the aforementioned mobile systems, it’s key to have an app that works on that sort of level.
However, Flickr hasn’t made this update available to the desktop software for Mac users, which was last tweaked back in June of 2009. We get that mobile is the new computing base, but four years? C’mon.
Flickr’s profiles — sorry, streams — have also been given a visual makeover. The new layout feels like the early 2012 update to Facebook, and one can’t help but wonder if the social media giant is entirely sanguine about this.
Mr. Zuckerman? Legal on line one for you.
Flickr also allows up to three minute clips of 1080p HD video. And you can store your filed on the one terabyte of storage you get. That’s not a typo. Flickr is now giving a terabyte of space to each user. For the tech- or math-phobic reader, that’s a metric frackton more than any other competing free service. Box, Shutterfly, Dropbox, Google, Apple, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive all cut off your storage way before that storage limit. While many of you may think “Big deal, why would I need that much photo space?” you clearly aren’t thinking along the lines of professional photographers, who do indeed use that kind of storage. Flickr has long been favored by serious hobbyists and pros who want to show their work off, so this is a perfect fit.
It’s unlikely a coincidence that this (and Yahoo’s Tumblr purchase) happened this close to Google I/O. The recent Google+ changes are largely centered on image curation/presentation. Yahoo isn’t often thought of as a social network company, but that’s certainly what Flickr is. Indeed, the superior features of the new Flickr serve as a reminder of what Yahoo used to be and what it could potentially be again.
I’m not a Flickr user, but giving 1TB of space will likely have a trickle-down effect to other services I might use, and therefore set a new standard that seems much more reasonable as file-sizes and demand of ease and accessibility of photo/video sharing continues to grow.
And you can quote me on that.
I am starting to veer away from image sharing sites simply because most of the terms of service now say that if you make an image available for public viewing you also give the service permission to use the image for *their* advertising purposes. At the minimum.
Since I saw a trend toward their making commercial use of my images (this on Photobucket), I’ve been shifting toward posting all my images (photos and artwork) on my own domain hosting instead. I want more control over how my pictures get used.
When the head of Yahoo says that there’s no longer such a thing as a professional photographer, it’s a sign that internet sharing services are treating all users as if they are exploitable commodities whose own business intentions can be disregarded. Not a good sign for creators’ rights, in my mind.
I should also add that I happen to have unlimited storage on my domain hosting (yes, I pay for it, but it is worth it!), and so the concerns about file size are not so significant to me when compared to the potential nibbling away of assigned rights by the image hosting service.
From what I remember, Flickr’s desktop app only really offered uploading capability. The website’s upload tool has been improved so much since then that it’s actually better than the stand-alone uploader now.
I’ve used flickr for years and love it! I’ma be usin this.