Flickr: The next big thing?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Prager [mailto:pragerieee.org]
> Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 9:41 AM
> To: tidbits-talktidbits.com
> Subject: Flickr: The next big thing?
>
>
> According to some, Flickr is supposed to be the next big thing.
> However, I have to admit that I just don't get it. Would someone
> care to explain what's so ground breaking about Flickr?
>
> <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/08/flickr_ceo_interview.html>

I think the article itself answers your question pretty well. They use the
word "phenomenon" a lot which I think is more appropriate than "ground
breaking" when describing what's going on. It talks about Flickr's place in
the realm of social networking, a meme that is surviving beyond Friendster
(and such). It talks about "folksonomies" (vs. formal, traditional
taxonomies), a very 2005 buzzword, which is most publicly demonstrated by
Flickr.

From the article:
"Flickr is simply the manifestation of the perfect storm of camera phones,
consumer broadband, blogs, RSS, and folksonomy tags."

Skimming the article I don't see this element but it definitely fits in with
the open source and Creative Commons movements. It's all about the good that
can come from when people relinquish some of the control over intellectual
property. Maybe you want your family & friends to see some photos you took
but what's wrong with let others see them as well (yes, you can also choose
to make photos private)?

I think there's a strong faddish element here, it's fun for people to
explore by trying different tags and such but my guess is that part will
wear off after a while. But still, people like taking photos, sharing
photos, and looking at photos. That's not going away and it seems Flickr
does it much easier and more open way than previous online photo
repositories.

At 12:46 PM -0800 2/11/05, Wilcox, Curtis wrote:
>I think there's a strong faddish element here, it's fun for people to
>explore by trying different tags and such but my guess is that part will
>wear off after a while. But still, people like taking photos, sharing
>photos, and looking at photos. That's not going away and it seems Flickr
>does it much easier and more open way than previous online photo
>repositories.

I was reacting to the number of posts I've seen recently about
Flickr, not to the linked article, which I hadn't even noticed.

Now I've read the article and my opinion is unchanged. The basic
question I have is: "How will this technology make my life better?"

That is, how does Flickr comapre to some recent technological
innovations that have "stuck" (say, for example, the iPod and
blogging)?

Maybe my problem has to do with the fact that I don't own a camera phone. ;)

Ken P.

On Friday, February 11, 2005, at 09:41 AM, Kenneth Prager wrote:

> According to some, Flickr is supposed to be the next big thing.
> However, I have to admit that I just don't get it. Would someone
> care to explain what's so ground breaking about Flickr?
>
> <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/08/flickr_ceo_interview.html>

Social networking is has always been one of the big attractions of the
internet. Pictures of family picnics of people that you don't know or
would want to know probably won't seem interesting to you or me, but
there's always the six degrees of separation factor - friends, and
friends of friends, might be interested in some of them.

I think the premise is that the visual content is supposed to lure
visitors in - rather like photo blogs. What is unique about Flickr, as
far as I understand it, is that not only makes it very easy to post
photos and provides free hosting - you don't need much in the way of
time, knowledge or money to participate, it allows the meta-tags to be
submitted with each photo. This enables search engines to crawl a
centralized database, and ad servers to deliver appropriate content.
But I wonder how, and if, they will keep out spam.

Flickr also allows participants to set up RSS feeds, which could be
very interesting - families, friends, fans, special interest groups,
etc. signing up for regular photo feeds.

Add in social networking with grass roots meta-tagging, and you've got
the new "f" word - folksonomies:

http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/
folksonomies.html

The author of this article clearly thinks Flickr and the public
bookmark compilation del.icio.us are the greatest thing since sliced
bread - while he does speak about misclassifications and false
positives, he doesn't mention the potential for spamming, which I think
is huge. And because serving advertising along with relevant content is
key to establishing a healthy business model, it makes me skeptical of
the long term potential for Flickr to produce revenue similar to that
of Google. It doesn't make the same economic sense.

Marilyn

On 2/11/05 9:47 PM, "Kenneth Prager" <pragerieee.org> wrote:

> At 12:46 PM -0800 2/11/05, Wilcox, Curtis wrote:
>> I think there's a strong faddish element here, it's fun for people to
>> explore by trying different tags and such but my guess is that part will
>> wear off after a while. But still, people like taking photos, sharing
>> photos, and looking at photos. That's not going away and it seems Flickr
>> does it much easier and more open way than previous online photo
>> repositories.
>
> I was reacting to the number of posts I've seen recently about
> Flickr, not to the linked article, which I hadn't even noticed.
>
> Now I've read the article and my opinion is unchanged. The basic
> question I have is: "How will this technology make my life better?"

If you're interested in sharing photos you take, a technology that makes it
easier to do so clearly makes your life better.

As for viewing photos, having a site with lots of them with lots of meta
data (relatively speaking) is helpful. Say you're interested in Christo's
"The Gates" which was unveiled today in New York's Central Park.

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html

There is, and will be, a lot of news coverage but maybe you want to see more
of it, see it other than how the paid photographers take it. You could try
using Google's image search but it won't find anything until its been
indexed and since the text you enter isn't necessarily associated with the
images on indexed web pages, there will be a lot of false hits. On Flickr, I
can search for "gates" and "park" tags and get (right now) 214 matches with
almost no false hits.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/search/tags:gates%2Cpark/tagmode:all/

And, I can look at how specific photos were tagged to find other tags I
might try (clicking "Christo" gives me 509 results).

> That is, how does Flickr comapre to some recent technological
> innovations that have "stuck" (say, for example, the iPod and
> blogging)?

For some, Flickr is a photoblog site. Instead of sharing one's thoughts or
activities through words in a blog, one can just snap, snap, snap pictures
and add just some tags and/or comments to them. It can also be used to post
photos within a conventional blog for those who want to do both.

"Blogging" is a huge, amorphous concept and Flickr is just one service from
one company. "iPod" is a much better comparison. Portable mp3 players were
introduced in 1998 but the iPod didn't come along until 2001 and it's been
successful because it's done so *right.* Online photo sites have been around
for many years but it may be that Flickr is it done right. They don't make
you create an account and login just to view someone's (public) album and
they make it easy not only to put your photos in but also to get them out
again (both downloading and viewing via other sites).
 
> Maybe my problem has to do with the fact that I don't own a camera phone. ;)

Flickr and camera phones definitely have a symbiotic relationship. Both
would still exist without the other but camera phones are more interesting
with an easy way to quickly share photos and Flickr gets a lot more content
and a feature that stands out from its competitors.

Reading my last two messages, it sounds like I drank the Flickr Kool Aid or
something. The fact is I had only looked at a handful of images on the site
prior to Kenneth's question. But, it piqued my interest so I started
checking it out and was interested in what I saw. Either that, or Kenneth
and I are working tag-team on our guerrilla marketing merit badges ;)

Honestly, I signed up for a free Flickr subscription so I could easily take photos and have them appear in a little sidebar on my weblog:

http://jeffcarlson.typepad.com/thought/

That code is actually for a Flickr banner (it took me a long time to find it on their site), but it does exactly what I want: point to a few pictures automatically without me having to mess with creating .Mac home pages. An iPhoto plug-in makes it especially easy to upload files (since I don't take pictures with the crappy camera built into my cel phone).

http://www.speirs.org/flickrexport/

At 5:03 AM -0800 2/14/05, Curtis Wilcox wrote:
>Reading my last two messages, it sounds like I drank the Flickr Kool Aid or
>something. The fact is I had only looked at a handful of images on the site
>prior to Kenneth's question. But, it piqued my interest so I started
>checking it out and was interested in what I saw. Either that, or Kenneth
>and I are working tag-team on our guerrilla marketing merit badges ;)

To further add to the illusion that we've almost completed the
requirements for said merit badge, I'll admit that I'm starting to
come around to seeing usefulness in Flickr. "The Gates" example was
a good one because it demonstrates the agility of Flickr relative to
Google's image search feature.

At 5:03 AM -0800 2/14/05, Marilyn Matty wrote:
>Flickr also allows participants to set up RSS feeds, which could be
>very interesting - families, friends, fans, special interest groups,
>etc. signing up for regular photo feeds.

I can also see benefit to using RSS feeds. For example, this summer
I'll be traveling with a my son's soccer team to Italy for two weeks
of games. The parents back home want pictures. As of last week, my
plan was to use .mac to host the pictures and then send out an e-mail
to let the parents know that they are there. Now I'm considering
Flickr and an RSS feed.

I wonder how long it's be until Tiger incorporates RSS feeds into
other tools besides Safari

Ken P.
(not a Boy Scout since high school)

I use Flickr as the easiest way to get pictures into my weblog from
iPhoto. There's a very nice iPhoto plugin that lets you simply select
one or more photos and export to Flickr. Then from Flickr, I can go to
the photo and click 'blog it' to create a new blog entry with that
photo. It's easier than exporting to a file, uploading, and creating a
new entry in Wordpress.

On Feb 14, 2005, at 8:03 AM, Jeff Carlson wrote:

> Honestly, I signed up for a free Flickr subscription so I could easily
> take photos and have them appear in a little sidebar on my weblog:
>
> http://jeffcarlson.typepad.com/thought/

On 14 Feb 2005, at 06:03 :17, Curtis Wilcox wrote:
> "Blogging" is a huge, amorphous concept and Flickr is just one service
> from
> one company. "iPod" is a much better comparison. Portable mp3 players
> were
> introduced in 1998 but the iPod didn't come along until 2001 and it's
> been
> successful because it's done so *right.* Online photo sites have been
> around
> for many years but it may be that Flickr is it done right. They don't
> make
> you create an account and login just to view someone's (public) album
> and
> they make it easy not only to put your photos in but also to get them
> out
> again (both downloading and viewing via other sites).

I have to admit, I thought the whole flickr thing sounded rather silly
and pointless, but I went ahead and loaded up the page and did a search
for "christos" and told flicker to do a slide show.

Very interesting, very well done. The navigation bar at the bottom of
the image is an especially nice touch. Only down side I see of the
slideshow is it doesn't show the text info that goes along with it.

Not sure I'm convinced of its utility, (there's quite a lot of pictures
in the search that appear to have nothing to do with the Christo
exhibit. Perhaps they are of people named Christo, or more likely,
were group tagged by the uploaded along with their other pictures.

OTOH, I never saw the use in friendster or Orkut either, though I know
some people use those sites extensively, including at least one who is
currently dating someone he met on orkut.

Popularity aside, I wonder if they'll be able to make money. Google and
Yahoo are raking in the dough though the services they offer are free
because they can deliver and sell contextual advertising on results
pages. Google and Alta Vista stopped indexing user supplied meta tags a
while ago because they skewed results inaccurately.

Unless Google (who already owns Picassa, Blogger and Orkut) or Yahoo
decide to buy it.

Marilyn

Flickr is a photo sharing social network--like a cross between photo
sharing + friendster. It works best if you add tags to your photos. You
can subscribe to RSS feed of tags to get a constant stream of new
photos. you can put a photostream into your blog. i like to look for
photos taken with speciality cameras like the nickelodeon photoblaster
quad cam.

check this tag

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/photoblaster

-- tommy

> Popularity aside, I wonder if they'll be able to make money.

Their main revenue stream will probably be the Pro accounts. The free
accounts are "good enough" for many but I think for those who like it, its
easy to justify paying for Pro. Someone using .Mac mainly for photo
publishing would probably find Flickr to be a better service and deal
($59.95/yr., $41.77 if you buy while they're still in beta). Presumably
they'll add a printing service and other photo-related services. Maybe
they'll strike a deal with a film processor so customers could have
processed film automatically uploaded to Flickr. Maybe they'll get into the
stock & news photography business (a Corbis wannabe). there are already
instances of people contacting Flickr users and paying for the right to use
a photo. Flickr users could label some or all of their photos as available
for sale/use and Flickr could act as a broker.

> Google and
> Yahoo are raking in the dough though the services they offer are free
> because they can deliver and sell contextual advertising on results
> pages. Google and Alta Vista stopped indexing user supplied
> meta tags a
> while ago because they skewed results inaccurately.

META tag abusers did so to increase pagerank and draw visitors, thus
increasing their ad revenue. Flickr tags are created by its users but only
Flickr benefits from the AdSense ads displayed on their site. I suppose
Flickr itself could start randomly tagging photos with "asbestos" to have a
greater number of high-paying AdSense ads displayed but I doubt that could
help more than it hurts.

Google and Yahoo have a lot of ad revenue because they have a lot of
visitors, but they had to get the visitors first. As Flickr gets more
visitors, their ad revenue will likewise increase. If Flickr gets big
enough, they can make even more money by selling ad space directly instead
of using AdSense.

> Unless Google (who already owns Picassa, Blogger and Orkut) or Yahoo
> decide to buy it.

I think Flickr and competitors, like Buzznet, could both be excellent
targets for acquisition by either one of these companies or merging with
another, like Sixapart, that's in the blog market.

On 2/16/05 2:30 PM, "Wilcox, Curtis" <cwilcoxesm.rochester.edu> wrote:

> There are already
> instances of people contacting Flickr users and paying for the right to use
> a photo. Flickr users could label some or all of their photos as available
> for sale/use and Flickr could act as a broker.

I just came across an example in the pro realm of what I'm imagining.
Digital Railroad is a site which caters to professional photographers and
photo agencies and the editors (or whoever) who are looking to use their
work.

http://www.digitalrailroad.net

Just this week, Digital Railroad announced a feature to make their Member
archives accessible via RSS feeds. The web site is very much structured
around each member's section being separate and distinct but the feeds can
be based on subjects or keywords and pull from all member photos.

Publish.com | Digital Railroad Unveils Photo Feeds
http://www.publish.com/print_article2/0,2533,a=146267,00.asp

If this is an field into which Flickr decides to go, it will be interesting
to see if a combination of quantity and (presumably) lower fees can win over
the quality of pro outlets. If done right, it could draw pro photographers
as well, kind of the way some businesses have chosen to use Ebay as their
online sales presence.

Flickr is actually owned by Yahoo!, so it's really already part of the larger picture of digital content. (if you scroll down to the bottom of the front page, it actually says "a Yahoo! company" on it).