Continuing with our How it works… section, now we will take a look at the veteran photo hosting service on the Internet, Flickr (flickr.com), an ideal place for those who want to upload their best work and give it visibility to other photographic art lovers, and even sell some of their work to those interested.
What is Flickr?
Flickr is one of the most important communities on the Internet that allows photography lovers to expose their best works, which is why the images found there are mostly of high quality. Obviously there are also users who use Flickr as a repository of their personal moments through the different albums created. All users have at their disposal a number of tools that allow them to easily manage all their photo files, from the organization itself to making a number of adjustments on the images themselves.
Flickr has had very little competition, with Photobucket being one of its most direct rivals. However, over time, the number of services claiming to compete head-on, such as Ipernity, Smugmug, or 500px, among others, has been growing. Currently, Flickr is trying to regain users to its service, trying to get closer to the position it had in its glory days.
A bit of history
Flickr is a clear exponent of an Internet service that was born as a different concept to what it finally is in reality and what it is known for. As we can see in its article in the Spanish Wikipedia, it was created in 2004 by Ludicorp, being initially part of a multiplayer online game, Game Neverending, although it soon became an independent project, whose first versions had a chat for exchanging images, although it disappeared in later versions.
It was in the year 2005 when Yahoo! did as much with Flickr as the company that developed it, Ludicorp, so that Yahoo! focused its efforts on this service to the detriment of Yahoo! Photos. Back in 2007, Yahoo! decided that users who used Flickr needed to have an associated Yahoo! ID. It was also this year, in June, that Flickr expanded the number of supported languages, among them Spanish.
Some negative aspects that we can remember from Flickr are among other things, that in the year 2008 it became possible to include short videos of up to 90 seconds to users of paid accounts, something that caused it to receive a lot of criticism from the community itself that such an inclusion went against its identity. Also, there was controversy around image sensitization, something that gave users a lot of headaches, among them, those who exposed nude photos and Flickr’s filters interpreted it as sexual content.
More recently, in May, Flickr completely changed its design, organizing the different visual elements more in line with current times, and offering 1 TB of free space to users, who also found themselves without the limitations of previous versions of Flickr.
Flickr is aimed at all users who want to manage and have a place on the Internet where they can host their own photographic works. However, there are also those who want to use it for more professional matters, although these types of users have been migrating to Facebook to post their photos for the same purpose. Nor should we be surprised to find illustrations by some graphic artists, although the most suitable platforms for this purpose are communities like Devian Art or Pinterest itself.
How to create a user account
Currently, users can create an account on Flickr if they have a Yahoo account, although since 2010 and 2011, users can use Flickr using their Google and Facebook accounts respectively, a strategy aimed at getting new users to their service by opening up identification to the aforementioned partners.
How to use it
The new interface is much more intuitive, and therefore simpler for any user to use. Users will have to log in, and then go to the upload photos option, located on the top tab, where they will enter an interface where they can select locally hosted photos and videos, establish categories, titles, link to albums, etc. Users will also be able to manage their networks, set the privacy level of their images, and even participate in existing user groups, called communities, although with the advent of Facebook, today, there are many communities abandoned to their fate, without interacting, although others continue to appear where users continue to participate in discussion groups and post their images.
What it provides to the users themselves
Users have in Flickr a specialized tool for managing and socializing their own images, and can also include them in other services thanks to the HTML code they can obtain. In addition, they gain in visibility, since Yahoo’s image search engine also takes into account the images hosted on Flickr, and also, it provides a showcase of image sales for users who want to monetize their photographic work.
Conclusions
Flickr has been one of the most important communities in the world of photography for almost nine years now, although it now has new competitors that are trying to outdo it. In fact, Flickr is one of the most current services of reference within a Yahoo! model that was practically exhausted before Marissa Mayer took over to renew it, a renewal that a few months ago also reached Flickr itself, which had been without news for a long time, becoming outdated.