Flickr Now Takes Videos (or "Long Photos") : SOMEWHAT FRANK

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April 8, 2008

Flickr Now Takes Videos (or "Long Photos")

Frank Gruber

Flickr, the photo community which we have all grown to love, after months of rumors and specutation has launched Flickr Video today. With almost six thousand photos on Flickr I was interested to see just how video was integrated. I was concerned adding videos might mess with the simplicity of the lovable photo sharing site that I have grown so accustom to. Flickr implemented short videos based on the idea of “long photos” setting the limit to 90 seconds maximum time limit on videos. This makes it clear Flickr is not the platform for video podcasts or other stuff but more for short photo-like blurbs of life.

Flickr is treating videos very similar to photos by allowing users to tag, title and describe. After exploring the Flickr video implementation I was pleased to see they are taking a very simple approach to enabling the community to also import videos by leveraging the same upload used for photos. I also like the video length restriction as it acts as it creates a unique new video format. I uploaded a video and liked the Flickr video player which I included (below).