Like a photo but it moves

Posted April 8th, 2008 at 6:35 pm by Kakul Srivastava, Flickr

 8 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News, Video

We’re very excited to announce that Flickr now supports video!

Yes, those videos you’ve been accumulating on your hard drive or cell phone finally have a great place to hang out, meet other videos, and be loved.

Adding the ability to share videos on Flickr is a natural extension of our mission to be the “eyes of the world” — letting our members share what they see with the people who matter most to them, be they family and friends, or the world. As we set about adding video to one of the world’s most loved photo sharing experiences (Flickr has over 25 million members worldwide who have collectively uploaded over 2 billion photos), we did a lot of homework. We spoke to our members, took surveys, played with very many video experiences on the web, and, of course, took lots of video. Through the process, we learned a few surprising things:

• Most videos being captured today are essentially “long photos” — short clips that are captured on digital still cameras or mobile phones rather than long format video taken by traditional video cameras
• People aren’t sharing these clips much. If they are, it’s either via playback on their camera, DVD, or sending a large email file.
• While certainly there is video being shared on the web, most of it is re-broadcast content, such as clips from TV shows. If it’s user recorded content, much of it is material that is trying to be like broadcast content.

The video equivalent for the personal, authentic moments that are the hallmark of photos found on Flickr is actually pretty tough to find.

Until now. Check out some of the great videos shared by members of our Beta program:

So here’s how it works. If you’re a pro member, you can go to Flickr and start uploading your videos now. Video on Flickr works the same way as photos. Features you know and love like easy uploading, tagging, sets, sharing, privacy settings, adding to groups, geo-tagging, interestingness, and stats all work for video just as they do for photos. We support videos that are up to 90 seconds long each and up to 150MB large. Your unlimited storage limits still apply — so go ahead, push that to the limit.

Why 90 seconds?
Most video that people capture is, in actuality, fairly short-format content captured on digital still cameras. Our research suggests that most of it is actually under 60 seconds, and 90 seconds should be a pretty comfortable limit. As with (most) other features on the site, we’d love to hear feedback.

Why pro only?
Pro members are the most active, dedicated members of the Flickr community and are the foundation to all we do at Flickr. Starting with them seemed like the right way to introduce such a significant new feature to the site.

So what are you waiting for? Free your videos — share them on Flickr.

Kakul Srivastava
General Manager, Flickr

Tagged: Flickr, news, Video

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8 Comments Add your own

pankaj | April 8th, 2008 at 8:45 pm

Finally, Flickr with videos. Not very excited because it has been long anticipated. User feedback will be interesting but 90 seconds seem to be very less for me. A small clip from my son’s soccer game can take 2-3 minutes. I have to deal with splitting it with some software. Although I am Pro user, I still feel sorry for the non-pro users. Some of them take most amazing pictures and highly likely to take great small clips too.
Also, the concept seems to contradict Flickr’s dna about sharing and spreading pictures. Nevertheless, Flickr has moved forward with this feature and I am sure flickr community will love this. Good luck and congratulations to the FLickr team.

Huey Newtron | April 9th, 2008 at 6:17 am

Interesting.

So, when Microsoft completes it’s purchase of Yahoo! and its constellation of related services, it will have purchased the beginnings of a YouTube competitor.

While probably not a direct reason for rolling out this feature, I’m sure it had to be factored in.

Alan D | April 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Sharing 90 second VIDEO clips is not something we, the majoritiy of Flickr users (in my estimation) want to contend with on Flickr. We use Flickr to share our Photographs. Still, images, not video. If we want to share “Videos” we have alternative sites to go to.

Now, if Flickr wants to show videos… make it a separate site from the traditional Photo site which Flickr has become.

S K G Rao | April 13th, 2008 at 4:36 am

A video should be as long as I want why limits?

christian | May 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

A video should be as long as I want why limits?

Lourdes | January 24th, 2009 at 1:07 am

althought reason was given why the pro members can access the video feature of flickr, i still think all member must be given access.

dandagagecops | March 20th, 2009 at 5:56 am

very intresting

Jacques Snyman | Website Design | May 6th, 2009 at 1:20 am

Adding video to the still images service that flickr is known and loved for is definitely a step towards the right direction. Pictures are pictures after all, and moving pictures can convey an even stronger message than static images. It also helps with tidying up the plethora of services one needs these days to function in the world of the internet. Good one!