Photo: Available from sharper65./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41421819@N05/6227046130/in/photostream/

Today we’re introducing new global additions to Flickr’s mobile portfolio across Android, iPhone and iPad devices that make it even easier for you to share your life in photos anytime, anywhere.  These new additions build on Yahoo! and Flickr’s continued focus on creating experiences around sharing and communicating on every screen –PC, mobile phone, tablet, and even TV.

Bring Images to Life on Android Devices

Making its debut on the Android Market, the new Flickr Android App allows you to beautifully capture, customize, edit, and share high-quality photos on the go, directly from your device. You can:

• Shoot & share: Before taking a photo, adjust your camera settings on the Flickr app with functions like flash, ratio selection, and shutter focus. Then start snapping and capture beautiful, hi-res images with the app’s innovative, built-in shoot & share camera that you can view anywhere.
• Release the inner artist in you: Pick from 10 high-quality filters to customize your photos, automatically upload your images to Flickr, and share instantly to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.
• Stay up to date on all your photos: Whether you have 20 photos or 20,000, scroll through all your photos by simply swiping across the screen and touching the image to view it in full screen or slideshow mode.
• Stay in control: Manage your privacy settings directly from your phone and choose who can download your images.
• Be a part of Flickr: As a Flickr member you get instant access all the great features on Flickr.com, including powerful organizational tools, community groups, fun third-party apps, and so much more.

Live Sharing Made Easy

Remember how you used to flip through a photo album and bring your images to life by your narration? Well, now you can have that experience wherever you and your loved ones are using your iPhone, iPad or PC. Originally created at a Yahoo! Hack Day, Photo Session from Flickr takes photo sharing to the next level by allowing you and small groups of family and friends to interact with, discuss via chat, and draw on your Flickr photos in real time. With Photo Session from Flickr, you can

• Get started quickly: Begin a Photo Session by selecting any public set or photostream and inviting your friends to view with you.
• Share instantly with friends: Enjoy real-time sharing with up to 10 people at a time and get their reactions immediately.
• Browse, chat, and sketch: Seamlessly flip through images as you doodle on your photos with the drawing tool and chat with each other, all at the same time. You can also pause or scroll through the photos at your own pace.

Just got back from your African safari? Invite your friends to a Photo Session and inspire wanderlust in one and all.  It’s a girl? Congrats! The whole family is dying to meet her.  So set up a Photo Session to show off the latest pics of your newest member of the family and fill them in on every gurgle.

Check out the Photo Session experience:

As a leading brand in mobile, Yahoo! is committed to making sure that Flickr users have the richest, most engaging experiences on every device. And we know you love your camera phones – the iPhone 4 is the most popular camera in the Flickr community, after all. So check out these new additions and keep snapping. Your best moments are out there just waiting to be captured!

Markus Spiering
Head of Product, Flickr

Audience figures show that Yahoo!’s overall traffic surpassed expectations and broke records, driving more traffic and video streams to its coverage of the wedding than any previous event. Preliminary internal data shows that Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on Friday. Additionally Yahoo! delivered Royal Wedding content at a record-breaking 50,000 requests per second on Friday, seven times the average daily peak of approximately 7,500, and video traffic was 21 percent higher than the previous record. Interest in the Royal Wedding was so high that Yahoo! broke bandwidth records before Kate Middleton even stepped out of the car at Westminster Abbey.

According to Yahoo!’s internal data, Yahoo!’s Royal Wedding site (royalwedding.yahoo.com), hosted on Yahoo! Shine, the leading site for women’s lifestyle content , generated 65 million unique pageviews on April 29 and April 30, with 6.6 million unique visitors the day of the wedding and 8.6 millions unique visitors the day after. Engagement with the site was high, with users spending a total of 112 million minutes over those two days combined.

Yahoo!’s homepage recorded 32 million clicks to Royal Wedding coverage on April 29, a new one-day record for a single news event, and 52 million clicks from April 29 through May 1, a three-day record for a single news event.

Yahoo! Shine as a whole set traffic records on Thursday, April 28, then broke them again on Friday and Saturday, generating 80 million combined pageviews over the two days, with 8.7 million unique visitors on Friday and 9.4 million unique visitors on Saturday. Users spent a total of 141.7 million minutes on Shine over the two days.

Yahoo!’s total Royal Wedding video audience figures eclipsed the previous record – Michael Jackson’s funeral – by 21 percent especially impressive given that this event happened during non-peak hours.

Most clicked stories:

Yahoo!’s original content on the Royal Wedding performed incredibly well, providing users instant access to everything they wanted to know with Yahoo!’s unique voice and interesting analysis. A team of industry-leading writers and editors wrote and featured fascinating stories that really clicked with users on Yahoo!’s homepage. Pippa Middleton, Kate’s younger sister and maid of honor, quickly became the breakout star of the wedding, and led coverage with the top two most-clicked stories. Yahoo!’s top five Royal Wedding stories included:

• All eyes turn to Kate’s sister (6.7 million clicks)
• Kate’s sister wears surprising white dress (6.1 million clicks)
• Who is the frowning girl in the royal kiss photo? (5.3 million clicks)
• Kate debuts stunning evening dress (5.1 million clicks)
• Kate Middleton’s dress wows spectators (4.6 million clicks)

The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook:
The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook provided users the opportunity to offer their marital advice and best wishes to Prince William and Kate Middleton, then share those wishes with users’ social networks. The guestbook received more than 300,000 comments from users in 194 countries. The most common advice, across all the regions, centered on three themes: be good to each other, communicate openly and never go to bed angry.

Yahoo! searches during the Royal Wedding:

Audiences have been visiting Yahoo! for daily updates since Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement was announced, seeking the most interesting stories or answers to a wide range of questions about all aspects of the Royal Wedding.

On the day of the wedding, amidst all the pomp and circumstance, people turned to Yahoo! for answers to their many questions — including figuring out what “pomp and circumstance” was. Some of the questions people asked on Yahoo! included:

• What does Pippa mean?
• What does Prince William do?
• What is a fascinator?
• What religion is Prince William?
• Did Kate Middleton meet Princess Diana?
• What is a duchess? What is a royal duke?
• Was Diana a commoner?
• Who was invited to the wedding? Who wasn’t invited to the wedding?

The day-of searches on Yahoo! centered mostly around Kate: her shoes, dress, tiara, and the lace on her dress. Interest in Prince Harry and Pippa Middleton also surged on the wedding day. All week leading up to the ceremony, Prince Harry searches on Yahoo! surpassed those of groom Prince William. Aside from the royal wedding party, Yahoo! saw Americans’ interest focus on Sarah Burton, designer of the now-famous wedding gown, the hats worn to the wedding (searches for “royal wedding hats” spiked 4291percent on the day of the wedding), and the ladies sporting the fanciest hats: Princess Beatrice spiked 2333 percent on the day of the wedding and Princess Eugenie spiked 1474 percent.  Hat designer Phillip Treacy spiked as well.

In the days following the wedding, the attention turned from Kate and according to searches on Yahoo!, Pippa Middleton became the star of the show.  Searches on Yahoo! for Pippa were 11 percent higher than for Kate (looking at searches for April 29 and 30^th). Searches for “Pippa Middleton” were also significantly higher than “Prince William” and “Prince Harry.” Specifically, people wanted to know about her age, weight and height, and see her dress. Another lady casting a shadow on Princess Kate was Princess Grace — searches for “Princess Grace Wedding Dress” spiked 5680 percent the day of the wedding on Yahoo!, as commentators drew comparisons to Kate’s dress.

As expected, users wanted to see photos. On Yahoo!, searches for “royal wedding pictures” and “royal wedding photos” spiked more than 5263 percent.

Flickr from Yahoo!:

Through The British Monarchy’s official photostream on Flickr from Yahoo!, one of the world’s best places to post and share photos, the royal family has given people across the globe an inside look into the Royal Wedding over the past few months, from wedding invitations, wedding cake designs and the official wedding pictures taken by the happy couple’s photographer. In total, there have been more than 45 million views of the British Monarchy photostream and pictures on Flickr.  The top five photos viewed on The British Monarchy’s official photostream include:

• The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Bride and Groom with attendants) – 1.08 million views
• The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Royal Wedding Group) – 1.07 million views
• The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Bride and Groom) – 810,000 views
• The Royal Wedding Cake – 447,000 views
• The Service (Prince William and Catherine Middleton leaving Westminster Abbey following the ceremony) – 440,000 views

Hurricane Earl:

• The path of Hurricane Earl: searches are off the charts on Yahoo! for “hurricane earl path” and “earl hurricane track”
• Searches for the “National Hurricane Center” are up 344% this week
• Searchers are looking on Yahoo! for “hurricane tracking map” up 366% this month

From hurricanes and earthquakes to floods and tornadoes, it’s likely we will all be impacted by the threat of a natural disaster at some point in our lives, yet the unpredictable nature of these events doesn’t mean we can’t establish a plan in advance.

Emergency Preparedness

• Searches for “hurricane preparedness” and “storm preparation” are off the charts this month on Yahoo!
• Yahoo! searches for “72 hour emergency kits” are off the charts this week
• “Portable generator” searches on Yahoo! are up 54% this month.
• Yahoo! searches for “free first aid kits,” “emergency kits,” and “emergency preparedness” are off the charts this month.

***off the charts refers to searches that received little to no searches the week/month before and are now gaining interest***

Disaster Awareness

• Yahoo! searches for “hurricane” were up 53% this month, with 59% of searches coming from men. Top states searching for “hurricane” this month are: Louisiana, Florida, Texas and North Carolina.
• Searches for “2010 hurricane names” on Yahoo! are up 298% this week, with 57% of searches by females and the majority coming from women ages 35-54. Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina were the top states searching for this term.
• Yahoo! searches for “NOAA Hurricane Center” on Yahoo! were up 240% this week.

And, as you prepare for the possibility of a Natural Disaster, Yahoo! Health shares the essentials for your disaster recovery kit, including the following items to name a few:

• Three-day supply of water for each person (one gallon of water per person each day), stored in plastic containers and three-day supply of food, such as canned fruits, vegetables, juices, granola bars and other compact items
• Kitchen items, including: a manual can opener, a mess kit, all-purpose knife, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and resealing plastic bags
• First-aid kit, including: spare pairs of eyeglasses and prescription medicines
• Fire extinguisher, Crow bar, Heavy-duty gloves
• Portable radio and batteries; solar and hand-cranked radios are available that need no batteries and are better choices for long-term storage of emergency equipment

Our goal is to making printing simple and easy for our members.  For instance, the print functionality within Organizr will be easily accessible for Flickr members, allowing members to conveniently select photos in a batch process for printing.In the US, Flickr members will be able to go to a wide variety of Snapfish retail partners including Walmart, Walgreens, Staples, Duane Reade, Publix, Meijer, and Longs, among others.  Additionally, Flickr members will have the ability to ship their prints to any location in the world.  And since we know that money is tight for people, our new partnership ensures that our US members will have some of the lowest printing prices around, with competitive international pricing as well.

We believe that this new partnership provides a tightly integrated, comprehensive printing environment to help bring members’ photostreams to life.  We have worked closely with Snapfish to develop a full integration with our online photo organization features – Organizr, Sets and Photo Page – to improve the overall printing experience.  For those members who have used other other printing options, our existing printing partners will still be available to you through the recently launched App Garden.

• Faces of the Flickrverse: Tagging has always been the fun part of Flickr, making it a cinch to find photos of anything from fungus to flugelhorns. This week, People in Photos made its debut, letting you add people to your photos, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in. If you’re tagged, you’ll get notified in your activity stream. If that sounds at all creepy to you, never fear – you’ve got plenty of privacy power. Opt out, opt in. More on the Flickr blog.
• Teach your phone to yodel: Sure, your mobile can probably mimic the sound of crickets, a dog bark, a vintage telephone, or sonar. But can it yodel? Now it can. In support of our Yodel Studio promotion, which seeks the world’s best new yodelers with a chance to be featured on our homepage and in our global marketing campaign, we’ve cooked up yodeling ringtones. And not just your government issue yodel. We’re talking hip-hop, a cappella, R&B, reggae, and bluegrass yodels. Download them here or text YODEL to 49737 in the US, 56263 in India, and 83338 in the UK. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your yodel and/or vote for your favorites. The deadline is November 8th.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Unleash your inner curator: If you’re a photo nut, it’s easy to get sucked into exploring the more than 3.4 billion photos on Flickr. And if you’ve ever wanted to collect and horde your favorites by theme, have we got a new feature for you. Introducing Flickr Galleries, which gives members a handy way to celebrate the creativity of their fellow photographer. You can curate together up to 18 public photos or videos in one place – Big Ben, blue eyes, snails, cats with thumbs, mannequins, what have you. To get started, just click on the “Add to Gallery” icon on the menu bar. Just five days out of the gate and it’s a very popular feature – you’ve created more than 25,000 galleries to date. More here.
• Out with the old: The Messenger team has news for anyone using Yahoo! Messenger versions 6.0 through 7.5. As of September 30th, we’ll be retiring those oldies. If you’re using anything below 8.0, you’ll find you won’t be able to sign in. That’s the price of progress, right? (We wouldn’t want you to be that guy still using a mobile phone with an antennae.) While Messenger 9.0 and the beta of Messenger 10 are rich in features like video sharing, full-screen video chat, spam protection, and more, we realize people like options. So after September 30th, you can also try Yahoo! Messenger for the Web or the IM built into Yahoo! Mail. More here.
• Celebrate en Español: In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Yahoo! En Español has teamed up with Kodak to invite Latinos – and Latinos at heart – to “Muestra Tu Herencia” (Show Your Heritage). Folks are invited to upload photos of friends and family through October 31st as well as leave comments. For every photo uploaded, Yahoo! and Kodak will donate $4 to the Hispanic College Fund (up to $20,000). And as of October 12th, we’ll unveil a digital photo mosaic of all the submitted photos as a tribute to Hispanic families across the U.S. Muchas gracias!

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Check out more photos here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo from polvero

First and foremost, we want to say congratulations to our members — this is truly a testament to their great work. Our community of more than 35 million members from all over the globe continue to amaze us with the authentic and individualistic images that they see in their daily lives and share on Flickr.

For the past few months, editors at Getty Images have been busy exploring the Flickrverse to find the right photos to be part of the collection – a task that is somewhat daunting when there are more than three billion images to choose from on Flickr. The goal was to choose photos that created a commercially viable collection, while preserving the inspirational and unexpected nature of the kinds of images that are so prevalent on Flickr. Like Flickr itself, this is a “living collection” and Getty Images will continue to add thousands of new images every month from here on out.

We see this as an exciting moment that’s breaking new ground for our members around the world, as well as the larger imagery industry. So what are you waiting for — start exploring the first set of photos on gettyimages.com/flickr.

Kakul Srivastava
Flickr General Manager

Photos courtesy of Flickr Collection/Getty Images

That’s why we’re rolling out a radically overhauled m.flickr.com site today. What we’re most excited about is that now –- for the first time -– you’ll actually be able to play Flickr videos back on your phone. Ever since we launched video, we’ve let you upload your “long photos” directly from your cell, but we think the playback functionality is pretty huge. It’s based on the Yahoo! Video Platform and takes advantage of its ability to serve content to a wide variety of phones, screen sizes, and video/audio codecs. We’ll be rolling video playback out over the coming weeks for handsets that support streaming video, starting with the iPhone and iPod Touch today and more to come.

The new m.flickr.com sports a sleek new interface that makes it significantly easier to view your photostream and sets, and puts recent activity (yours and your contacts’) front and center. We’ve also added a bunch of new capabilities, like letting you add contacts, favorite images, and change your privacy and permission settings –- all while you’re out walking the dog. And, in support of our “eyes of the world” vision, we’ve also added the ability to explore the latest “interestingness” photos.

iPhone users have been playing with our new mobile incarnation since we released our beta in October and now we’re expanding the experience to any smart phone that supports browsers like Webkit, Firefox Mobile, and Opera Mobile.

The mobile phone has become central to how many of our users take pictures and how they share their view of the world with the important people in their life. We think the new Flickr mobile experience reflects all the cool possibilities that today’s advanced and rich mobile web has to offer, combined with all the functionality Flickr members know and love.

So grab your phone, bookmark m.fllickr.com, and enjoy photos and videos with a big smile on that small screen.

UPDATE: Just a clarification. Video playback is available for videos uploaded yesterday onward. Over the next few months, we’ll work to make the entire catalog of videos viewable on our mobile site.

Kakul Srivastava
Flickr General Manager

We recognise that the many designers, art buyers and art directors that make up our client base visit sites like Flickr to find daily inspiration for their projects. As a result of a new partnership between Getty Images and Flickr, they will now not only be able to view the imagery, but easily license it, too.

As the unrivalled experts in the licensing of intellectual property — imagery, footage, multimedia and music — Getty Images will be able to work with Flickr to easily make the commercial licensing of what is, in effect, the world’s image library a reality.

Apart from the value of the accomplished and experienced photographers that contribute to Flickr, the addition of this content also brings a new flavour of photography to Getty Images and its customers — there is another world of photography that will afford an authentic view into the daily lives of people around the world. The places they live, the food they eat, the people they love and the milestones in their lives.

Sometimes the most amazing imagery is more about moments in time and place than it is about technical expertise. This partnership gives our clients access to thousands of these moments.

We congratulate the Flickr community for its fresh collection of high-quality images, and we look forward to working closely with the community.

Andy Saunders
Vice President of Creative Imagery
Getty Images

There were photos of newborns, wombats, hedgehogs, Vietnam, the Alps, Groucho impersonators, numbers, shoes, coffee, the Batmobile, libraries, suck-ups, and, my favorite, rubber duckies. Printed by Photoworks San Francisco, they created a stunning backdrop as Flickerites wolfed down catering by Say Cheese and 400 cupcakes from Kara’s Cupcakes. Never was there a party with more cameras in tow.

All walks of Flickr life were on hand, including a dozen thrift-store brides from the Brides of March, adding a Flickrly appropriate dose of iconoclasm to the evening.

Check out our photos, along with the bevy taken by fellow guests here. Happy Birthday, Flickr.

My ego was flattered. I felt like the most important amateur photographer on Earth. Then I received an email from The Economist asking me for an Oman pic to be used in an ad. (What? I can earn money with my pics??? And they even paid!) I went to Papua New Guinea, put my pics online, received comments, faves, you know the story! GEO USA called me: “Hi, we saw your Papua pictures on Flickr. We want 12 pages for GEO Germany, OK?” (Yes, sir!)

A French editor saw my photos and asked me if I was OK making a book. (No problemo!) My book was released this Christmas and was number 10 on Amazon.fr last week! Lonely Planet, National Geographic Russia, Get Lost, UNESCO Magazine, etc. bought my pictures thru Flickr. And then, the leading French photography agency Eyedea (Rapho, HoaQI, Gamma) contacted me and signed me few weeks ago!

So, YES, Flickr works and… well, now, I must leave you cuz I have to pack my bags and go to India for one month to shoot!

I keep posting on Flickr as it remains the most powerful tool to be seen on the Web and in search engines, and I do not want to lose the direct contacts I’ve got with the world jury that comments on my stream.

Thank you, Yahoo!!

Eric LAFFORGUE
http://www.ericlafforgue.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics

To that end, we’re completely making over Flickr’s map explorer and preparing to introduce a new Places Pages feature. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, is giving a preview of these great new additions at the Web 2.0 Summit, so check it out if you can.

The new Flickr map will display tags that will hover over specific locations, representing interesting and newsworthy things going on there. Clicking on any tag will take you to a photo stream of the popular and current photos related to that topic in that location. This is a great way to browse through news and events on a global basis – a forest fire here, a folk festival there, and fireworks in that other place. It’s like getting a pulse on the world by listening to a million camera shutters snapping pictures in unison.

Helping visitors discover photos by location is key to Flickr’s vision of being “the eyes of the world.” Our new Places Pages will provide a zoomed-in way to explore virtually any place in the world through iconic photos, popular tags, relevant Flickr groups, featured photographers of that region, along with local information such as a detailed map, current time, and temperature. What’s really cool about these pages though is that they are literally built by our members. Each photo, photographer, or group featured on any Places Page will be included because our members found them interesting as an aggregate group. There’s a lot of math to keep the content fresh, relevant, and awe-inspiring, but the end result is just stunning.

The new map and Places Pages are not yet available. We’re putting some finishing touches on them in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on the Flickr blog for the official launch.

We want to thank our 15 million members for making Flickr so fabulous and for sharing their amazing images with the world. With these new features, we invite you all to explore the world through the eyes of Flickr members – it’s truly a humbling experience.

UPDATE: Both new features are now live!

Kakul Srivastava
Director of Product Management, Flickr

Tell all yer mateys. Or walk th’ plank. An’ be quick about it. ‘Twill all be shippin’ out at midnight.

Nicki Dugan
Yer Bloggin’ Cap’n

If you use Yahoo! Photos, fear not. We’re still committed to doing what is best for you, and by getting laser-focused on a single photo sharing service (Flickr), we’ll be able to give you even more of the great stuff you’ve come to expect from Yahoo!. Many of creative folks behind Yahoo! Photos are heading over to the Flickr team, giving us even more ammo for future innovation.

We’ve watched photography gradually change from a tool for simply recording life events (seen enough baby/wedding/graduation/vacation photos, anyone?) to a social tool for sharing and connecting with others. That’s why we believe it’s time to shift our focus towards Flickr.

We’re doing our best to make this transition as smooth and convenient as possible, and beginning today you will be able to move your albums and photos to Flickr. The next time you log in to Yahoo! Photos, you’ll see your options for moving your entire collection with just one click.

And in case Flickr isn’t for you (no hard feelings), we’re also providing easy ways to move your photos to other services (including Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish or Photobucket), download them, or get them on an archive CD. Find more information on our Yahoo! Photos help pages. You don’t have to choose right away — you have until September 20th to make a decision.

Oh, and if you happen to use one of our international Yahoo! Photos sites, we’ll outline our plans for those services soon. Check your respective Yahoo! Photos site for details later this year.

In the meantime, we hope you’ll give Flickr a try for sharing your photos and exploring the millions of amazing photos uploaded everyday by Flickr members from all over the world.

Tim Anderson
Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Photos & Flickr

Proceeds from the silent auction will benefit Kids with Cameras, a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities around the world.

Check out our Flickr set and then search for “Flickr 333″ to taste more of the birthday action.