Ask anyone on the street if they have photos in their wallet and you might find a handful. But on their phone? That’s another story. Over the last year, our team at Flickr has seen a more than 50% increase in the number of people who have accessed our mobile site. And it can’t go anywhere but up from here.

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

Can’t live without your 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets? Well, thank Eli Whitney for figuring out a way to remove the seeds from cotton 214 years ago. After you finish thinking about the touch, the feel, read on for what we’ve seeded up this week.

• And the nominees are: It’s the final day of nominations for the Yahoo! Video Awards, so get your favorite videos into the line up. We’ve got it all — videos about zombies to Weird Al’s childhood. There are categories for all your interests including Best Indie Music Video, Best Internet Personality, Best Series, and more. And don’t worry, it’s okay to just vote. You may want to wait until Monday after all the nominees have loaded up their videos. Read more here.
• Getting foxy: Through our new friendship with FoxyTunes, we have a brand new version of FoxyTunes 2.0 for IE (freshly beta) to let you control any media player while surfing the web. What’s new? Now you can change the appearance of your FoxyTunes by installing custom skins (we’ve already got 11 skins available) and down the road you’ll be able to create your very own. We’ve even added a FoxyTunes Mini, basically a universal desktop widget that’s a customizable, collapsible, and skinnable version of its big bro. The best part — there’s a timer and alarm clock feature that lets you set your media player to your favorite song. The best part of waking up.
• Retiring in style: As Yahoo! Messenger turns 9.0, we’ve decided to retire our vintage versions (5.5 and 5.6). After April 1, if you’re using version 5.5 or 5.6, you will no longer be able to sign in. We know change is hard, so we’ve got two alternatives to help make it easier. You can download the new Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or the 9.0 beta, or try our Yahoo! Messenger for the Web. Both options offer better protection from spam, advanced features like voice calling and SMS, and the addition of your friends on Windows Live Messenger. And rest assured, your existing friends will follow up when you make the move! For more info go here and stay dialed into what else the team’s got up their sleeve here.
• Luck of the Irish: Whether you’re Irish or not, green beer and green cheer is just around the corner. So make it official by greening your My Yahoo! page with our new St. Paddy’s themed layout (complete with shamrocks, peeking rainbow, and blue skies). Go here and click on “Seasonal,” then go with the “St. Patrick’s” option.

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Eat my shorts and do have a cow in honor of Matt Groening’s 54th birthday. After you’ve done your best “doh,” take a look through our futurama updates.

• Popcorn not included: We’ve added one more reason for you to cozy up with your sweetie. Add the My Netflix module to your My Yahoo! page and get instant access into your Netflix account without leaving your page. You can see what the “Top Rentals” are or what’s new and hot for a special evening. Or get a status update on what movies are on their way to your home. Read more here.
• New and improved: Yahoo! Video look a little different to you? Not to worry, you’re not going crazy. We’ve made some changes to make the site the one-stop shop for all video on Yahoo!, whether it’s news, sports, movies or music. You now get a wider and cinematastic (16:9 player view in fact) viewing experience, bigger files so you can upload higher quality files (up to 150 megabytes), and also curate your own video experience beyond embedding your own individual videos to your blog or site. There’s more, read about it here.
• Putting the My in MyBlogLog: Just think, how cool it would be to personalize your site with your MyBlogLog community. With the new MyBlogLog plugin you can now instantly display members from your MyBlogLog community on your site. The plugin lets you display a widget of your most active MyBlogLog members, helps you to manage a members’ list page, and view a detailed members profile page. Just think of all the social bookmarking opportunities! One caveat, the plugins only work if you’ve already got a Yahoo! API key, but not to fret if you don’t. You can apply for the beta at developer.yahoo.com/mybloglog . Check out what else the team’s brewing here.

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