Flickr Adds Video

April 9, 2008 | Mark Goldstein | Websites | Comment |

FlickrFlickr pro members can now upload personal video clips and share them with friends, family and the world. The new video uploading feature will support up to 90 seconds of personal video footage, and members can organize and share videos just like they do photos. “Video on Flickr is an extension of what Flickr is already doing with more than 2 billion photos worldwide – providing a place where people capture and share life’s daily moments,” said Kakul Srivastava, general manager of Flickr at Yahoo!. “Digital media has led to a new behavior emerging in the market and people are much more likely to shoot short video clips, essentially “long photos,” with their digital still cameras and mobile phones.”

Flickr Press Release

Flickr Adds Video to its Popular Photo-Sharing Community

Video Enhancement Provides an Even More Engaging Service for Members, Helping Advance Yahoo!’s Goal to be the Leading Starting Point on the Web

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Flickr, a Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) company and one of the world’s fastest growing online photo-sharing communities, today launched video sharing. Flickr pro members can now upload personal video clips and share them with friends, family and the world. Flickr – which has grown from 27 million to 42 million monthly visitors worldwide in the past year1 – serves as the ‘eyes of the world’ for its members globally, and with the addition of video, is giving people more ways to share what they see and experience in their everyday lives. The new enhancement is helping to advance Yahoo!’s goal to become the leading starting point on the Web by offering an even more engaging and relevant service for sharing, exploring and discovering digital imagery.

“Video on Flickr is an extension of what Flickr is already doing with more than 2 billion photos worldwide – providing a place where people capture and share life’s daily moments,” said Kakul Srivastava, general manager of Flickr at Yahoo!. “Digital media has led to a new behavior emerging in the market and people are much more likely to shoot short video clips, essentially “long photos,” with their digital still cameras and mobile phones. There is a great resonance between this new category of content and with the kind of authentic, personal moments already being shared on Flickr.”

Video on Flickr provides an easy and fun solution for consumers to release the personal video clips stored away in their cameras. According to a recent survey commissioned by Yahoo!2, more than 40 percent of respondents ages 18-44 are capturing personal video clips with their digital cameras, but they are not taking advantage of Web sites to effectively share their videos. Fifty-five percent of respondents merely play back video clips for their friends on their camera device or PC, and 20 percent don’t share these clips at all.

The new video uploading feature will support up to 90 seconds of personal video footage captured with the video function of any digital video recording device including still cameras, camcorders and camera phones. Video on Flickr gives members a glimpse into daily and extraordinary activities, from watching dogs play in a park to seeing someone climb Machu Picchu. Flickr members can organize and share videos just like they do photos; they can upload videos to their photostream along with their photos, and set their privacy settings for friends, family or the world to see. Videos will be moderated through a combination of Flickr team review, community review and automated abuse-spotting mechanisms.

As pro members around the world upload personal video clips on Flickr, people can see, share, and experience the world in motion through the eyes of the Flickr community. Video on Flickr will be available in eight languages including English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese. This new feature provides:

  * Video uploading for Flickr pro members
  * The ability for free and pro members to view public video clips
  * Video limits up to 90 seconds long and 150MB maximum in size
  * Controls to make videos private, visible to friends and/or family, or public
  * Seamless integration of videos into the photostream, along with photos
  * The ability to share video clips individually, as part of a set, or embed on third-party Web sites
  * Tagging and geotagging capabilities for videos
  * The ability to search videos by tags and descriptions
  * The ability to upload videos directly from camera phones
  * The option to view videos on a full screen
  * Licensing options to mark a video as ‘All Rights Reserved’ or designate a license through Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/)
  * Application programming interface (API) for third party developers to create programs or services using authorized video submitted to Flickr

1 Based on comScore Media Metrix monthly unique visitors worldwide from February 2007 to February 2008.
2 Yahoo! and Decipher Inc. randomly surveyed 2,000 US Internet Adults that represent a swath of the general US online population in gender, age, ethnicity and region. This study was fielded over a four day period ending on February 4, 2008.

About Flickr
Flickr is one of the world’s leading online photo and video sharing communities where people explore, find and manage pictures and video clips of life’s daily moments with friends, family and the world. With 42 million worldwide visitors each month and more than 2 billion photos stored, Flickr serves as the ‘eyes of the world’ and has revolutionized the sharing and discovery of what people see and experience through digital imagery. Flickr was developed by Ludicorp in February 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005. To share and explore the world’s photos and videos, visit www.flickr.com.

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

For free video content about video on Flickr, please log onto www.thenewsmarket.com/yahoo to preview and request video. You can receive broadcast-standard video digitally or by tape from this site. Registration and video is free to the media.

Your Comments

Loading comments…