In fine Flickr tradition, users are protesting against the latest change at Flickr, Tuesday’s introduction of video. Over 24,000 members have joined the We Say NO to Videos on Flickr group and NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!! has 10,000 members.
Complaints against video on Flickr range from slowing Flickr down, lack of community consultation and video diminishing Flickr’s photo focused purpose.
We’re interested in what you think, do you support video on Flickr? Poll below or leave a comment.
Do you support video on Flickr?
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Yes
- No
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Undecided
Total Votes: 3307
Started: April 10, 2008
(above image credit: (CC) Franzi on Flickr)
(image credits, (CC) Mike Licht
If you don’t like it don’t use it. Just like the IM on MySpace.
This is more of the internet making something out of nothing.
This article read by passionate insiders could seem reasonable, but if Joe Public reads it, he/she’d be at a loss. Nobody forces you to use features on any website. It’s like Flickr is crushing passionate users’ fragile psyches that can’t handle 2 things at once. I can imagine those same people despise portals.
has there ever been a change to flickr that the users have embraced? they protested the yahoo acquisition, they protested allowing sign-in with a yahoo id, they protested mandatory yahoo id, they protested the possibility of a microsoft buyout, and now they are protesting video clips. STFU already.
kyle
you would have noticed my reference to it being in fine Flickr tradition
I think it is spelled “flicker.”
I can see how it could go bad, however, the video can look beautiful as a single image via the poster frame and you dont need to press play.
The limited length suggests a different kind of use. Consider this way of looking at it:
http://dembot.c...m/post/31209664
@morgan Warstler the logo is spelled with out the E..It Is spelled wrong on purpose
Same difference.
Great. Now I can add video to my site, softOrNot.com
It’s just a name, no big deal..
I’m actually in favor of video on Flickr because I want one place to share all my photos and videos. The problem is that the ridiculous file size and length restrictions make it fairly useless for video.
The original Flickr’s not even a “photo site” in the first place. It’s a bunch of tools came out of the development of Game Neverending MMORPG…. Photo is really an after thought. I say it’s all good we’re getting video now.
Flickr’s got photos and accounts and groups and email…. maybe they need to add MP3s and instant messaging and customisable home pages and userdefined page themes and and and… oh yeah, that’d turn it into myspace.
I can see if Flickr introduced a completely unrelated feature, such as restaurant reviews, but still pictures and video are so complementary that any “protest” seems kind of silly. I looked at Laughing Squid’s coverage of the San Francisco Olympic no-torch relay, and the pictures and video he took worked well together.
The r mania continues…
I support whatever makes money.
Certainly there’s MoneyR…
I’m just saying, someone should tell them to correct the spelling.
@15, good call.
Good on them, and I don’t see the short time limit as an issue. As a Nokia phone user, I’m frequently taking short videos of my son and Flickr is now a perfect place to show off photos and videos together to family. I think it’s smart to embrace short videos – more and more people will use cell phones for video in the future (maybe even iPhone users if Apple sorts it’s s**t out!) and a short time limit keeps the video on target and to the point.
Perhaps Flickr video provides pro users a place to record a concise 90 second (or shorter) video bio of themselves and their photography philosophy/business.
Best photogs wil break off to another startup…whos next?
I support Video on Flickr. For those of us which use Flickr to share pictures of our family with friends and relatives around the country, I’ve long appreciated the friends and family privacy filter on Flickr. Now I can easily also share video clips with my family without worrying about them being indexed on the public web forever.
Video and Photos are deeply related. I take them at the same time and for the same purpose–to remember a moment in my life and share it with others.
yes. Flickr has fantastic product managers. The reqs to post videos are a perfect start.
There’s a lot more important stuff to be mad about than Flickr adding video support. I mean sweet baby Jesus, people, get a grip over yourselves. What a stupid waste of time to even be talking about this.
people love to whine.
they will whine that features aren’t being implemented, whine about new features they don’t want, and whine if those features got taken away. Not the same group of people each time of course, but probably similar in size and whinyness.
It’s the old “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” adage. Here’s something controversial – you don’t ALWAYS have to listen to your users (you just need to listen to the ones who matter)! Flickr’s product managers have always done a great job with the brand, IMO.
Flickr video is a fantastic move.
It is just a name i think…
http://www.discovery5000.com
It is a feature that I have been waiting sometime for, so needless to say I am very happy with their decision. If you don’t want videos on your flickr account, don’t upload them. Pretty easy fix, right?
I think this response is typical of most community based sites. You see this a lot on eBay too, and I have no doubt if Craigs list introduced an updated look the response would also be an outcry.
On hand this shows a strong healthy community, and passion is something you can’t buy or market.
On the other hand, I think Flickr users need to understand that as sites grow, they are not one thing to everyone. Hell Twitter, which should have virtually only one way to use it, is used different by almost everyone I follow.
There is a strong tie between social photography and social video. This is an essential feature for Flickr to move forward. Flickr isn’t just for SLR totting arty photographers. It’s for photo sharers. This is school kids with camera phones, families, professionals, and bloggers alike. And since cameras supported video mode years ago now, most people see both as part of the same thing … that is capturing something. A still can beat 1000 videos in some cases. And a video can capture things a still never can.
How video is used on Flickr will be determine by the community Flickr fosters, not (solely) by the functionality available. Look at the difference between Vimeo and YouTube for proof on this.
Not to mention commercially (and lets be honest, Flickr/Y! aren’t a charity) they had to make this move. I think it’s about 3 years later than they should have, but to continue to grow against the growing web this was almost a necessity. I think their will be some niche specialist photo sites out there. But something with the broad depth and scope of Flickr had to do this, before the video sites stepped in on their ground.
Whilst I completely applaud the brave step to limit videos to 90s I think they are missing a trick. I think many people mix footage of holidays and parties into 3-5 vids. I think Flickr is missing this. If you’re looking for quality, I think 90s limits you to one off single shot video “snaps”. I think the 90s limits the type of video you are going to get too tightly.
I do think their is a commercial opportunity for a “Video Pro” account that has longer videos. Having worked in bigger corporations before I would be surprised if Flickr didn’t at least consider this at some point.
A great move for Flickr, and long after the ‘protests’ die down, this will still be growing strong.
This doesn’t sound good to me… Integrating video service to a popular photo site is weird… Probably they should start video service with some other name to compete with youtube.
I think Flickr should just focus on what they stared with that is photo sharing. We dont need another YouTube plus ppl are gonna upload/watch videos on YouTube more than any other sites anyway. The differentiation strategy was working, why are we moving away from it?
Those who are protesting just need to get some in the mornings. Really.
This was sorely needed and demanded by lots of people, and their complaints are just the whinging of antisocial nerds who react this way to every little change.
They should have made a stricter separation, allow people to continue to experience Flickr as a photography site by default, with video only integrated if both visitor and author choose that.
But more importantly, screwing over your most loyal paying customers, Pro-account holders and mostly photography purists by investing in a low-end video service (certainly not interesting for video-pros) instead of improving the service they pay for is about the dumbest thing Flickr could have done.
For many them Flickr has now become a fundamentally different site, no longer about them and their passion, and they will leave as soon as they find a decent alternative.
It’s like my favorite Formula 1 site would suddenly start covering NASCAR…
I don’t care if they offer videos or not. But please, do something to make flickr available in the whole world, so the whole world can see my photos (and/or videos for that matter). Country-wide firewalls in some countries is surely bothering.
Do you support video on Flickr? I’ll say yes if there is a nice and public service to add more videos on site ( http://www.seitepedia.com )
I like the ideea.
For my a nice YES
I support for the reason I am still a PRO member with them past 3 years and secondly, makes sense when I shoot some 40 or 50 seconds clip (I did one recently) and when I view via flickr it does look great. Quality wise I stand with Flickr over YouTube and best part is I see no Flickr name on my video which makes it my creation and hosted by me
!!
I wish they increased the limit to 5 minutes or so.. 90 seconds is truly insane and again they are aiming this feature at short videos but I think they should increase the duration!
Personally I like it, especially the short time limit. The limit makes me think more in terms of a moving picture, than in terms of video.
It does feel like a bit of a shark jump for flickr though. From a design and usability perspective, it’s gonna be a pain for them to always label things as “photos and videos” They might have been better off just including it, but not mentioning it to anybody or labeling it.
if people don’t like videos, don’t look at them.
yep! http://abstract10.com will put our entire video library on flickr!!
The “No Video on flickr” movement is not (well, not entirely) a bunch of Luddites whining about moving pictures. The flickr corporate strategy is a desperate short-term attempt by Yahoo to add value before an impending corporate take-over.
Adding video to flickr is a horrible move for the brand, for the long-term health of flickr, and for the user community. flickr management is diluting the brand identity, introducing “New Coke” at the expense of “Classic Coke.” This wil not help the Tahoo bargaining position, and even foolishly endangers Yahoo employee stock options.
Nothing keeps flickr from introducing a separate video service except the desire to exploit the user numbers for short-term gain in the corporate wars.
flickr community members have a strong interest in a strong flickr brand identity. This move weakens it.
I’ve seen numerous people say videos and photos don’t belong together and that “videos on a photo site is weird”. Thats pretty funny because last I checked most non-DSLR cameras include both photo AND video capabilities. Most newer camcorders include both video AND photo capabilities. Photos and video go together.
When you travel you probably take photos… and video.
When your son has a birthday party you probably take photos… and video.
It makes sense to put them together and Flickr has done a fantastic job of integrating video in a way that isn’t obnoxious. They don’t look out of place, they look just like the photos do only with a little play button icon. They did a great job with how unobtrusive the videos are.
Anyone whining is just complaining for the sake of complaining.
Things change people, get over it.
I’m extremely happy that I can now share my travel and home videos with my family and friends side by side with the photos from the same trips and events. For me it is perfect. Before I only shared photos because I didn’t want to use YouTube or some other video sharing site, frankly it is hard enough getting my parents to remember how to get to my Flickr site.. let along some other site for videos.
Now I just need them to increase the file size and length limitations…
Question is how long until they integrate some video editing tools along the lines of Picnik for photos?
Why do companies like these feel that they have to do everything. What ever happened to doing 1 thing and doing it well. That’s the boat I always felt Flickr was in…. photos…. they do this well and should keep on building the company on this stable medium which has been around for over a hundred years.
What they should do is provide more hooks into other video services without trying to stake their own share in the very diluted pool of video posting sites.
Flickr’s brand is photos… they should stick with it.
#39, I think this isn’t correct. They’ve been promising video for well over a year now, and they finally got it done.
As a longtime Flickr user with nearly 7000 photos, I’ve always wanted to have a place where I can share the short video clips I take with my digital camera alongside my photos. When I go to a family party and take a bunch of pictures of my niece, for example, I usually take a few short movies, with the same camera, each about a minute long. For me, the new video sharing is perfect, because I can put these short videos in with the sets that they belong with. Previously I would have had to upload them to You Tube, but they don’t make much sense separated from the pictures they were taken with.
And I like the idea they came up with, to not compete with You Tube but instead to have people think of the videos as “long” pictures.
Great feature, well implemented.
Several comments have been along the lines of “If you don’t like it, don’t use it.” However, this misses the point – there is no real opt-out.
There’s no obvious way to search for photos, excluding videos. If there’s a way to exclude videos from RSS feeds, I sure can’t find it. There’s no apparent way to automatically exclude video from groups. There’s no API update that provides the ability to turn videos off.
Yahoo alienated a lot of their users with this move – the fact that they didn’t include a way to turn it off is a big oversight.
Good for me. As a pro user, I would like to get as much benefits as I can.
Now I don’t have to deal with uploading videos on youtube. Flickr does it all.
All those who are cribbing, are hard core still photographers who don’t like filming videos and sharing them.
Video is the next big thing. We cannot continue with static images, and if they been able to be so good at providing a service for images, they will do the same with video. I’m 100% supporting them.
I need a job bad, hire me and i will tell you my take on this subject.
Most of people saying that video is bad seem to think that Flickr is trying to become a youtube competitor. No offense to these people, but holy shit you are stupid.
The point of video on Flickr is that every digital camera can also take video. I dont have a camera right now but when I did, if I was in picture taking mode, it wasn’t that uncommon to also take a small video or two of something happening at the same scene. These videos are part of the film roll, and it makes sense to be able to upload them along with the photos from the same trip/place/etc, because they fit right in.
THAT is the point. It is NOT to become another Youtube – the restrictions on file size and 90 second time limit are obviously there to help make that NOT happen.
This whole thing is just ridiculous and people wouldn’t be so up in arms if they took 5 seconds to think about why Flickr is doing this.
Art videos are cool, too.
I spent part of yesterday watching videos on Flickr, and the crap-to-interesting ratio was no worse than it is for photos on the site. In fact, it’s probably better, because uploading a video takes considerably more time than uploading a photo.
I saw several clever, fun videos that I never would have found on unwieldy YouTube. Short videos are a great addition to Flickr. The change even inspired me to create and post my first little movie, an epic starring my heavily breathing dog.
By the way, TechCrunch, your poll results show that more people support video than don’t support it, yet the bar graph has a longer bar for the “no” voters.