My mother always yells at me when she looks at my pictures on Flickr, saying that I don’t take enough pictures of people. The truth is, I do, I just put most of those on Facebook because it’s a billion times better for pictures of your friends because you can easily tag them. Now Flickr is gaining the same functionality — but better.
Its new “People In Photos” feature is long overdue. With it, you’ll be able to select a picture and start typing a person’s name, which will then scan your Flickr contacts to see who it should add as a tag to the picture. And like Facebook, you’ll be able to draw an outline around someone’s face to show exactly who they are in the picture.
But the reason this feature is even better than Facebook’s functionality is the opt-out and opt-in options. While most users love the people tagging for photos in Facebook, just about everyone wishes there were more options that allow you to opt-out of being tagged in certain photos. You can untag yourself, or block people from tagging you, but there isn’t a good case-by-case method of doing this.
Flickr is offering that by allowing you to opt-out of being tagged in individual photos. And once you opt-out, unlike Facebook, no one can put you back into that photo. You can also set who is able to tag you in photos. And you can set who is able to tag people in photos that you shared.
The stength Facebook has over Flickr is that you probably have many more contacts, or at the very least, actual friends on Facebook. Because Flickr relies on your Flickr contact list, it probably won’t be as useful as Facebook’s, at least at first. But this is a great incentive to get you adding more contacts on Flickr, and encouraging your friends to sign up.
Users have long been working around Flickr’s lag of people photo tagging by doing it manually in the tag section of pictures. Now it’s getting a whole lot better. Undoubtedly, some users will hate this feature, but they can opt-out entirely from being tagged.
When you’re tagged in a photo, it will show up in your recent activity stream. And Flickr has revamped users’ profiles to show pictures you’re tagged in.
[photo: flickr/spuz]
I just tagged you in that photo. I want to see more pictures of heather!
You can do the same thing with Facebook. Research is your friend MG.
some of it, but not all of it. flickr has more and more obvious options.
Yeah, you can do everything your wrote about in Facebook, Travis is right
“Flickr is offering that by allowing you to opt-out of being tagged in individual photos. And once you opt-out, unlike Facebook, no one can put you back into that photo.”
In facebook no one can add you back either once you’ve untagged yourself.
That is correct.
To be more specific, in Facebook, when you untag yourself from a photo, no one else can tag you again in that photo. That’s half of your post right there.
The permissions about tagging are unique, but comparing them to Facebook is apples to oranges. Facebook’s (supposed to be) a private network, and flickr is decidedly public. Essentially flickr is just emulating Facebook’s privacy, really, because any of your Facebook friends you should trust enough to tag you. (And you remove them)
Now, we need Apple to make iPhoto 09 transfer the face tags automatically in Flickr (and vice-versa).
shut up loic. why don’t you integrate siesmic with flickr comments?
I don’t know about being better than Facebook, but it does have that *one* feature that FB doesn’t.
I’ve been using Polar Rose facial recognition (http://www.polarrose.com/) with my Flickr account and it connects to Facebook to tag my contacts.
Works pretty good and seems to be getting better, too.
People won’t just sing up for Flickr so I can tag them, trust me on that. But when I tag them in Flickr using Polar Rose, it sends them a message on Facebook telling them they’ve been tagged.
Ends up being just as effective as FB tagging, but on Flickr.
My 2 cents.
I’m not impressed, TechCrunch. Most of my friends aren’t on Flickr, and unlike FB, which let’s me tag anyone, Flickr makes me put an email in so they can sign that person up as a member prior to accepting the tag, which ends up feeling just lame. It’s like they’re whoring out tagging so that they can drive more signups, versus focusing on what’s good for the member. It’s a sorely needed feature, for sure, but I think the opt-in stuff is overkill – do you really find that your photo tags are constantly abused? I certainly don’t.
Actually Facebook changed its tagging policy months ago. Now when you untag yourself, no one but you can tag you back…
Once you tag someone on facebook, you cannot retag them. #pointing-techcrunch-mistakes-out-cos-theyre-popular
“Flickr is offering that by allowing you to opt-out of being tagged in individual photos. And once you opt-out, unlike Facebook, no one can put you back into that photo.”
MG, once you untag yourself from a facebook photo, your friends can’t tag you again. They can tag your name but it will not be a link to your fb profile. The only way for your friend to retag you will be to upload the same picture again and then tag.
Doug that is your bad that your friends aren’t on Flickr.
Anyways.
I love this. I prefer having more pics on flickr over FB coz it is just so unorganized and really how many pics can you post drinking with your buddies all tagged on FB? Most of the time your friends don’t even want to be tagged on FB cos it might be an unattractive pic of them and now all their “prospects” just saw that pic.
Flickr is awesome, just wish it wasn’t owned by Y! why do i need a yahoo email acct for this? my accts always deactivate for no use. the fail.
Once you un-tag yourself from Facebook, you can’t be re-tagged in that same photo. It’s been that way for a very long time. You should edit this article.
Do some research indeed!
face.com has an superb (practically frightening) auto tagger. you can get the facebook app and say goodbye to manual tagging.
I always explain to my friends that their collection on Facebook is compressed and that they should also use services like Flickr. Would be ideal to provide the ability to upload photos to Flickr but also import over to Facebook much like how Posterous operates with photo albums!!
+1
ehhh… you can opt-out in facebook and noone but you can retag you in that photo.
If Yahoo wants to Regain Web 2.0 networking, it will have to make Flickr the cornerstone of its company. People, everyone, women, etc. love photos and that is one of the main reasons for success in social networking profiles. Its about sharing something with your friends.
What would make this killer for Flickr would be for them to add Facebook Connect integration. Then all your Facebook contacts could be used for tagging as well. Plus, it would have the added benefit of Flickr being able to easily (and reliably) publish to the Facebook profile wall as well (something which currently works very poorly and sporadically).
This sucks that we can not tag freinds who do not have flickr accounts. The tagging of people is more a an orginizational things, so I find this feature usless if i cant tag people not on facebook
I’ll second the Polar Rose integration — the facial recognition stuff is very very cool.
I don’t understand why Flickr wouldn’t add FB Connect — seems like a no brainer (hopefully it will happen soon).
Orkut has it better. When u see a picture, all faces in the picture automatically selected and you just have to put a name in it. And you can tag only your friends. and yes you can opt out of this tagging thing.
So orkut has
1) Face Detection (Flickr/Facebook does not have it)
2) Opt Out option (Facebook does not have it)
I like the face detection of Picasa…. Although I wish they would extend it beyond just your albums… meaning, that once I put a name to a face in any of my albums, then any photo of that individual anywhere on Picasa should become searchable.
They have the technology, and they have the computing power… I wonder when they will do it
Flickr better start offering some free storage if they have *any* hope of competing. Holding photos ransom unless you’re willing to pay 25 bucks a year isn’t the best incentive.
Why doesn’t flickr allow me to import my contact list from Fb? I’d be set with that.
For me personally, I put my friend photos on facebook and my artsy look at this flower photos on flickr (maybe not really a flower, but you get the idea).
Facebook to me has been about social connections, gather pictures of yourself and friends, and flickr has been mostly, show that arty photo you think is so hot.
So, I’m not really that interested in this feature.
Hey Flickr allows to put people based on email id too. So arbitrarily anyof my friends can be added. This gives more reach then just facebook users. Think of it now i can tag my professor who does not like facebook but still can get to know abt his photos.
Facebook is best at connecting people.. but when it comes to photos .. Flickr is the best!!
Wonderful, those privacy issues. I’m glad nobody cares about them.
Sounds like this new feature works exactly the same way as out tagging system has worked for the past 3 years or so.
It’s just as if it was a positive review of our tagging functionality. Thanks for making me feel happier
’strength’ and not ’stength’ in “The stength Facebook has over Flickr …”
Yeah, nitpicking, I know.
The problem is that I’m not going to recreate my social graph in flickr. It’s much easier for fb to start storing uncompressed graphics and destroy flickr.
A better solution would be to integrate the two, so they can both do what they’re good at. Let flickr use your fb graph for tagging and let flickr host your fb photos (you can kind of do this, but the integration isn’t complete).
Well its a grt thing …. if we can do that in it as well ..its for betterment..
Best,
Daina
Flickr needs to stop requiring a yahoo ID
i am looking for emelia azimi in dubai
Flickr use to be a great photography site, mostly
artistic photography.
The social network has been developed through
groups and contacts ( friends) list.
If you don’t have a pro account – $24.95, you won’t be able to delete your photos if you want to leave, also you have a limited storage.
Competing with Facebook is out of context for photographers, especially for the pro ones ( $24.95)
The new profile page is clearly disadvantageous for the vast majority of the members and it was done without a beta test.
Fighting for supremacy, Flickr will soon lose many of its loyal photographers users, to become another common “social” site.
What was unique on Flickr is almost gone now, a shame.
I am also pointing out the staff and management attitude towards their customers, total disregard and no option for their personal profile page.
I hope that Flickr remains a good photography site. It is one of my favorite places to go when I want to see a new place that I have never been or an old place that I would like to visit again. I find it a fascinating site for scenic photos. Facebook of course is great for sharing photos with friends. The basis of these two sharing sites is very different and each has benefits that support the purpose of the site. Facebook has the social network needed to share “people” photos; great for sharing family photos with friends and family. And Flickr, on the other hand, has the features needed for sharing high quality scenic (professional) photos; great for sharing photos for professional use, maybe even for making photos available for purchase for graphic designers.