What is Flickr? Flickr Review, Features

Flickr is a photo-sharing website owned by Yahoo that provides free photo storage and video hosting, while allowing users to share photos on blogs and social media.

Function

1. Image service

Flickr provides comprehensive, first-class and efficient image services, including image uploading and storage, classification, tagging, image search, etc. First of all, of course, you still have to register and log in. A more complicated task is to fill in your profile.

Uploading pictures is very simple. After entering your home page, click Upload to enter a new page. Select the pictures you want to upload on your computer and then click the "Upload" button. After uploading, it will ask you to add a title (Title, which will be displayed above the picture), a description (Description, which will be displayed below the picture), and a tag (Tag, which is used for indexing and searching) to each picture. Next, you can classify these pictures (i.e. create a group [Set]). Click "Organizr" at the top of the home page to enter a new page. Click "Create a New Set" at the bottom right to create a new group, then drag the pictures from the left to the specified group, and click Save. It should be noted that free users can currently create multiple groups, and the size of the uploaded pictures cannot exceed 300M per month, and only 200 pictures can be displayed. Paid users (about 2 US dollars per month) can upload 1G of pictures per month, with no restrictions on grouping. The search for pictures is very simple, so I won't go into details here.

2. Contact service

This service allows you to add contacts, who can be friends or family members. The advantage of adding contacts is that you can make more friends and organize the pictures of these friends in a regular way for easy browsing, communication and sharing.

3. Group service

The group service allows users to join a group or create a new group and serve as an administrator. In the group, everyone can chat, share pictures, knowledge, send emails, etc. just like on a BBS.

You can join a group by: 1) directly selecting the groups listed at the bottom of the group service page, and then selecting "Join this Group" on the right after entering the group. 2) searching for groups by entering relevant keywords, finding the appropriate group and entering it, and then clicking "Join this Group" on the right side of the page to join. 3) entering someone's Profile page, clicking on the group he joined, and then selecting to join.

In addition, you can also create a new group yourself, the method is also very simple. Click "Create a New Group" on the group service page, enter the new page, and follow the relevant system prompts to complete the creation of the group [I also tried to create one myself, Chinese Mutual Association]. In addition, you will also become the administrator of the self-created group (Administrator), with the authority to kick people out, block, etc. After creating your own group, you can also invite your contacts to join.

feature

1. Management method

Flickr is a collection of digital images that are connected to each other through relationships between users. Images can be related to each other based on their content. The image uploader can define the keywords of the photo, which is "Tags" (a format of metadata), so that searchers can quickly find the photos they want, such as specifying the shooting location or the subject of the photo, and creators can quickly understand which photos are shared by others under the same tags. Flickr will also select the most popular tag list to shorten the time to search for photos. Flickr is generally regarded as a model of effective use of Floksonomy. In addition, Flickr is also the first website to use tag clouds.

Flickr also allows users to organize photos into "Sets," or groups of photos that begin with the same title. However, Sets are more flexible than traditional folders, as a photo can be placed in multiple Sets, or just one Set, or not at all (a concept more familiar from the "labels" feature in Google's Gmail service).

2. Organizr

Organizr is a web application for managing photos in Flickr. This application allows users to modify tags, photo descriptions, and create photo albums, and uses AJAX technology to make the application look, feel, and quick functions almost the same as ordinary photo management applications. Therefore, Organizr makes it easier to manage large numbers of photos.

3. Public sharing

In addition to sharing photos through Tags, Flickr also provides a contact mechanism (Contacts), where users can see the latest photos of the other party and quickly browse the public photos of the contact. Users can also add private photos to other public groups for members in the group to browse. Some groups even encourage members to communicate with each other, such as the famous "1-2-3" Group, which encourages "after posting 1 photo in the group, look at at least 3 other photos in the group, and leave comments on at least 2 of the photos" to increase the exposure of photos. In addition, Flickr will also refer to the number of views and the number of times it has been added to favorites to select the style photos of the day and publish them on the site.

Users can set the access permissions for photos: fully public, absolutely private, or decide whether photos are open to contacts set as friends or family to view or leave comments. Users can also set up private groups and set browsing permissions for the group so that only members they choose can see the photos.

4. NIPSA Mechanism

NIPSA (Not In Public Site Areas) is a mechanism used by Flickr to screen users for the ability to share private photos. Since the purpose of Flickr is to create a digital photo sharing community, if an account stores excessive amounts of non-photo images, screenshots, web captures, celebrity portraits, copyrighted photos or artwork, the Flickr administrator will mark the user as NIPSA. Once marked as NIPSA, regardless of whether the account has paid, its images will not be displayed in the public area and can only be viewed by the user himself.

If an account marked as NIPSA wants to be removed, it must sort out the problematic pictures on its own and request a re-examination from Flickr.

5. File Saving

Flickr is not a website for permanent file storage. If a user with a free account does not log in to Flickr for more than 90 consecutive days, the photos under the account will be deleted. The company's website states: "If a user does not take any action for 90 consecutive days, we will eventually delete the (free) account." A valid free account can only display up to 200 recently uploaded pictures, and older pictures will not appear in the free user's Flickr account; but these pictures can still be displayed on external linked web pages and in the group within the site. However, after May 20, 2013, free users are no longer restricted to the number of pictures that can be displayed, and each user has 1TB of free storage.

6. Copyright

In Flickr, photo uploaders can choose whether to use open Creative Commons licensing so that public photos can be used reasonably. Users can also set the copyright authorization details of the photos themselves. Flickr also allows users to search for other photos that can be used reasonably.

7. Public photo album project

The Commons was originally a collaboration between Flickr and the Library of Congress, which aims to "share the hidden treasures of the world's public photo databases".

Since the project was officially announced on January 16, 2008, dozens of cultural institutions have joined to date (2014).

The guidelines adopted by the public photo album project members are "No known copyright restrictions", which is a clause of "very low legal risk in use". Project members claim that their works match one of the following reasons for release:

It is in the public domain because the copyright has expired;

the copyright falls into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to comply with the required formalities or conditions;

The institution owns the copyright but does not want to control it;

Some institutions have sufficient legal rights to authorize others to use the work without restriction.

Therefore, regarding the copyright of published works, the project's description is: "It is difficult to analyze photos under copyright law, not only because laws around the world vary in the scope and duration of protection, but also because the photos themselves usually lack source notes, time and other identification information. Because libraries, museums and other cultural institutions often collect, preserve, archive and study photos for their non-profit purposes, they have extensive experience in photo processing. However, under copyright law, cultural institutions cannot be copyright holders in many cases. Therefore, cultural institutions can neither grant others permission to use photos nor provide guarantees that the photos have fallen into the public domain." In other words, if anyone wants to use photos from the public photo album project, they must first analyze the applicable laws on their own.

Account Classification

1. Free account : $0 per month, 1 TB of photo and video storage space, create "photo collections", add photos to up to 60 groups, upload single photos of 200 MB, upload single videos of 1GB, each video can be played for 3 minutes, and unlimited downloads of original photos.

2. Account without ads : Annual fee is $49.99, and it provides ad-free browsing experience.

3. Doublr account: $499.99 per year, 2TB of photo and video storage space, and all the features of a free account.

Development History

-In 2004, Ludicorp established a web service suite and online community (the predecessor of Flickr).

- In March 2005, Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr. During the week of June 28, all data was moved from servers originally located in Canada to the United States, making all data subject to U.S. federal law.

-May 16, 2006. Flickr overhauled its website design and structure and upgraded its service from Beta (second testing phase) to Gamma.

-On June 13, 2007, Flickr officially launched the Traditional Chinese interface.

-As of June 2011, Flickr has 510,000 registered members and 800,000 unique visitors

-On May 20, 2013, Flickr underwent a major redesign that completely changed its look and feel, upgraded its Android app, and increased storage space.

-On July 25, 2016, Verizon announced an agreement to acquire Yahoo and Flickr for $4.8 billion.

-On June 13, 2017, Verizon completed the acquisition of Yahoo, and Flickr was subsequently incorporated into Oath, a subsidiary of Verizon.

-On April 20, 2018, professional photo library service provider SmugMug acquired Flickr from Oath Group for an undisclosed price. Users who do not agree to transfer their image files to SmugMug have the right to delete their Flickr account content at the end of the next month.

-In November 2018, Flickr made its first major change since the acquisition by SmugMug. From January 2019, Flickr will terminate the 1TB capacity for free users and change it to 1,000 free videos or photos. The statement mentioned that after January 8, 2019, if the free version users still have more than 1,000 photos, the user will not be able to continue uploading new photos; and after February 5, the photos will be automatically deleted until there are 1,000 photos left, and the system will start deleting from the oldest photos.