Flickr is the Apple of online photo-sharing with its high multimedia standards, cool interface, tools and fanatical following, but a failure to add video has been a major shortcoming of the service.

No longer. The Yahoo subsidiary finally introduced video today, but with some limitations.

Only Pro members, who pay an annual $24.95 subscription, can upload to the new service and clips are being kept to 90 seconds and 150mb in size.

Flickr says the 90-second limit is an artistic rather than a technical one.

It told its community:

“You know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,” of capturing slices of life to share.”

So Flickr appears to want to remain distinctive by discouraging the kind of music video and TV-clip uploads seen on YouTube. Videos should be an extension of photos, perhaps recorded on the same camera, considering that so many digital cameras now have a movie feature.

The new service is completely integrated and looks as cool as the photo one - it has already attracted its first meme, Fridgets.

April 9th, 2008 in Digital media, Internet, Media | Permalink