TurntheScrew

This one came across the news wire yesterday morning, and I’d like to add my own take to the already numerous amounts of words already out there.It’s been confirmed by a number of sources that photo sharing site Flickr is set to launch with a beta version of incorporating video sharing into the site. Now normally, especially when it comes to photos, I’m a bit of a purest. I think that one of the (not so) secrets to Flickr’s success is that it’s plain, it’s simple, it’s easy to navigate, and you get basically you’re asking for…photos. Nothing else, just photos. It’s kinda similar to my plea: Facebook - Keep it simple.

With that said…I always try to look at both sides of the coin. We all know that as far as online video sharing goes, there’s pretty much one place to share: YouTube. Yes, there are a bajillion others, but really, YouTube is your one stop shopping for any and all online video creation. And while I love YouTube and think that they’ve really contributed to differing the way we live our day to day lives, to be honest, they’ve kinda been slacking, while some of the smaller fish have been coming up with bigger and betters.

Vimeo offers HD. HD video? Outstanding! Why watch washed out color and pixels when you can see even the most minute details? Unfortunately, Divx’s Stage6 has disappeared off the map, but they also offered HD along with an unlimited file size upload (hmmm…maybe they should have thought that one through a bit better?). YouTube’s offerings? The same old standard that they’ve been sticking to for years, 100MB, 10 minute length. To be fair, a few months back YouTube did introduce the MultiVideo upload which should appeal to budding filmmakers looking to put something up a bit bigger than 100MB (limit with MultiVid is 1GB), which should increase quality, but I’ve still yet to find a way to actually search for these videos.

A point of comparison:

Vimeo HD:

YouTube:

Ok, that was probably a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to illustrate the point that while YouTube manages to capture 1 out of every 3 videos that are out there on the internets, I personally think they’re resting a bit on their laurels. Therefor, if Flickr were to come out of the chute with something that blows my socks off, I think I might almost be willing to forgo my Keep it simple philosophy and dig it.

Clearly the technology exists, and is readily accessible. Basically anyone with the server capacity and bandwidth can start their own Video sharing site, and something tells me that Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) isn’t lacking on either. I think the bigger question here is, will the already established community of 23M contributors to Flickr buy into it?

As stated above, if Flickr can really give me a wow factor, I’d consider posting my videos to Flickr as well (perhaps even incorporating Video uploading into the excellent Flickr Uploadr?), otherwise it’s just going to be a waste of time. In addition to the world wide knowledge that YouTube is the place to go for videos, it’s also the massive community that the site has built in that makes it special. I.e. nothing makes me happier to see/read the comments on my videos (and to comment on others). Again, clearly there are other sites out there that are offering bigger and better quality videos, but they just don’t cut the mustard to YouTube’s level because there is simply no or little community involvement.

I’m hoping for (and expecting) Flickr video to really wow me. Can they also wow 23 million photographers as well?

Posted under Flickr, Yahoo, internets, youtube