Why Flickr is more valuable than you think
As technology allows richer media experiences with better browsers, internet speeds, and devices, images will play larger roles in the software and experiences we try to create.
Flickr recently went through a huge redesign and is finally using images to tell a story.
CubaGallery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/3831295511/
You are starting to see it more and more with the design of new startup pages, travel sites, etc. The big hero image is our first attempt at creating an experience rather than an informational brochure.
www.airbnb.com
www.getchute.com
We are focusing on the why rather than the what. How the user will feel using our product, how their lives will change, images help us do that. This form of story telling is not new, magazines and television have been doing it for a living. Images on the web have grown in popularity with the rise of mobile, photo enhancement apps, and blazing internet speeds. They are being used more and more to tell a story, and it’s only going to get better as technology continues to make images incredibly easy to load.
Flickr is one of the largest repositories of images on the web today. Each image is tagged and has the meta data of where it was taken, with what camera, etc. However for most power users it is understood to be a community rather than a giant repository.
Think about the last time you needed to use an image from the web for a presentation, a blog post, or a website. You would probably start by going to flickr, heading to the creative commons page, typing in a keyword for a specific image, and wade through the search results to find one that fits just right. Then you would still have to download or screenshot the image, prepare it, and insert it into the medium you’re using. Does this sound some what familiar? Remember what search was like before Page Rank? You would head to certain portal like Yahoo, type in some keywords to search for specific content, wade through the results to find one that fits just right.
Imagine a world where image search and insertion was smarter. Where things only show up that can be used for your presentation or blog post, and the attribution was automatically inserted. You could easily find and insert images that will make your content more expressive as well as reduce the amount of time it takes to find high quality images that match your content. The fact that the attribution exists and is linkable creates the same environment for an image version of Page Rank.
Maybe this isn’t something Flickr ventures into and it’s a startup itself that unlocks the true potential of images. One thing is for sure, images will continue play a larger role in the content we consume and stories we tell.
If you know anyone thinking about similar ideas or has explored something like this I would love to talk to you.
