Flickr: Better Late Than Never
Flickr was a big fad last year. Everyone I knew discovered it last year and eagerly started posting their photos to the website. I was reluctant to try it, mostly because I have a bunch of my own weblogs and servers where I can post my own photos. I wanted to keep control of my photographs and I REALLY didn’t want to depend on a company that might go out of business next week.
Then Yahoo bought Flickr, so there was no risk of it going out of business. In fact, Yahoo was allowing Flickr to flourish. Even that news wasn’t enough for me to try them. I just let all my friends use those cool plug-ins that automatically uploaded pictures that they had taken to their weblogs while I did it the hard way.
Then one day, I decided to test it for The Gadgets Page.
Seriously, I thought that I should just try it out to see if it’s something that “normal†people could easily use. If my mom asked me whether she should upload her pictures to this Flickr-thing, what would I tell her? I found that it was extremely easy to use and was ready to give it a positive review when I found something that changed everything.
I love Flickr!
Does it bother me that my pictures aren’t on my own server and my webpages are at the mercy of Flickr and Yahoo? No, not really. Does it bother me that people can see my pictures anywhere, even if they aren’t reading my blogs? Nope again. If they find me on Flickr and go to my weblogs from there, that’s actually GOOD for me. Does it bother me that people could steal my pictures from there and use them on their own? They always could do that. In fact, I have a little more protection with Flickr because I have proof of the date I posted them from an independent source.
None of those reasons are why I love Flickr. I love them because I can upload a picture, write a blog entry and post it to my weblog all with my cell phone. Flickr makes it easy. See the instructions here:
Logically, I look at this and think, “This shouldn’t change things for me.†I’ve ALWAYS been able to blog using my phone, but I was never able to add a picture to my entries until Flickr came along. When I think of trying to text a blog entry using the tiny buttons on my Treo, it doesn’t really seem worth it. If I include a picture, however, it suddenly becomes worth it to me. Here is an example of a personal entry that I wrote while riding in the car:
It was easy to do and only took a couple of minutes. Trying to do that before I signed up for Flickr would have been so involved that I wouldn’t have even thought about it. Now, I can write anywhere. I may have come to Flickr late, but better late than never!