Video on Flickr
My first response is that I like the way Flickr are doing this. In a move which is lightweight, simple, restrained and humble, pro users can now upload video clips up to 90 seconds long.
I like it because I think it’s going to foster something different to most of what happens on Youtube these days. My feeling is that Flickr’s loyal users will start using the service to upload and share little slices of their life with their friends, and the world at large. And it’s the 90 second time limit that will encourage this. Sure, so much of the commercial content on Youtube probably is less than 90 seconds long, but there’s something about the overwhelming presence of all those 9 minute Simpsons and Family Guy clips and highly produced music videos that overwhelms and intimidates and discourages me from uploading my humble little clip of a cool cafe I found in Bangkok. I just don’t feel like I’m part of something bigger on Youtube.
90 seconds says to me “keep it light, keep it low tech, be silly”. For example, The Fridgets Pool.
Intrigued to see what happens here as such a major feature is set before a massive, loyal, participatory, contributory community.
Cameron Adams
April 8th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I got a little “uh-oh” moment when I read your post.
Sure, it won’t affect me because my little Flickr circle probably won’t include that much video (prove me wrong!), but I always feel there’s something oh-so disposable about user generated video, and I had the premonition of a decaying Flickr, consumed by a flood of mediocrity.
Sure, it could be a field rife for innovation, but I feel It’s so much harder to produce quality video than it is to take a quality photograph. If Youtube is anything to go by, cute puppies, Japanese game shows and painfully earnest pieces to camera are the upload of the day. Which is great for Youtube, but I don’t think it’s what Flickr is about.
Not only that, but consuming video is a totally different experience for me than photographs — photographs are easy for me to click, view, sort, discard, star, move on. A little break in the day. Videos — much harder. They demand me to sit there and appreciate them for ~90 seconds. And it’s particularly hard to know whether you’ll get any value out of it just from a thumbnail.
I don’t know … I get the feeling that video is a popular medium (well, it undeniably is), and that Flickr’s version of it might be popular, but not from the existing user base of photographers.