Video Comes to Flickr

Starting today, you can enrich your social web with videos on flickr.  This great new feature basically does what you would expect, it allows you to put video on your flickr account.  However, the services does come with a few restrictions.

First, you must be a pro member in order to enjoy these benefits.  Second, videos are limited to 90 sec and 150 mb.  These limitation are trying to prevent it from being a youtube clone.  Instead, it aims to help supplement your photos with self created video or “long photos”.

These videos can be played on your main page alongside your photos, or they can be viewed on their own page (just like photos).  You even have the ability to embed them elsewhere on the web, like your blog.

Some people may dislike the limitations that flickr has imposed.  I for one don’t mind them.  They did get in the way with my first video (which was 3 min long), but I feel that this will help keep the sub-par content out.  The limitations are similar to those that Twitter imposes.  On Twitter, it is 140 characters and on flickr it is 90 seconds.  The limitations should encourage people to edit their clips and only grab the best part, which would benefit everyone.  If you want to put your entire *insert event here* video online, there are plenty of other media distribution services.

Overall I think this is an excellent addition to flickr and hopefully we will see it grow and develop more in the future.  By the way, I love the sleek clean interface for the video controls.  I will be posting a video as soon as I can get it uploaded (probably in the morning) and you can check out my flickr site here.

EDIT: My video finished uploading sometime last night.  It was put together by my girlfriend.  You can find the video here (or below) and her flickr page here.