Analysis
What does Flickr do?
Flickr’s base function can be described as the storage and sharing of photos and video. But a large component of Flickr has become its social networking features. What Flickr does really depends on your needs. A person, organization, or school can simply use Flickr to upload images for storage. They can restrict access to the photos in a way that allows only that person or organization to see and have access to the images. Flickr allows the user to organize all the images. You can tag the images with keywords to make them searchable. Geotagging is a very popular way of tagging images geographically. The user can create sets, galleries, and albums, which are tagged with markers allowing for them to be quickly searched.. Being able to search images is a very handy feature when you are talking about organizations with thousands of images.
If you want to, you can set your images to be uploaded and shared. The person loading the image can choose the level of sharingfor each image. Sharing can range from a few friends, to a designated group, to all Flickr members. Flickr has developed a steadily growing social network component of the site. Users can explore all the images loaded to Flickr to be viewed. Users can comment on the images they look at. A running dialogue or listing of comments usually can be found at the bottom on the page displaying the image. The user can also make annotated notes on the image as well.
The social networking aspect of Flickr can easily translate to critiquing, sharing of ideas, and other educational purposes. As you are looking through images through out Flickr, you can mark images as favorites for quick reference. This allows for the user to display the image on their computer at a moment’s notice. The Flickr user can create or join groups. Groups are a number of Flickr members interested in a topic or set of images. The group could be a small visual arts class or hundreds of people interested in maple trees.
Flickr has developed relationships with several other sites and services. Creative Commons is a licensing organization that helps with the buying and selling of copyrighted images. Flickr works with photo editing sites like Picnic, which allows the user to do basic photo editing and sharing without buying expensive software. Flickr also offer Flickr Blogs, easy upload to Facebook, and mobile uploads from mobile devices. It appears that Flickr is trying to integrate themselves with many of the other social networking and productivity sites.
If you want to, you can set your images to be uploaded and shared. The person loading the image can choose the level of sharingfor each image. Sharing can range from a few friends, to a designated group, to all Flickr members. Flickr has developed a steadily growing social network component of the site. Users can explore all the images loaded to Flickr to be viewed. Users can comment on the images they look at. A running dialogue or listing of comments usually can be found at the bottom on the page displaying the image. The user can also make annotated notes on the image as well.
The social networking aspect of Flickr can easily translate to critiquing, sharing of ideas, and other educational purposes. As you are looking through images through out Flickr, you can mark images as favorites for quick reference. This allows for the user to display the image on their computer at a moment’s notice. The Flickr user can create or join groups. Groups are a number of Flickr members interested in a topic or set of images. The group could be a small visual arts class or hundreds of people interested in maple trees.
Flickr has developed relationships with several other sites and services. Creative Commons is a licensing organization that helps with the buying and selling of copyrighted images. Flickr works with photo editing sites like Picnic, which allows the user to do basic photo editing and sharing without buying expensive software. Flickr also offer Flickr Blogs, easy upload to Facebook, and mobile uploads from mobile devices. It appears that Flickr is trying to integrate themselves with many of the other social networking and productivity sites.