A Flickr video service to compliment and work alongside the brilliant photo sharing service has been rumoured for what seems like years now.
Indeed it actually is years, with CNet’s Dan Farber claiming to have first heard talk of it way back in December 2005. In May 2007, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield said users would be able to upload videos soon.
So it’s about time the service actually got up and running, which according to the latest whispers, it’s finally going to in April. I assume they mean 2008, but we can’t be sure.
Fourth Anniversary – About Time
Flickr held a fourth anniversary party in San Francisco on Saturday evening, and this is where talk of the beta launch in as little as 3 weeks time came from.
At the moment, Flickr is the pinnacle of a simple photo sharing service, offering free and a completely user friendly interface which has helped it gain 23 million contributors.
It’s a mystery why the ability to upload videos hasn’t been included until now, because it would seem to be a logical step for people to want to share holiday videos, or arty projects along with photos.
Flickr Video & Yahoo! Video
Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005, and while it swallowed up Yahoo Photos in the process, there’s no plans for the new Flickr Video to replace Yahoo Video, mainly because the audience being targeted is different.
There’s definitely an appeal to Flickr video, as it means people would be able to share their photos and videos in the same place, but most Flickr users have already found other alternatives and enticing them back will take something unique and special.
What About YouTube?
Will it be different enough to market leader YouTube? While Yahoo have been stalling on offering video sharing capabilities to Flickr, the Google owned YouTube has grown to be the largest online source of videos, and one of the most popular websites in the world to boot.
Although YouTube have recently announced big plans to make the site even more user friendly, there are still things Yahoo could do to enable Flickr Video to gain a foothold in a crowded market.
Videos longer than ten minutes for ordinary users would be good, as would high definition, full screen playback.
Maybe searching for the inspiration of how to make the site different to YouTube explains the massive delay in launching. I guess we’ll see come April. Fingers crossed.
