Flickr Has Video

Last night I noticed that Flickr had added video to its service. This news thrilled me, so I started testing it out right away and discovered that, for starters, the video quality is much better on Flickr than it is on Youtube.

Here is a video I made last summer in Thailand. I uploaded the exact same file to Flickr as I did YouTube:

Thai National Anthem video on YouTube

Thai National Anthem video on Flickr

The Flickr version looks much closer to the original quality.

In addition to the higher quality, the primary advantage to using Flickr for me, is that I can now upload “family” only videos and they will appear alongside my family only photos. My relatives can access both with the same Yahoo! account.

Flickr has added the limitation that the videos can only be 90 seconds in length. In their mind, these videos are meant to be long photographs. I like that concept and think it will lead to a distinct type of video being uploaded to Flickr making browsing videos on Flickr a fairly consistant experience.

I still think YouTube will be the leader when it comes to things like clips of vintage 3-2-1 Contact Episodes

But when it comes to sharing family videos in a secure setting, I think Flickr is going to succeed in fulfilling a need that was not yet filled.

Wednesday April 9, 2008