From the blog:
“What can I do with Flickr?”
By JOrozco, on September 29th, 2008.Flickr is essentially an online storage for digital photos. For many people, myself included, it is more than that. Flickr can be described as a photo sharing service, a social network, and a photo organizer. It can be used to share images between family, friends, businesses, and everyone in between. Some photographers, graphic designers, and other professionals, use it to display their work as a digital portfolio.
Flickr use Folksonomy to organize photos. Folksonomy just means you can give your photo a tag like the word “cats.” If you wanted to view all your images that you tagged with the word “cats,” you just click on the corresponding tag. This also works if you want to search for other images from all the Flickr users, as they will tag their images as well.
SETS allow you to group photos together, almost like a folder, but with folders, a photo can only belong to one folder at a time. With SETS, a photo can belong to one set, many sets, all sets, or no sets. If I have a photo of a cat, I can add it to a set that is labeled ANIMALS and another set labeled PETS.
To use Flickr, you must sign up for a Yahoo account, then register the account with Flickr. This process allows you to post an unlimited amount of images to your account, but only your 200 most recent images can be viewed. Flickr will not delete the rest of your images, it only removes them from public access. Viewing images on Flickr does not require a Yahoo account.
Once you’re signed up, if you would like the ability to display all of your images, you need to sign up for a PRO account. A PRO account costs $24 per year (at the time of this posting). A free account will allow you to create 3 SETS and upload up to 100 MB of images (no video uploads with free account) per month. A PRO account removes the SETS limit and allows video uploads.
Flickr can be a fun way to share your images with people that share your interests. Flickr Groups are user created groups that other Flickr users can join and add their own images to the pot.
Flickr also includes privacy options that allow or block users from viewing your images depending on their status with your account. You can label users as Family, Friend, and more. Each type has a different level of permissions to your images. If you want to share images of your child with family only, clicking on the appropriate settings will block all users from viewing your images except for Family members.
Flickr’s service is limited only by your imagination. Start with a free account and post your images, play with the interface and sign up for some groups!
~JOrozco
