Flickr Releases Video Streaming
Flickr, the well known photo sharing site, has announced that it will begin offering video Streaming in an effort to rival the dominant market leader, YouTube.
Flickr said it is launching videos “gently” on the site. For example, it said that the videos will show up anywhere that photos do, such as search results, photo streams and RSS feeds, but they won’t play automatically. Only pro members of the site will be allowed to upload videos.
Users can upload up to 90 seconds of footage, with a maximum size of 150 MB, from any recording device. They can organize and share videos the same way they handle photos, using tags, geotags, sets, and privacy settings. Videos can be uploaded to photo streams, alongside photos, and embedded on third-party Web sites. The formats supported for upload are AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG (1, 2, and 4) and 3gp.
Similar to other video-sharing sites, Flickr Video offers the “embed” feature. “You can choose a size and whether or not to include the owner’s name and the title of the video as an introduction to the video itself. Based on your choices, a little snippet of code will be generated for you that you can cut and paste, and insert into another web page, or blog post” reads the Video FAQ posted on Flickr website.
Flickr will make video available in eight languages: English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese.
“Adding the ability to share videos on Flickr is a natural extension of our mission to be the ‘eyes of the world’ — letting our members share what they see with the people who matter most to them, be they family and friends, or the world,” noted Kakul Srivastava, Flickr’s senior director of product management.