Why Flickr?
The last big thing I have to move to SGnTN is my photo library. Initially the debate was whether I should use Coppermine or Gallery 2. I have, or had, decided that although Gallery 2 might be slightly behind Coppermine in terms of the features that I want, it looks to me like Gallery development is more active and will catch up and pass Coppermine soon. That and Gallery 2 is new and shiny and we all know about my weakness for all things shiny.
In the midst of this comes the realization that you can’t swing a dead cat (or is that huff a cat?) on internet without hitting a site who’s owner has placed his photo library on flickr. I’ve viewed a few albums on flickr and it seems ok, but OMGWTFBBQ!? I want my site, including the gallery, to have a consistent look and feel and using flickr wouldn’t allow for that. But why is everyone else using it? Is it because they’re on Blogger and it’s not as easy to add photos there? Is it to save on bandwidth costs? Is it because everybody is moblogging now and just has to be able to post pictures from their cell phone? Is it because people would rather erect an SEP field and be done with it? Is it simply the cool thing to do? Is anyone actually reading this? Anyone? Bueller?
Actually adding pictures to blogger is much easier than it has been in the past. However, as a Flickr user I find that the tools for uploading and sharing (especially grouping pictures) is very simple.
The popularity of Flickr probably came from the ability to tag photos then search the entire Flickr database by those tags to see pictures other Flickr folks have taken.
I like, and find Flickr to be most useful for sharing.
Yeah after looking a little deeper, I can see the appeal of flickr with it’s del.icio.us approach to tagging (BTW folks, feel free to tag SGnTN ;)). Although sadly it doesn’t appear to be collaborative tagging. If you have a limited number of pictures or don’t have access to a server and want the widest possible exposure flickr is probably the way to go. From a users point of view, not only is it easy to keep all of your friends pictures organized, but you can explore all sorts images by searching with tags such as geeks or better yet, babes.
Since I have about 800MB of pics, and I don’t want to pay $25/year for the “pro” version of flickr, I think I’m going to go with Gallery 2 though I may toss a few pictures that may have a broader appeal on flickr.
Well i just read what you said, i have no idea what you were talking about with flicker and all that nonsense but i am sure you will or have made the right decision.