6. Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site

Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Within the past year, Flickr has become the fastest growing photo sharing site on the web and is known as one of the first web sites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site. Developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company, Flickr was launched in February 2004. In March 2005 Yahoo! Inc. acquired Ludicorp and Flickr.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other libraries are using Flickr for. Guess what? Becker has a flickr account – take some time to explore it.

Resources:

• Tour Flickr
• Flickr FAQs
• Get Flickr-tastic (Andrea Mercado)

Exercise:

• Visit Flickr and explore. Browse using some of the Explore options. Choose an interesting image that you want to blog about. Be sure to include either a link to the image (or if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr’s blogging tool to add the image in your post.).

Optional Exercise:

• Create a Free account in Flickr and upload a few pictures. Tag at least one of the images and mark it public. Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for uploading images – through Flickr’s blogging tool or using Blogger’s photo upload feature.
• Explore some of the other image sharing sites:
  • Photobucket
  • Google’s Picasa
  • Zoomr

P.S.: A quick word about photo posting etiquette - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) it is advisable to get the person’s permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren’t taken by you (unless you have the photographer’s consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.