News.blog: Flickr expands into video

In a bid to broaden Flickr, if not actually crush YouTube, Yahoo is adding video to what has just been a photo-sharing site.

The change, which the company launched publicly on Tuesday, is a modest but significant extension of Flickr's features. The videos, limited to 90 seconds and 150MB, will be shown as thumbnails alongside users' photos, and will inherit all the features of photos stored on the site: users can add comments, captions, geotags and privacy restrictions so only friends or family may view the videos, the company said.

The company sees the videos in effect as 'long photos', moving snapshots people take, now that digital cameras (except SLRs) can record video as well as still images, said spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten Neilson. The hope is to populate the site with "authentic" videos, not clips from last night's TV shows, and Yahoo will police the site for violations of the terms of service, added Flickr product manager Shanan Delp.

The company wants to reproduce some of the success of Flickr's photo work not just as a repository of imagery, but also as a way for like-minded people to form communities. One example appears to be emerging among beta testers: the fridget, a video taken from an inside-the-fridge perspective as somebody (or even a dog) opens the refrigerator and peers in.

Only those with 'pro' subscriptions will be able to publish videos, but as with photos, those with free Flickr accounts and the public will be able to watch them. The site will support videos in AVI, MPEG and MOV formats, showing them with a Flash player but storing the original, too. Existing upload tools will work with video, too.

I see Flickr's incremental evolution as likely to succeed, as long as 'succeed' is defined relatively narrowly as making Flickr users more active, loyal or engaged. And after all, Yahoo can reuse the technology it's put together for its Yahoo video site, so design and deployment expenses were likely minimised. It might even coax some people to spend $25 (£13) a year on a pro account, which means revenue for Yahoo.

But as the non-award-winning director of several 'authentic' videos of my child that last over 90 seconds, I suspect the 90-second cutoff could be a common problem.

Yahoo says the company thought carefully about the issue. Most people shoot video clips less than a minute long, so 90 seconds should be "a really comfortable time," Neilson said.

Although Google's YouTube can handle longer clips -- up to 10 minutes for regular users -- Yahoo believes it doesn't compete. "People aren't using YouTube to share their personal short-form video clips," Neilson said. I beg to differ -- take a look at a YouTube search for 'daughter's first steps' -- but she's probably right that YouTube has a much broader usage model.

A benefit of the time limit is that it should help curtail pirated TV content. "Ninety seconds helps us define that rebroadcasting commercial content is not what this site is for," said Neilson said.

Will Yahoo users and members be confused whether to head to video.yahoo.com or Flickr? Yahoo believes not.

"Video.yahoo.com is all about broadcast... Flickr is more about personal, authentic video clips," Nielson said. Think Barack Obama for video.yahoo.com and Flickr for the clip of your niece, she said.