Flickr
Encyclopedia
Flickr is an image hosting
and video hosting
website, web services suite, and online community
that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo!
in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by blog
gers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media
. Yahoo reported in June 2011 that Flickr had a total of 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr without the need to register an account but an account must be made in order to upload content onto the website. Registering an account also allows users to create a profile page containing photos and videos that the user has uploaded and also grants the ability to add another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile users, Flickr has an official app
for iPhone
, for Windows Phone 7
, and for Android.
-based company founded by Stewart Butterfield
and Caterina Fake
. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp's Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game
. Flickr proved a more feasible project, and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved; however, Butterfield has since launched an online game of similar intent.
Early versions of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room
called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr's backend systems evolved away from the Game Neverending's codebase.
Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present were tags
, marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending
.
Yahoo!
acquired Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005. The reported acquisition cost was $35 million. During the week of June 26 – July 2, 2005, all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, resulting in all data becoming subject to United States federal law
.
On May 16, 2006, Flickr updated its services from beta to "gamma", along with a design and structural overhaul. According to the site's FAQ
, the term "gamma", rarely used in software development, is intended to be tongue-in-cheek to indicate that the service is always being tested by its users, and is in a state of perpetual improvement. A further connotation, more specific to photography and the display of images, is that of gamma correction
. The current service is considered a stable release.
In December 2006, upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100 MB a month (from 20 MB) and were removed from Pro Accounts, permitting unlimited uploads for holders of these accounts (originally a 2 GB per month limit).
In January 2007, Flickr announced that "Old Skool" members—those who had joined before the Yahoo acquisition—would be required to associate their account with a Yahoo ID by March 15 to continue using the service. This move was criticized by some users.
On April 9, 2008, Flickr began allowing paid subscribers to upload videos, limited to 90 seconds in length and 150 MB in size. On March 2, 2009, Flickr added the facility to upload and view HD videos, and began allowing free users to upload normal-resolution video. At the same time, the set limit for free accounts was lifted.
In May 2009, White House
official photographer Pete Souza
began using Flickr as a conduit for releasing White House photos. The photos were initially posted with a Creative Commons Attribution license requiring that the original photographers be credited. Flickr later created a new license which identified them as "United States Government Work", which does not carry any copyright restrictions. The photos are posted with this disclaimer: "This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House."
extension. Users were able to create individual photo albums, categorize their photos and place them in the corresponding albums. Users were also able to set access of their albums by publishing them for the viewing pleasure of everyone, disabling access, or marking them as private folders for their own viewing. In an effort to make it simpler and more efficient, Yahoo had an uploader tool to drag and drop the pictures from one's computer to Yahoo! Photos web page
. In March 2005 Yahoo! purchased Flickr, and in May 2007 announced that Yahoo! Photos would be closed down on September 20, 2007 at 9 p.m. PDT, after which all photos would be deleted. During the interim, users had the ability to migrate their photos to Flickr or other services (including Shutterfly
, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish
, and Photobucket
). All who migrated to Flickr were given three months of a Flickr Pro account.
On 16 June 2007, Yahoo! Photos issued a press release stating that its service would end on 20 September, in order to focus the company's efforts on Flickr.
announced his resignation following his wife and co-founder Caterina Fake
, who left the company on June 13, 2008. Butterfield wrote a humorous resignation letter to Brad Garlinghouse
in which he stated that he was an old tin man in a new age.
On December 11, 2008, The Guardian
reported that three employees had been laid off as Yahoo continued to reduce its workforce.
On November 30, 2010 CNET
reported Yahoo was on the verge of a major layoff affecting 10%-20% of its workforce. Flickr was specifically named as a target for these layoffs.
Free account users are allowed to upload 300 MB of images and two videos per month. If a free user has more than 200 photos on the site, they will only be able to see the most recent 200 in their photostream. The other photos that were uploaded are still stored on the site and links to these images in blog posts remain active. Free users can also contribute any one photo to a maximum of 10 photo pools. If a free account is inactive for 90 consecutive days, Flickr reserves the right to delete it. For a free account, no one (including the account owner) can access the original file. If the account is upgraded to a pro account, then the original files are available for download.
Pro accounts allow users to upload an unlimited number of images and videos every month and receive unlimited bandwidth and storage. Photos may be placed in up to 60 group pools, and Pro account users receive ad-free browsing and have access to account statistics. As soon as a Pro account expires, it reverts to the restrictions of a free account, including Flickr's right to delete an account that is "inactive for 90 consecutive days". Flickr may delete a Pro account without giving any reason nor warning to the account's owner.
Flickr asks photo submitters to organize images using tags
(a form of metadata), which enable searchers to find images related to particular topics, such as place names or subject matter. Flickr was also an early website to implement tag cloud
s, which provide access to images tagged with the most popular keywords. Because of its support for tags, Flickr has been cited as a prime example of effective use of folksonomy
, although Thomas Vander Wal
suggested that Flickr is not the best example.
Flickr also enables users to organize their photos into "sets", or groups of photos that fall under the same heading. Sets can be displayed as a slideshow and shared by embedding them in websites. However, sets are more flexible than the traditional folder-based method of organizing files, as one photo can belong to one set, many sets, or none at all. Flickr's "sets" represent a form of categorical metadata rather than a physical hierarchy. Geotagging
can be applied to photos in set. Any sets with geotagging can be related to a map using imapflicker. The resulting map can be embedded in a website. Sets may be grouped into "collections", and collections further grouped into higher-order collections.
Flickr offers a fairly comprehensive web-service API that enables programmers to create applications that can perform almost any function that a user on the Flickr site can do.
for organizing photos within a Flickr account that can be accessed through the Flickr interface. It allows users to modify tags, descriptions, and set groupings, and to place photos on a world map (a feature provided in conjunction with Yahoo! Maps
). It uses Ajax
to emulate the look, feel, and quick functionality of desktop-based photo-management applications, such as Google's Picasa
and F-Spot
. Users can select and apply changes to multiple photos at a time, making it a better tool for batch editing than the standard Flickr interface.
online photo-editing application that includes a reduced-feature version of Picnik built into Flickr as a default photo editor.
.
In November 2006 Flickr created a "guest pass" system that allows private photos to be shared with non-Flickr members. A person could e-mail this pass to parents who may not have an account to allow them to see the photos otherwise restricted from public view. This setting allows sets to be shared, or all photos under a certain privacy category (friends or family) to be shared.
Many members allow their photos to be viewed by anyone, forming a large collaborative database
of categorized photos. By default, other members can leave comments about any image they have permission to view, and in many cases can add to the list of tags associated with an image.
and Atom
feeds and an API
that enables independent programmers to expand its services. This includes a large number of third-party Greasemonkey
scripts which enhance and extend the functionality of the Flickr site. In 2006 Flickr was the second most Greasemonkey-extended site.
The core functionality of the site relies on standard HTML
and HTTP
features, allowing for wide compatibility among platforms
and browsers
. Organizr uses Ajax
, with which most modern browsers are compliant, and most of Flickr's other text-editing and tagging interfaces also possess Ajax functionality.
Images can be posted to the user's photostream via email attachments, enabling direct uploads from many cameraphones and applications with email capabilities.
Flickr has been adopted by many web users as their primary photo storage site, especially members of the blog
ging community. In addition, it is popular with Macintosh and Linux
users, who are locked out of photo-sharing sites that require Windows and Internet Explorer
.
Flickr uses the Geo microformat
on the pages for over 3 million geotagged
images.
Flickr has entered into partnerships with third parties to offer printing of various forms of merchandise, including business cards, photo books, stationery, personalized credit cards, and large-size prints, from companies such as Moo, Blurb
, Tiny Prints, Capital One
, Imagekind
, and QOOP
. In addition, Flickr has partnered with Getty Images
to sell stock photos from some users.
Users of Windows Live Photo Gallery
, Apple's iPhoto
(version 8), Adobe's Lightroom 3.2 and Apple's Aperture
(version 3.0) have the ability to upload their photos directly to Flickr.
Flickr provides a desktop client for Mac OS X
and Windows that allows users to upload photos without using the web interface. Uploadr allows drag-and-drop batch uploading of photos, the setting of tags and descriptions for each batch, and the editing of privacy settings.
) and how "safe" (i.e., unlikely to offend others) their images are, as well as specify that information for specific images individually. In addition, users can specify the same criteria when searching for images. There are some restrictions on searches for certain types of users: non-members must always use SafeSearch, which omits images noted as potentially offensive, while members whose Yahoo! accounts indicate that they are underage may use SafeSearch or moderate SafeSearch, but cannot turn SafeSearch off completely.
Flickr has since used this setting to change the level of accessibility to "unsafe" content for entire nations, including South Korea, Hong Kong, and Germany. In summer 2007, German users staged a "revolt" over being assigned to the user rights of a minor
. See Censorship below.
Flickr offers users the ability to either release their images under certain common usage license
s or label them as "all rights reserved
". The licensing options primarily include the Creative Commons 2.0 attribution-based and minor content-control licenses - although jurisdiction and version-specific licenses cannot be selected. As with "tags
", the site allows easy searching of only those images that fall under a specific license.
mapping for various cities; this began with Beijing during the run-up to the 2008 Olympic games. , this is used for Baghdad, Beijing, Kabul, Sydney, and Tokyo. OpenStreetMap data is collected by volunteers and is available on a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license from Creative Commons
.
s across 124 servers
, with about 800,000 user accounts
per pair of servers. Based on information compiled by highscalability.com, the MySQL
databases are hosted on servers that are Linux
-based (from RedHat), with a software platform that includes Apache
, PHP
(with PEAR
and Smarty
), shards
, Memcached
, Squid, Perl
, ImageMagick
, and Java; the system administration tools include Ganglia
, SystemImager, Subcon, and CVSup
.
from Flickr and Yahoo.
Flickr management, unwilling to go into legal details, implied that the reason for the stringent filtering was some unusually strict age-verification laws in Germany. The issue received attention in the German national media, especially in online publications. Initial reports indicated that Flickr's action was a sensible, if unattractive, precaution against prosecution, although later coverage implied that Flickr's action may have been unnecessarily strict.
On June 20, 2007, Flickr reacted by granting German users access to "moderate" (but not "restricted") images, and hinted at a future solution for Germany, involving advanced age-verification procedures.
On June 1, 2009, Flickr was blocked in China in advance of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
.
launched a bus stop advertising campaign which promoted its cellphone text messaging
service using the work of amateur photographers who uploaded their work to Flickr using a Creative Commons by Attribution license. Users licensing their images this way freed their work for use by any other entity, as long as the original creator was attributed credit, without any other compensation being required. Virgin upheld this single restriction by printing a URL, leading to the photographer's Flickr page, on each of their ads. However, one picture depicted 15-year-old Alison Chang at a fund-raising carwash for her church, for which Chang sued Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The photo was taken by Alison's church youth counsellor, Justin Ho-Wee Wong, who uploaded the image to Flickr under the Creative Commons
license.
On November 27, 2007, Chang filed for a voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit against Creative Commons,focusing their lawsuit against Virgin Mobile. The case was thrown out of court due to lack of jurisdiction and subsequently Virgin Mobile did not incur any damages towards the defendant.
and other social networking sites, is being monitored by the US Department of Homeland Security.
, Library of Congress
, Brooklyn Museum
, Nationaal Archief
, National Archives and Records Administration
, State Library of New South Wales
, and Smithsonian Institution
.
announced a partnership with Getty Images
in which selected users could submit photographs for stock photography
usage and receive payment. In 2010 this was changed so that users could label images as suitable for stock use themselves.
Image hosting service
An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image....
and video hosting
Video hosting service
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...
website, web services suite, and online community
Online community
An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted...
that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
gers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
. Yahoo reported in June 2011 that Flickr had a total of 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr without the need to register an account but an account must be made in order to upload content onto the website. Registering an account also allows users to create a profile page containing photos and videos that the user has uploaded and also grants the ability to add another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile users, Flickr has an official app
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
for iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, for Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...
, and for Android.
History
Flickr was launched in February 2004 by Ludicorp, a VancouverVancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
-based company founded by Stewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield is a Canadian-born entrepreneur and businessman. He co-founded the photo sharing website Flickr and its parent company Ludicorp with then-wife Caterina Fake. In March 2005 Ludicorp was acquired by Yahoo!, where Butterfield continued as the General Manager of Flickr until he...
and Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake is an American businesswoman and internet entrepreneur.Fake was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, attended Smith College, and graduated from Vassar College in 1991....
. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp's Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
. Flickr proved a more feasible project, and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved; however, Butterfield has since launched an online game of similar intent.
Early versions of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...
called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr's backend systems evolved away from the Game Neverending's codebase.
Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present were tags
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
, marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending
Patent pending
The expressions "patent pending" or "patent applied for" refer to a warning that inventors are entitled to use in reference to their product or process once a patent application has been filed, but prior to the patent being issued or the application abandoned...
.
Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
acquired Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005. The reported acquisition cost was $35 million. During the week of June 26 – July 2, 2005, all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, resulting in all data becoming subject to United States federal law
Law of the United States
The law of the United States consists of many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the United States Constitution, the foundation of the federal government of the United States...
.
On May 16, 2006, Flickr updated its services from beta to "gamma", along with a design and structural overhaul. According to the site's FAQ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
, the term "gamma", rarely used in software development, is intended to be tongue-in-cheek to indicate that the service is always being tested by its users, and is in a state of perpetual improvement. A further connotation, more specific to photography and the display of images, is that of gamma correction
Gamma correction
Gamma correction, gamma nonlinearity, gamma encoding, or often simply gamma, is the name of a nonlinear operation used to code and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems...
. The current service is considered a stable release.
In December 2006, upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100 MB a month (from 20 MB) and were removed from Pro Accounts, permitting unlimited uploads for holders of these accounts (originally a 2 GB per month limit).
In January 2007, Flickr announced that "Old Skool" members—those who had joined before the Yahoo acquisition—would be required to associate their account with a Yahoo ID by March 15 to continue using the service. This move was criticized by some users.
On April 9, 2008, Flickr began allowing paid subscribers to upload videos, limited to 90 seconds in length and 150 MB in size. On March 2, 2009, Flickr added the facility to upload and view HD videos, and began allowing free users to upload normal-resolution video. At the same time, the set limit for free accounts was lifted.
In May 2009, White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
official photographer Pete Souza
Pete Souza
Pete Souza is an American photojournalist and the current Chief Official White House photographer for President Barack Obama and Director of the White House Photography Office...
began using Flickr as a conduit for releasing White House photos. The photos were initially posted with a Creative Commons Attribution license requiring that the original photographers be credited. Flickr later created a new license which identified them as "United States Government Work", which does not carry any copyright restrictions. The photos are posted with this disclaimer: "This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House."
Yahoo! Photos
Yahoo! Photos had unlimited storage for photos, but it was required that photos have the jpeg/jpgJPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
extension. Users were able to create individual photo albums, categorize their photos and place them in the corresponding albums. Users were also able to set access of their albums by publishing them for the viewing pleasure of everyone, disabling access, or marking them as private folders for their own viewing. In an effort to make it simpler and more efficient, Yahoo had an uploader tool to drag and drop the pictures from one's computer to Yahoo! Photos web page
Web page
A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...
. In March 2005 Yahoo! purchased Flickr, and in May 2007 announced that Yahoo! Photos would be closed down on September 20, 2007 at 9 p.m. PDT, after which all photos would be deleted. During the interim, users had the ability to migrate their photos to Flickr or other services (including Shutterfly
Shutterfly
Shutterfly is an Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service. Shutterfly's flagship product is its photo book line. It is based in Redwood City, California.-Features:...
, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish
Snapfish
Snapfish is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service that is owned by Hewlett-Packard. Members can upload files for free, and are given unlimited photo storage.- History :...
, and Photobucket
Photobucket
Photobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007....
). All who migrated to Flickr were given three months of a Flickr Pro account.
On 16 June 2007, Yahoo! Photos issued a press release stating that its service would end on 20 September, in order to focus the company's efforts on Flickr.
- March 2000: Yahoo! Photos launched
- Summer 2002:Flickr launched
- 29 March 2005: Yahoo bought Flickr (and the company which launched it)
- 14 January 2007: Yahoo! Photos updated its site with new features, including free full-resolution downloads from ISPs that have partnerships with Yahoo
- 3 May 2007: An informal announcement was made that Yahoo! Photo would be ended
- June 2007: Yahoo! photos ceased to accept new accounts or allow users to upload photos
- 20 September 2007: Yahoo! Photos shuts down. Users in India were terminated on 18 October; users in Australia were terminated on 19 October. Users could follow a link to transfer their photos to one of five providers automatically: Flickr, ShutterflyShutterflyShutterfly is an Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service. Shutterfly's flagship product is its photo book line. It is based in Redwood City, California.-Features:...
, PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007....
, SnapfishSnapfishSnapfish is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service that is owned by Hewlett-Packard. Members can upload files for free, and are given unlimited photo storage.- History :...
, or Kodak Gallery. - 18-19 October: Yahoo! Photos shut down for Indian and Australian users and all photos and accounts were deleted.
Corporate changes
In June 2008, Flickr co-founder Stewart ButterfieldStewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield is a Canadian-born entrepreneur and businessman. He co-founded the photo sharing website Flickr and its parent company Ludicorp with then-wife Caterina Fake. In March 2005 Ludicorp was acquired by Yahoo!, where Butterfield continued as the General Manager of Flickr until he...
announced his resignation following his wife and co-founder Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake is an American businesswoman and internet entrepreneur.Fake was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, attended Smith College, and graduated from Vassar College in 1991....
, who left the company on June 13, 2008. Butterfield wrote a humorous resignation letter to Brad Garlinghouse
Brad Garlinghouse
Bradley Kent "Brad" Garlinghouse is currently President of Consumer Applications at AOL which includes services such as AOL Mail, AIM and Mobile. Prior to AOL, Brad was Senior Vice President at Yahoo! running its Communications business...
in which he stated that he was an old tin man in a new age.
On December 11, 2008, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reported that three employees had been laid off as Yahoo continued to reduce its workforce.
On November 30, 2010 CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
reported Yahoo was on the verge of a major layoff affecting 10%-20% of its workforce. Flickr was specifically named as a target for these layoffs.
Accounts
Flickr offers two types of accounts, Free and Pro.Free account users are allowed to upload 300 MB of images and two videos per month. If a free user has more than 200 photos on the site, they will only be able to see the most recent 200 in their photostream. The other photos that were uploaded are still stored on the site and links to these images in blog posts remain active. Free users can also contribute any one photo to a maximum of 10 photo pools. If a free account is inactive for 90 consecutive days, Flickr reserves the right to delete it. For a free account, no one (including the account owner) can access the original file. If the account is upgraded to a pro account, then the original files are available for download.
Pro accounts allow users to upload an unlimited number of images and videos every month and receive unlimited bandwidth and storage. Photos may be placed in up to 60 group pools, and Pro account users receive ad-free browsing and have access to account statistics. As soon as a Pro account expires, it reverts to the restrictions of a free account, including Flickr's right to delete an account that is "inactive for 90 consecutive days". Flickr may delete a Pro account without giving any reason nor warning to the account's owner.
Organization
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
(a form of metadata), which enable searchers to find images related to particular topics, such as place names or subject matter. Flickr was also an early website to implement tag cloud
Tag cloud
A tag cloud is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata on websites, or to visualize free form text. 'Tags' are usually single words, and the importance of each tag is shown with font size or color...
s, which provide access to images tagged with the most popular keywords. Because of its support for tags, Flickr has been cited as a prime example of effective use of folksonomy
Folksonomy
A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging...
, although Thomas Vander Wal
Thomas Vander Wal
Thomas Vander Wal is an information architect best known for coining the term "folksonomy". He is also known for initiating the term "infocloud"...
suggested that Flickr is not the best example.
Flickr also enables users to organize their photos into "sets", or groups of photos that fall under the same heading. Sets can be displayed as a slideshow and shared by embedding them in websites. However, sets are more flexible than the traditional folder-based method of organizing files, as one photo can belong to one set, many sets, or none at all. Flickr's "sets" represent a form of categorical metadata rather than a physical hierarchy. Geotagging
GeoTagging
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata...
can be applied to photos in set. Any sets with geotagging can be related to a map using imapflicker. The resulting map can be embedded in a website. Sets may be grouped into "collections", and collections further grouped into higher-order collections.
Flickr offers a fairly comprehensive web-service API that enables programmers to create applications that can perform almost any function that a user on the Flickr site can do.
Organizr
Organizr is a web applicationWeb application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
for organizing photos within a Flickr account that can be accessed through the Flickr interface. It allows users to modify tags, descriptions, and set groupings, and to place photos on a world map (a feature provided in conjunction with Yahoo! Maps
Yahoo! Maps
Yahoo! Maps is a free online mapping portal provided by Yahoo!.-News:*On May 16, 2007, Yahoo! released a new map style designed by the cartography company...
). It uses Ajax
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
to emulate the look, feel, and quick functionality of desktop-based photo-management applications, such as Google's Picasa
Picasa
Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website, originally created by Idealab in 2002 and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my...
and F-Spot
F-Spot
F-Spot is an image organizer, designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. The name is a play on the words F-Stop and G-Spot.-Features:...
. Users can select and apply changes to multiple photos at a time, making it a better tool for batch editing than the standard Flickr interface.
Picnik
Flickr has a partnership with the PicnikPicnik
Picnik is an online photo editing service. It is headquartered in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. Currently it can import photos natively from Facebook, Myspace, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Yahoo Image search, Google Plus and also offers options to upload from a computer or to upload...
online photo-editing application that includes a reduced-feature version of Picnik built into Flickr as a default photo editor.
Access control
Flickr provides both private and public image storage. A user uploading an image can set privacy controls that determine who can view the image. A photo can be flagged as either public or private. Private images are visible by default only to the uploader, but they can also be marked as viewable by friends and/or family. Privacy settings also can be decided by adding photographs from a user's photostream to a "group pool". If a group is private all the members of that group can see the photo. If a group is public the photo becomes public as well. Flickr also provides a "contact list" which can be used to control image access for a specific set of users in a way similar to that of LiveJournalLiveJournal
LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
.
In November 2006 Flickr created a "guest pass" system that allows private photos to be shared with non-Flickr members. A person could e-mail this pass to parents who may not have an account to allow them to see the photos otherwise restricted from public view. This setting allows sets to be shared, or all photos under a certain privacy category (friends or family) to be shared.
Many members allow their photos to be viewed by anyone, forming a large collaborative database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
of categorized photos. By default, other members can leave comments about any image they have permission to view, and in many cases can add to the list of tags associated with an image.
Interaction and compatibility
Flickr's functionality includes RSSRSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
and Atom
Atom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
feeds and an API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
that enables independent programmers to expand its services. This includes a large number of third-party Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to HTML web page content on the DOMContentLoaded event, which happens immediately after it is loaded in the browser .As Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web...
scripts which enhance and extend the functionality of the Flickr site. In 2006 Flickr was the second most Greasemonkey-extended site.
The core functionality of the site relies on standard HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
and HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
features, allowing for wide compatibility among platforms
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
and browsers
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
. Organizr uses Ajax
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
, with which most modern browsers are compliant, and most of Flickr's other text-editing and tagging interfaces also possess Ajax functionality.
Images can be posted to the user's photostream via email attachments, enabling direct uploads from many cameraphones and applications with email capabilities.
Flickr has been adopted by many web users as their primary photo storage site, especially members of the blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ging community. In addition, it is popular with Macintosh and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
users, who are locked out of photo-sharing sites that require Windows and Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
.
Flickr uses the Geo microformat
Geo (microformat)
Geo is a microformat used for marking up WGS84 geographical coordinates in HTML. Although termed a "draft" specification, this is a formality, and the format is stable and in widespread use; not least as a sub-set of the published hCalendar and hCard microformat specifications, neither of which is...
on the pages for over 3 million geotagged
GeoTagging
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata...
images.
Flickr has entered into partnerships with third parties to offer printing of various forms of merchandise, including business cards, photo books, stationery, personalized credit cards, and large-size prints, from companies such as Moo, Blurb
Blurb.com
Blurb is a company that provides a print-on-demand layout, printing and self-publishing service for the general public.- Awards :*In April 2008, Blurb is nominated for A 2008 Webby Award*In 2010, Blurb becomes 2010 IMA Award Winner....
, Tiny Prints, Capital One
Capital One
Capital One Financial Corp. is a U.S.-based bank holding company specializing in credit cards, home loans, auto loans, banking and savings products...
, Imagekind
Imagekind
Imagekind is a commercial website that prints and sells images created by participating artists on-demand. It also includes a social networking and marketing site for artists and their customers...
, and QOOP
QOOP
QOOP is a web services company that was founded in Mill Valley, California in 2005. They run the website QOOP.com, which is presented as a 'social commerce network' for authors, artists, media archives and publishers.- QOOP.com :...
. In addition, Flickr has partnered with Getty Images
Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...
to sell stock photos from some users.
Users of Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Photo Gallery is a photo management and photo sharing application released as a part of Microsoft's Windows Live initiative. It is an upgraded version of Windows Photo Gallery, which is a part of Windows Vista....
, Apple's iPhoto
IPhoto
iPhoto is a digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. and released with every Macintosh personal computer as part of the iLife suite of digital life management applications...
(version 8), Adobe's Lightroom 3.2 and Apple's Aperture
Aperture (photography software)
Aperture is a photo editing and management software program that was developed by Apple for the Mac OS X operating system, first released in 2005 for $499 , dropped to $199, and now released on their App Store for $79...
(version 3.0) have the ability to upload their photos directly to Flickr.
Flickr provides a desktop client for Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and Windows that allows users to upload photos without using the web interface. Uploadr allows drag-and-drop batch uploading of photos, the setting of tags and descriptions for each batch, and the editing of privacy settings.
Filtering
In March 2007 Flickr added new content filtering controls that let members specify by default what types of images they generally upload (photo, art/illustration, or screenshotScreenshot
A screenshot , screen capture , screen dump, screengrab , or print screen is an image taken by a computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device...
) and how "safe" (i.e., unlikely to offend others) their images are, as well as specify that information for specific images individually. In addition, users can specify the same criteria when searching for images. There are some restrictions on searches for certain types of users: non-members must always use SafeSearch, which omits images noted as potentially offensive, while members whose Yahoo! accounts indicate that they are underage may use SafeSearch or moderate SafeSearch, but cannot turn SafeSearch off completely.
Flickr has since used this setting to change the level of accessibility to "unsafe" content for entire nations, including South Korea, Hong Kong, and Germany. In summer 2007, German users staged a "revolt" over being assigned to the user rights of a minor
Minor (law)
In law, a minor is a person under a certain age — the age of majority — which legally demarcates childhood from adulthood; the age depends upon jurisdiction and application, but is typically 18...
. See Censorship below.
Licensing
License
The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...
s or label them as "all rights reserved
All rights reserved
"All rights reserved" is a phrase that originated in copyright law as part of copyright notices. It indicates that the copyright holder reserves, or holds for their own use, all the rights provided by copyright law, such as distribution, performance, and creation of derivative works; that is, they...
". The licensing options primarily include the Creative Commons 2.0 attribution-based and minor content-control licenses - although jurisdiction and version-specific licenses cannot be selected. As with "tags
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
", the site allows easy searching of only those images that fall under a specific license.
Map sources
In addition to using commercial mapping data, Flickr now uses OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Two major driving forces behind the establishment and growth of OSM have been restrictions on use or availability of map information across much of the world and the advent of inexpensive portable GPS devices.The...
mapping for various cities; this began with Beijing during the run-up to the 2008 Olympic games. , this is used for Baghdad, Beijing, Kabul, Sydney, and Tokyo. OpenStreetMap data is collected by volunteers and is available on a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license from Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
.
Account-undelete option
In May 2011 Flickr added an option to easily reverse an account termination. This action was motivated by a very public accidental deletion of a Flickr user's account, and its very protracted restoration.Implementation
According to the company, Flickr is hosted on 62 databaseDatabase
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
s across 124 servers
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
, with about 800,000 user accounts
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
per pair of servers. Based on information compiled by highscalability.com, the MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
databases are hosted on servers that are Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
-based (from RedHat), with a software platform that includes Apache
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
, PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
(with PEAR
Pear
The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....
and Smarty
Smarty
Smarty is a web template system written in PHP. Smarty is primarily promoted as a tool for separation of concerns.Smarty is intended to simplify compartmentalization, allowing the presentation of a web page to change separately from the back-end...
), shards
Shard (database architecture)
A database shard is a horizontal partition in a database or search engine. Each individual partition is referred to as a shard or database shard.- Database architecture :...
, Memcached
Memcached
In computing, memcached is a general-purpose distributed memory caching system that was originally developed by Danga Interactive for LiveJournal, but is now used by many other sites. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in RAM to reduce the...
, Squid, Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, ImageMagick
ImageMagick
ImageMagick is an open source software suite for displaying, converting, and editing raster image files. It can read and write over 100 image file formats. ImageMagick is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.- Features and capabilities:...
, and Java; the system administration tools include Ganglia
Ganglia (software)
Ganglia is a scalable distributed system monitor tool for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and grids. It allows the user to remotely view live or historical statistics for all machines that are being monitored.-Ganglia:It is based on a hierarchical design targeted at...
, SystemImager, Subcon, and CVSup
CVSup
CVSup is a computer program written for Unix/Linux based systems that synchronizes files and directories from one location to another while minimizing data transfer using file-type specific delta encoding when appropriate...
.
Censorship
On 12 June 2007, in the wake of the rollout of localized language versions of the site, Flickr implemented a user-side rating system for filtering out potentially controversial photos. Simultaneously, users with accounts registered with Yahoo subsidiaries in Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea were prevented from viewing photos rated "moderate" or "restricted" on the three-part scale used. Many Flickr users, particularly in Germany, protested against the new restrictions, claiming unwanted censorshipCensorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
from Flickr and Yahoo.
Flickr management, unwilling to go into legal details, implied that the reason for the stringent filtering was some unusually strict age-verification laws in Germany. The issue received attention in the German national media, especially in online publications. Initial reports indicated that Flickr's action was a sensible, if unattractive, precaution against prosecution, although later coverage implied that Flickr's action may have been unnecessarily strict.
On June 20, 2007, Flickr reacted by granting German users access to "moderate" (but not "restricted") images, and hinted at a future solution for Germany, involving advanced age-verification procedures.
On June 1, 2009, Flickr was blocked in China in advance of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
.
Virgin Mobile ad copyright
In 2007 Virgin MobileVirgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile is a brand used by many mobile phone service providers across the globe; its headquarters are based in the United Kingdom. Virgin Mobile has local operations in Australia, Canada, France, India, South Africa, Greece, United Kingdom and the United States. It briefly also had operations...
launched a bus stop advertising campaign which promoted its cellphone text messaging
Text messaging
Text messaging, or texting, refers to the exchange of brief written text messages between fixed-line phone or mobile phone and fixed or portable devices over a network...
service using the work of amateur photographers who uploaded their work to Flickr using a Creative Commons by Attribution license. Users licensing their images this way freed their work for use by any other entity, as long as the original creator was attributed credit, without any other compensation being required. Virgin upheld this single restriction by printing a URL, leading to the photographer's Flickr page, on each of their ads. However, one picture depicted 15-year-old Alison Chang at a fund-raising carwash for her church, for which Chang sued Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The photo was taken by Alison's church youth counsellor, Justin Ho-Wee Wong, who uploaded the image to Flickr under the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
license.
On November 27, 2007, Chang filed for a voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit against Creative Commons,focusing their lawsuit against Virgin Mobile. The case was thrown out of court due to lack of jurisdiction and subsequently Virgin Mobile did not incur any damages towards the defendant.
Flickr being monitored by US Government
In October 2010 it was reported that Flickr, along with FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and other social networking sites, is being monitored by the US Department of Homeland Security.
The Commons
Several museums and archives post images released under a "no known restrictions" license, which was first made available on January 16, 2008. The goal of the license is to "firstly show you hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer." Participants include George Eastman HouseGeorge Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
, Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
, Nationaal Archief
Nationaal Archief
The Nationaal Archief is the national archive of the Netherlands, located in The Hague. It houses collections for the central government, the province of Zuid-Holland, and the former County of Holland. There is also material from private institutions and individuals with an association to the Dutch...
, National Archives and Records Administration
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...
, State Library of New South Wales
State Library of New South Wales
The State Library of New South Wales is a large public library owned by the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located in Macquarie Street, Sydney near Shakespeare Place...
, and Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
.
Getty Images
In 2009 FlickrFlickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
announced a partnership with Getty Images
Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...
in which selected users could submit photographs for stock photography
Stock photography
Stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer. Today, stock images can be presented in searchable online databases. They can be purchased and delivered online...
usage and receive payment. In 2010 this was changed so that users could label images as suitable for stock use themselves.
See also
- BlacklistBlacklist (computing)In computing, a blacklist or block list is a basic access control mechanism that allows everyone access, except for the members of the black list . The opposite is a whitelist, which means allow nobody, except members of the white list...
- Image hosting serviceImage hosting serviceAn image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image....
- List of photo sharing websites
- List of social networking websites
- Photo sharingPhoto sharingPhoto sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others . This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images...
- User-generated contentUser-generated contentUser generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...