This week I got Flickr working with iPhoneSlide. It means I can upload/email photos direct from my iPhone to my Flickr account. I didn’t previously have a Flickr account. I just enabled Flickr on my existing Yahoo account (which is one of the oldest IM accounts I have, dating back to about 2000, eclipsed only by my MSN address which was HoTMaiL before Hotmail was Microsoft.
This is one of the reasons why I’m keen on Flickr. It’s open enough and has the mass behind it to be really really good. Yahoo has had few real successes recently but their acquisition of Flickr far outshines eBay’s purchase of Skype, Google’s buying of Jaiku and FaceBook’s acquisition of Microsoft (what?).
Flickr is bottom-up: unmoderated, horizontal, unhierarchical, networked, and open to just about any kind of use.
Things I like about Flickr?
It’s not just the sharing, it’s the who. Flickr is, perhaps more than any dedicated social sites like FaceBook or Orkut, a social network for people to hook up and talk about real things – pictures they have taken. There’s no pressure to be a fabulous photographer – for many it’s just a place to share images – each worth a thousand words – for others to see. The only real estimation of worth is the “favourites” system. Who cares about the appreciation of jaded photographers when you can be the favourite of real people.
And, in addition to all of this, you can get FlickrExporter for iPhoto from ConnectedFlow (the brainchild of Fraser Speirs).