Flickr
From Dharmasphere
Flickr is a community-based, photo-sharing website. Users range from complete amateurs to professional photographers and the images they produce from party snapshots to high-quality artwork. The site's emphasis is on photography, but many illustrators and digital artists also upload their work.
The site is free to join, but by paying an annual fee, the user gets more upload bandwidth per month.
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Blogging With Flickr
Flickr acts like a blog, where a user can upload a photo and then write text to accompany it. The user's latest photos appear at the top of the user's own space on the site (known as a photostream).
Users can post comments on other user's photos, which gives the social networking aspect that has made Flickr so popular.
Sets
A user can organise their photos into sets on a related theme. This may be, for example, a particular event (e.g. "Trip to Portugal") or concept (e.g. "The Colour Blue").
Contacts
It is possible to mark any other Flickr user as a contact, friend or family. This enables the user to keep track of the photos being uploaded by his/her contacts. There is also an internal mailing system where users can send messages to one another and invite them to join groups.
Users can choose whether their photos are viewable to the general public or only to their family and friends.
Groups
Any user may start a new group on a particular theme, eg. "Portraits", "Black and white" or "Urban Abstract". Other users may then join the group and add their own photos.
Discussion Forums
Each group contains a discussion forum for members of the group to communicate with each other.
Tags
Users can add descriptive keyword tags to their photos, e.g. "Portugal", "blue", "tree bark". These help other users to find their photos and to navigate around a user's photostream.
The Company
Flickr was originally launched by Vancouver-based company Ludicorp in February 2004. The company was bought by Yahoo in March 2005.
