A new group started on Flickr called NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!! has already seen over 4,000 Flickr members join the group. The group already has a petition going with over 1,000 users signing a petition opposing video on Flickr. The petition language is below.

"We the undersigned members of Flickr, free and pro, agree that video has no place on Flickr. Other sites on the web accept video already, but do not accept photos. We all joined Flickr because of it’s dedication to photography and photographers, and we want Flickr to remain true to this dedication. It is our request that this feature and addition to Flickr be removed."

If you agree with this statement, type /signed followed by your username/full name in a reply to this thread."

While there are some advocates for video and some Flickr defenders in the official feedback forum on Flickr Video, here too the comments by many of Flickr’s most active users are largely negative.

Some typical comments from the Flickr Help Forum:

Richard Carter: "It’s frankly disgraceful that you have not allowed users the option of saying (by default) "I don’t want to see videos". Especially in search results.

I know you’ve invested too much in this awful feature to turn it off, but PLEASE MAKE IT GO AWAY!! "

fofurasfelinas: "I just HATE having videos on flickr.
Flickr is a place for PHOTOS.
We pay for a photo service, if I want to see videos, I go to youtube.

I think Flickr is getting heavier everyday, and videos are going to make the connection busier."

skasper (off working on a project…be back soon): "Wow…check out all of the sentiment against this!!!! I too am opposed to video on Flickr….at least the Flickr that we currently know and usually love. While I acknowledge that many people use Flickr as a depository for their snapshots, many of us are here to improve our art. We are photographers! I also acknowledge that videography is an art….but give them their own space and don’t muddy our waters!"

dadodedos: "Sorry, but i’m angry for this last news…….
I think this is a really bad move for Flickr, why video ??? there’s a lot of sites that you can put video…….Please !! This is a photo site !!!
Put your video on youtube or others……

NO VIDEO ON FLICKR
NO VIDEO ON FLICKR
NO VIDEO ON FLICKR
NO VIDEO ON FLICKR
NO VIDEO ON FLICKR
NO VIDEO ON FLICKR
NO VIDEO ON FLICKR "

Fighting the criticism in the official help forum mostly seems to be being done by long-term Flickr member Striatic and Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ.

It will be interesting to see if the anti-video sentiment on Flickr continues to grow and gain momentum and if Flickr will actually take action on its community’s largely negative reaction to the service thus far.

About a year ago Flickr made a decision to cap Flickr contacts at 3,000 for users. After a lot of protesting from Flickr users over this decision Flickr reversed their decision and allowed unlimited reciprocal contacts.

Personally I don’t see Flickr reversing their decision on adding video to the site. Video is a fast growing service on the web and certainly Yahoo wants a piece of this pie. With the huge user base that Flickr represents, the opportunity to promote video to this group from a dollars/cents standpoint probably means more to Yahoo! than how a small but vocal group of hardcore Flickr photographers feel about the service.

What’s more, prior to their Yahoo takeover announcement, Microsoft had indicated that they would be launching a photo/video combo site to compete with Flickr. If/when Microsoft takes over Flickr, I would assume that they would rather the site contain both video and photos rather than a photo only site.

Perhaps the simplest answer in the short-term for Flickr would be to offer filtering technology to filter video out of your Flickr experience. They already have filtering technology that allows users to opt out of seeing screenshot images, for instance, on Flickr. They also have filtering technology allowing people to opt out of adult content on Flickr. By creating an option to allow users to opt out of video on Flickr this would alleviate some of the concern from some of the early critics of this service.

On the other hand, if too many people opted out of the video experience on Flickr, it might lose momentum and not achieve the success that promoting it to the entire Flickrverse might have.

Comments

The 90 second limit is an interesting one and will likely keep a lot of copyrighted material off of the site. When even a basic music video is over 90 seconds, it will be hard for anyone to really put any majorly infringing material on the site. This would be consistent with Flickr trying to create a more "authentic" video experience than users might find on YouTube or other video sites where more copyrighted non-original material shows up.

Interestingly it seems that Flickr plans to censor the video experience to only include "safe" or "moderate" videos. So far their rules for video seem pretty simple:

"1. Only “safe” and “moderate” video content is permitted. Your “beautiful wife” should not be moving. (Read more about content filters.)

2. Only upload videos you have created yourself."

Videos can be embeded into web pages (as the video above shows by example).

I do think that it is interesting that Flickr seems initially to have chosen not to allow filtering of the video experience. Personally I’m worried that a bunch of crap videos will clutter up my Flickr experience. I was hoping that Flickr might have built an option to allow users to opt out of the video experience. Instead it looks like video will be everywhere that photos are on Flickr without giving users an option to filter out or screen out video from their Flickr experience. I’m surprised that Flickr would not include filtering tools to opt out of the experience with this offering.

Most of the initial comments on the video service from existing Flickr users seem to be negative, especially given the decision to not allow filtering of video from the Flickr experience.

From ozoni11: "Video is not why I am on flickr. I hope it becomes a very small niche. Don’t get me wrong…I like a good video and often go to YouTube to see one. Just sorry flickr has made this decision."

From discoe: "Why would I ever want video on Flickr? "

From cathycracks: "what made flickr successful was the community of photographers and the photos. not the second youtube."

From AustinTX: "Well, I have been wanting to cut down on the number of contacts I have, any that upload video will be on the list to go. Count me as a naysayer, obviously."

From Patchattack: "absolutely against this. i chose flickr only because it was a photo-only site. i was looking for a photo forum. still photography and crappy 90-second videos are 2 completely different things. and bandwidth? is the entire site painfully slow tonight because of this?"

You can read more comments from the Flickr Help Forum thread on the service here.

A group dedicated to Flickr Video, Video, Video, Video, has already sprouted up where you can view some of the earliest video uploaded to Flickr here.

Although I’m personally not so interested in 90 second videos, Flickr also doubled the sizes that they allow for uploaded photographs on the site. Free accounts will now be able to upload 10MB files, Pro accounts will now be able to upload 20MB files. This is a welcome improvement as many higher-end digital SLRs produce file sizes larger than 10MB.

Another change made by Flickr today has to do with groups. Flickr marks many of the groups or forums on the site as adult only. These groups are NIPSA’d (not in public search areas). In the past these groups were more limited to groups that Flickr or other users flagged as offensive or restricted. Many groups are marked "adult only." For instance, one of the groups where I participate Delete Me Uncensored is marked as adult only. (Go ahead click through, unless you’re already a member you will see what I’m talking about).

Today Flickr changed the way that groups on the site are administered. In the past only groups that Flickr labeled as "restricted" would be NIPSA’d. Now groups that allow not only "restricted," but even "moderate" content will be marked adult only. I think that this is a bad idea. It’s one thing to mark blatantly sexual groups as "adult only." But marking groups with merely "moderate" content as adult only is overkill. It’s like saying that you have to be 18 not only to see an X or R rated film, but that you now have to be 18 to even see PG or PG13 films.

More on this change here.

More from TechCrunch here. More from Mashable here. More from CNET here.

What do you think? Are you happy with video on Flickr or would you rather do without it?

Comments