First Impressions: Yahoo's Flickr Video

The rumors were true and Flickr has officially launched a video player. Despite diving into a world already owned and dominated by YouTube, the Flickr video player has quite a bit of potential.

What makes this player stand apart from YouTube is its intended purpose. Flickr has said it wants the video service to complement its enormous photo-sharing service. With that being said, Flickr is limiting videos to 90 seconds and 150 MB in size. This will allow folks to upload short videos that regularly accompany the photos in this day and age.

Only Available for Premium Users

Not anyone can upload, either. Only Flickr premium users will be able to upload videos to the service, which limits video upload on Flickr to the service's most active users. Flickr's premium service is $25 annually.

Flickr's video player is conveniently simple and quick loading. After watching any video you're given the option to share the video by direct link or with HTML code to embed directly into a Web site.

The upload process is also as simple as uploading pictures onto Flickr.

Comparing Flickr's new service against the leader, YouTube gets the nod for ease of browsing. YouTube includes pages of categories to be browsed, but good luck trying to search videos only on Flickr. It's not easy or convenient.

I like what Flickr has done with its video service. It knows it won't be able to compete with the behemoth of YouTube, so it created something a little different and a little more user-friendly. The 90-second limitation is peculiar, but as Kakul Srivastava, Flickr's director, told the AFP, "Flickr is not the place for a one-hour wedding video."

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