Flickr.com, a popular image hosting Web site, seems to have popped up overnight, and is now ranked as the No. 1 photo hosting site. It is ranked in the top 100 sites in the entire world! So what’s all the buzz about? To get to the bottom of it, I used myself as a human guinea pig and signed up for an account. Here’s what I think of flickr:
Pros: Flickr is an online photo/image hosting website which allows users to customize the organization of their photos and the way other users view those photos. In my opinion, the best feature about Flickr is the ability users have to copyright their photos so they cannot be downloaded by other users. Other sites like photobucket and tinypic don’t have this feature which makes it hard to share photos without the risk of them being misused. Another feature I really liked was the ability to hide individual photos within a set without having to hide the entire set. Flickr is a really good site which protects users property while allowing sharing through creative commons licensing
Cons: Although Flickr is one of the most popular photo hosting Web sites, one thing i found very frustrating was the fact that once images are uploaded their order cannot be rearranged in a user’s photostream. Photos can be rearranged to a certain extent but it is very limited. Another thing I do not like about this site is the limited uploading all free users are restricted to. Each user is allowed only 100 MB of uploading a month, and the thing i find very unfair is that deleting photos you have uploaded does not free up space. If a mistake is made and a photo has to be deleted, kiss that space goodbye for the month!
Since my little experiment, I am still an active member on flickr.com and sign in regularly. From my experience using Flickr and other image hosting sites, I do believe Flickr is the best I have used so far and believe it’s popularity will grow even more rapidly in the next few years.
