In a bid to broaden Flickr — and put some pressure on Google's YouTube — Yahoo is allowing users to upload video content to its popular photo-sharing site.
The change is a modest but significant extension of Flickr's features. The videos, limited to 90 seconds and 150MB, will be shown as thumbnails alongside users' photos, and will inherit all the features of photos stored on the site: users can add comments, captions, comments, geotags, and privacy restrictions so only friends or family may view the videos, the company said.
Videos are shown on pages similar to photo pages, and videos can be embedded on other sites.
The company sees the videos in effect as "long photos," moving snapshots people take now that digital cameras can record video as well as still images, said a spokesperson. The hope is to populate the site with "authentic" videos, not clips from last night's TV shows, and Yahoo will police the site for violations of the terms of service, added Flickr product manager Shanan Delp.
The company wants to reproduce some of the success of Flickr's photo work not just as a repository of imagery, but also as a way for like-minded folk to form communities.
Only those with "pro" subscriptions will be able to publish videos, but as with photos, those with free Flickr accounts and the public will be able to watch them. The site will support videos in AVI, MPEG, and MOV formats, showing them with a Flash player but storing the original, too. Existing upload tools will work with video, the company said.
Yahoo says the company thought carefully about the issue. Most people shoot video clips less than a minute long, so 90 seconds should be "a really comfortable time," Neilson said.
Although Google's YouTube can handle longer clips — up to 10 minutes for regular users — Yahoo believes it doesn't compete. "People aren't using YouTube to share their personal short-form video clips," Neilson said.
A benefit of the time limit is that it should help curtail pirated TV content. "Ninety seconds helps us define that rebroadcasting commercial content is not what this site is for," said Neilson.
Will Yahoo users and members be confused whether to head to video.yahoo.com or Flickr? Yahoo believes not.
"Video.yahoo.com is all about broadcast ... Flickr is more about personal, authentic video clips," Nielson said.
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