Online photo sharing site Flickr is branching out into video. Starting today, paying Flickr Pro members can upload and share video clips. We're not entirely convinced that Flickr's parent company Yahoo! plans to turn the site into a YouTube killer. Videos are limited to just 90 seconds and 150MB. While that should cover the videos you shoot on your digital camera, which are often limited to 90 seconds or less anyway, it's hard to imagine music videos, video blogs, or other YouTube-style content taking Flickr by storm with this limitation in place.
But the move makes some sense if you think about that 90 second limit on your digital camera. In the press release, Yahoo! claims 40 percent of survey respondents use their cameras to capture short videos, but 55 percent of them only share those videos with friends on their camera. Today's move lets Flickr users upload and share everything on their digital camera, including photos and videos.
Videos will show up in users' photostreams, and can be managed just like images, with tags, privacy settings, and other controls. At launch, video will be available in 8 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Spanish, and traditional Chinese.
It's not clear if or when Flickr will role out the ability to upload videos to free account holders. But anyone can currently view videos uploaded by Pro members.
[via TechCrunch]
