Flickr launches video-sharing service

April 9, 2008 Flickr, the online photo sharing service owned by American internet company Yahoo!, today launched a new video-sharing service for "Pro" users. After 4 months of waiting since an unofficial "coming soon" on the Flickr forums, subscribers to the service are now able to upload videos of up to 90 seconds in length, or 150 MB in size.

After some criticism over the website diversifying too much, Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ, and Yahoo! spokesperson George Hadjigeorgiou responded by calling these 90-second videos "long photos", which capture a "slice of life to share".

Mr. Hadjigeorgiou elaborated, by saying that "digital media has led to new behaviour with digital photography fans and we've seen a huge growth in people taking short video clips, essentially 'long photos', with their digital still cameras and mobile phones." He added that he could see "a great resonance between this new category of content and with the kind of authentic, personal moments already being shared on Flickr."

"Pro" users, who pay a yearly subscription of US$24.95 for unlimited file uploads, have also had their filesize limit increased to 20 MB for each individual photo, and other members, who do not pay a subscription, have had their limit raised to 10 MB per photo. "Free" members are currently unable to upload videos.