Flickr’s NIPSA – Another Reason for Customer as Silo
Eric Rice is bummed about Flickr’s NIPSA thing (Not in Public Site Areas). I always have been as well.
The difference between “photograph” and “image” is pretty blurry. Especially in SecondLife where Eric is taking the “photos” in question.
I haven’t skimmed Flickr’s EULA, but it’s conceivable (if not allowed) a budding photographer could use Flickr to present their portfolio, but a budding graphic designer could not. Honestly, I’m a little surprised Flickr is so strong about being “photos” – rather than the broader “images”.
As Eric Rice mentions, these seemingly, arbitrary distinctions make Flickr a far less attractive option for all image-sharing and launching your own blog are far more attractive one.
UPDATE: Karl Long asks the same question.
5 Comments
This recent furor surprised me because I hadn’t realized that Flickr made a distinction about the content of the jpg bytestream. I’ve used it for screenshots regularly and bought my Pro account to be able to have a default place to put any image I want to put in a post on my site.
So, until this point, Flickr has been the online spot for all .png, .gif, .jpg, etc. files and not for “photos”.
Flickr isn’t making yahoo much (any?) money. They certainly do NOT want it to be a place for portfolios, I’m sure. ;o)
Flickr is a photography site. It make sense to keep photography in the public areas (the Explore page and searching by tags) because people are browsing / searching for photography there. You are free to post whatever images to your own photostream that you desire. NIPSA just means your photostream is not included in the public areas of Flickr, so a budding graphic designer could very well present their portfolio on Flickr and give the link to their photostream to anyone to show off their portfolio. They wouldn’t be able to gain exposure from the public areas of Flickr, but if you are a graphic designer looking to get exposure in a photography community, then you have bigger problems.
With regards to the image vs. photograph question, there are plenty of lengthy debates on the Flickr forums that cover many fine points, but it doesn’t matter all that much because NIPSA is about a photostream, not a photo. If a photostream enhances Flickr with photographs then a scattering of screenshots and/or cg images is not going to matter. What I am curious about is why those who post only non photographic images are so upset about not being included in the Explore and tag searches. They are still free to link to their photostream from their blog or anywhere else. Why do they care so much that people searching for a picture of a puppy don’t find their cg dog? Ultimately, Flickr is a community based around a common interest – photography – so to water that down makes Flickr less of a community. There are sites based around screenshots or cg or painting or anything else – use them or start a Flickr clone based around your chosen art form – but don’t expect one site to be all things to all people.
Barry, I think you’ve made some very good points about not using Flickr – if only because of the arbitrary distinction between photography any other types of imagery.
Ultimately, Flickr’s…er…Yahoo’s definition of photograph is diverging with vocal group of their membership base.
Just want to reiterate that while not upset (the JPGs are still accessible) about the thing, it just seemed odd since there is a pereception of photo = jpeg.
Besides, I have over 1000 photographs in my normal flickr stream– I created another pro account for just SL shots, so as not to dilute my normal community with excessively out of the ordinary content.
And funnily enough, FLISSL shots won’t appear then.. Ya know, the video game Flickr plug in. Irony!