PDN just released an article in their latest online and print edition titled “Your Friend Flickr?“. It’s an interesting cross section of the current state of Flickr, including it’s lack of commercial support and examples of well known offline transactions that got their start there. It barely touches upon a topic I’ve talked about (see “The Dark Side of Flickr: Photo Phishing By Corporate America“) the common query of image use for no charge. Although interviewed about this for the article and as unfortunate as I think it is that they didn’t discuss this further (perhaps in the future they will), I thought the editorial choice was a smart one. It’s a much better read to hear about the deals made versus not.
The most interesting part of this article, as has been discussed numerous time on other sites, is the power of Flickr’s tagging and search capability. This is likely the single most powerful tool available to those searching for photos. Flickr has made it so easy to search images accurately that they’ve ultimately developed a market they have yet to tap. Time will tell how long that will last.
[tags]PDN, PDNonline, Flickr, photo, professional, photography, search, tag, tagging[/tags]