This Flickr thing is way cool. And you don't need an invitation!!! No problemo. Just go there and register. No hassles. You don't have to enter a lot of info if you don't want to.
Every group has a chat channel associated with it with the ability to drag and drop photos in, drag them out of the chat area into your own shoebox if they are *public*. Comments or messages can be attached to a photo. Photo thumbnails aren't displayed unless you click on the button. If you do you get a large thumbnail about 128x128. You can click again to get a full-sized photo which can be no more than 400px on its longest side.
So, of course, as a social scientist, I had to check it out. I joined up. I know, I know. How many of these YASNs can you do justice to? I don't know. Staying flexible right now seems prudent. But people whose opinions I trust were saying that it beats Orkut hands down. What's Ms. Curiosity to do?
So I just copied and pasted info from my Orkut profile into my Flickr profile. That took a couple minutes. I did need to make a 48x48 buddy list photo by cropping the photo I cropped to get my main Orkut photo. Different size but that didn't take long either since FireWorks was already open.
What's cool about Flickr is that it has its roots in a really awesome chat-oriented gaming technology from the Game Neverending which I know next to nothing about except that people whose opinions I trust like Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web think it is really hot and innovative. From what I can tell, people use the word addictive very frequently in reference to this game.
Founder Stewart Butterfield's vision for GNE really resonates:
It's a social space designed to facilitate and enable play... We play all the time, even when there is nothing like a formal game going on - think of great conversations and all the verbal play of "goofing around," of flirting, of musicians jamming: these are all moments where the creativity is flowing, you feel completely alive, and you are able to fully express yourself at the peak of your ability without even trying. It is the new possibilities for these kinds of states that we are trying to create.
Stewart and his mates decided to extract the 75% of GNE that was useful to a non-game YASN and put it together and came up with flickr. It's day one for me again - newbie again. But I can see that these photos are a great way to share personal information or just cool or illustrative pix in the context of a conversation. I can see wanting to be able to draw on the screen to illustrate something (that's not part of the technology - yet) in the moment. I can see collecting and taking photos with flickr in mind. I picked up 8 tonight at the FlickerCentral channel.
The other fun surprise is that Dina Mehta came online while I was there. Because I had already listed her as an acquaintance and vice versa, she showed up on my contacts screen as online. So I clicked her pic and IM'd a greeting. We proceeded to have our first ever conversation - we've never even emailed each other before, just exchanged guestbook entries on Ryze. She showed me a photo of her baby nephew. I showed her a funny Bush photo. We talked about flickr's business model and what not. I feel much more connected.
Remember my Orkut Day 7 post when I talked about how there needed to be "more new features and developments to keep me and everyone else interested...more things going on"? Flickr's real time chat and instant photo exchanges provide that extra thing that is missing at Orkut. If you are on Orkut, why not come here instead? This is more fun! And not-so-serious play greases the wheels of social networks better than anything I can think of.
I'm definitely coming back for day 2. If you read my blog and want to check out Flickr, look me up. And when GNE beta comes out, I'm there. I don't have any more time than you do. I would just rather explore things like this than watch TV. TV is so 20th century, you know. ;-)
References:
Mindjack interview with Stewart last Spring about GNE: Thinking Outside the MUD.
eWeek's Feb 12 Flickr write-up.
Where is My Mind? Flickr - Birth of an online community
Stuart Henshall's slightly cranky take: Go Flickr Go Figure