You probably have a digital camera and you probably use it the way I did, which was:
- Take lots of photos
- Save the files on your computer
- Take a favorite photo and make it your background
- Email a favorite shot to all your friends and family every once in a while
- Never see 99% of all your other photos again.
This all changed when I started playing around with Flickr.com, the popular photo sharing site.
Flickr.com (and other sites, like photobucket.com) introduce some new ways to use your digital photos.
- You upload them to a Web site and then just send a link to all your friends and family instead of sending a large attachment.
- You can "tag" your photos with keywords like "wife, kids, car, dog" and then search on those tags later.
- You can make some photos private for friends and family, yet others public as you decide.
- Your friends and family can "subscribe" to your photo publishing and get notified every time you upload new content.
It's the last point that really excites me about Flickr. I've got good friends and family all over the world, literally, and other than emailing them the occasional stupid Web joke or funky Web video, I don't have an easy/good reason to keep in touch.
Sharing photos via Web sites changes all that. I simply invite friends and family to become "contacts" within Flickr, who then subscribe to my photo "feed", and voila, every time I upload a new photo, my whole global community is instantly notified and I don't need to send out an email.
I can tell this is working out great because on those rare occasions when I do talk to friends and family over the phone, their comment starts out with, "Hey, those are some great photos on Flickr!" I think I just found out the nicest, warmest way to stay in close touch with friends and family without having to resort to "how have you been?" emails and phone calls. Instead of sending jokes or links to stupid videos, upload your photo collection to Flickr and automatically share your treasures with the global Clan.
Check it out!
Peter Kay
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