Flickr?

What is Flickr?...

Although it is not as widely spoken about as the main social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc. Flickr is still a social media outlet for more than 112 million users spread across 63 countries. Being the home to more than 10 billion images, I suppose Flickr could be considered a sort of digital photo album. It is a social networking site based around users photos. Members upload their photos and assign tags to them, grouping them with other photos with similar tags. This tagging system allows for members to connect with each other and similar interest groups where they can comment on each others photos.

Flickr allows users to:

According to Flickr, 2016 their organisation is the "best online photo management and sharing application in the world" and they as a social media website have two main goals in mind for what their website can do for their users;

1. Available to those who matter - Flickr is aware of all the magical moments its users want to keep stored for themselves and their loved ones and takes it into its main objectives to have your photos kept safe and available to those who you want to share those memories with. One of the ways in which Flickr enforces this objective is by getting users photos and videos in and out of the system in as many ways as possible such as from the web, from their mobile, from whatever software they use to store their content pretty much. This makes it easy for users to upload and delete on the website and so it prevents making the organizing of your images an inconvenience.

2. New ways of organizing - The digital age has opened us into a world of internet and computer storage and the vast amounts of images and videos that we can upload are immense. This gives us all the want to take photos of all occasions and keep them safe to look back on, Flickr gives users a way to satisfy that want and use their website to store and discuss them with whoever you chosse, such as public, private, friends, family. 

Flickr in media and public relations

Flickr is used frequently by 112 million users meaning that in the world of media and public relations it is a wide outlet for communications with the public. If clients/organisations made Flickr accounts and used the photo based social networking site to upload images of their message/product/service, it would reach the targeted audience and allow for interest to circle and information to spread, which is the main objectives in many public relations campaigns. 

Bibliography

Hacking, E. (2010) Youtube, Flickr and MySpace: a Beginners Guide. Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/EmmaHacking/a-beginners-guide-to-youtube-flickr-and-myspace [Accessed 21 November 2016]

Flickr. (2016) Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/ [Accessed 21 November 2016]