In the beginning it was cool just to be able to upload photos, for free. Flickr became the go to place for sharing photos online.
Then came facebook. With it’s genius tagging feature, Facebook allowed users to take a picture, tag a friend and automatically share that photo with those tagged, bringing together people around a common social object. Facebook became the default place to post pictures because of it.
Finally, Flickr as added a similar feature.
So What…
While it may not seem like a major announcement, Flickr has increased the value of participating on the site by leaps an bounds. Instead of just seeing a stream of photos posted by your contacts, Flickr users can now be notified when they are tagged (in the recent activity stream) increasing participation and the potential for connections on the site.
For personal branding or marketing purposes, the tag feature allows for more networking and awarness building opportunities. Event organizers, for example, are now able to encourage the tagging of users in pictures as a way of helping individuals connect around photos that they are in. Attendees see value in being able to connect with other attendees and event organizers are able to increase awareness of their event or brand.
While Facebook still has twitter beat on shear number of users and the size of most users contact lists, Flickr has added enough functionality to make uploading photos to the site more social, and more valuable for those of us looking to spread meaningful connections online.