Flickr has reprioritized the means of basic Internet usage. It isn't quite a networking site, nor is it a homepage into your soul. Flickr attempts to blur the line between portraying your images, but more so integrating your images with "contacts." That which makes Flicrk so unique is that it isn't a site for advertising, yet it is most definitely a way to have your voice, or maybe more specifically your vision, heard. Flickr is the YouTube of photography - it is open to everyone, everwhere. There are loads of professional bombarding the website with truly magnificent nature shots and 15 year olds alike taking pictures of their puppy with their iPhone. Flickr is an endless database into our culture's history - uploads in the thousands every minute! Just the other day I found myself browsing photos from the 1930's - free for my perusal!
Flickr, like YouTube, and even Facebook and Myspace for that matter, is not a means to make huge incomes, but instead a means for people to reach out towards one another. A way to share. A way to integrate our everyday lives and our digital lives. Photosharing has seemed quite an integral part of our American lifestyle (think of just about every family reunion, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.)
My point, is that people LOVE to share photos. Yet similarly, people LOVE to look at photos. Flickr gives us such an opportunity... wherever we may be (providing of course an internet connection is within reach!)
With the age of digital technology, and idea of printing photos has, and continues, to fade. Back in the day (three years ago) I worked in a photography lab. In just those 6 months there I noticed quite a rise in online photo prints, as compared to film - honestly, the only film I ever processed were from 35mm disposables, and the remaining few with those ever-so irritating APS formats.
Regardless, we did get quite a few digital orders, yet with the advent, and continual improvement of digital photo frames, I imagine the day will come, where 4x6's are more of a memory (or a commonly used OLED format!). When this day finally comes, flickr, as it is slowly becoming now, will be a centralized database for photo sharing. I will stream my photos to my phone, to my television, to my computer, to my digital photo frame, to my friends, etc.
I imagine Flickr has quite a stable life in front of it. As much as I love the quality of a print, digital RAW data files are in fact lossless - and uploads onto Flickr... well... are acceptable.
When the day comes, when internet databases allow for lossless photo uploads, will be the day memory constraints stop holding us back. We'll see if Flickr jumped on that bandwagon, or fades into memory.
I suppose similar things could be said for music. Even though mp3 are being popularized and largely distributed, the older formats remain. They remain, for at the end of the day, the true sound, the true data, need remain intact.
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