Getty Images and Flickr are working together to establish the first commercial licensing opportunity for photo-enthusiasts in the Flickr community. The Flickr collection will feature photography selected by Getty Images editors based on their expertise in licensing digital content and insights into customers’ needs. In the next several months, Getty Images will begin inviting selected Flickr members who will have the choice to participate in the collection.

So normal Flickr fans won’t likely see any difference but those who have made a big name on Flickr already might well get selected to be a part of the collection.

While it is a good first step, but let’s see an option where we can all get involved, eh? Apparently “Getty customers usually pay between $29 and $200,000 for an image, depending on how freely they may use it.”, I am sure there are a lot of us who would like in on that kind of action even if it is a slim chance any of our pictures will sell.

It’s clear where the opportunity for Flickr and their users is, and Getty gets access to a bigger inventory. There could be some political fallout for Getty though. As Thomas Hawk says My own expectation would be that current Getty “Pros” are probably none too happy about having a new horde of “amateurs” jointing their ranks and competing with their own image sales.

If you have ever wanted to know more info about your Flickr traffic, who looks at what, and where your views come from, the Flickr has the feature for you!

We’ve designed stats on Flickr to give you all sorts of insight into how people arrive at your photos.

The stats are updated daily and include referrers from other sites and search engines, including search queries, individual photo views within the site, but nicely it does NOT include your own clicks which could skew results.

You need to be a pro user to get this feature, plus after activating you need to wait a while to actually see some statistics.

Visit Flickr now to activate your stats or read more at the FAQ.

When you first hit the edit button you are asked to allow Picnik into your account.

After that the editing interface should load. On my Mac’s Firefox it doesn’t, boo! Luckily I also have Safari.

Strangely even in Safari I found I had to click through twice or more to actually get to edit. When it does work though it is a welcome addition!

More info at the Flickr Blog

Most of the people on Flickr are a friendly sort. They’re helpful and chatty, and they usually have something nice to say about your pictures. Most of them. Like anywhere though, you do get the odd creep sneaking in.

Since one or two problems on Flickr I have become a lot more guarded about what I do and who I allow as contact.

• Any time I post a picture of children I try to make it friends and family only. Lately just family for certain pictures. There are just too many twisted people out there who have made it clear to me that these pictures are not safe for general consumption, no matter how proud we are of our kids. I can’t do anything about the copies that are on these “individuals” hard disks but can try to stop them getting any more new ones.
• I am now very careful how I label and tag my pictures. I had to stop using the word “mum” because of these slimy people who seem to search for those words for their own perverted uses.
• Now it seems pet and animal fans have to avoid drawing attention from people who think it is funny to submit images of abused or deceased animals.

With people like these out there, could it be we are better off not joining communities like Flickr? I would say we should be aware of the problems, protect our privacy and try to enjoy these communities despite the sickos.

Read the post over here and try not to have nightmares

What it seems to have happened is that Virgin Mobile, or an advertising agency they hired, decided to save lotsa moola and attempt some good PR (backfiring, obviously) by using Flickr photos with Creative Commons licenses (specifically, the ones that allowed commercial use) in a recent ad campaign. Which, fine, is legal, though, perhaps, cheap-assed. What’s getting people especially crazy over this (and this doesn’t include me, thankfully) is that they’re using these photos without the models’ permissions

It seems some random person has spotted Gillians Flickr photo of a smashed car used on an advertisement. No problem there, it was CC licensed in a way that meant only attribution was necessary. Notification to these Flickr users would have been the polite thing, but ok it’s not a requirement.

The crazy thing though is there are people in these advertisements. Without model releases. Being insulted.

There is more coverage here and over at Flickr.

Tags: flickr, virgin, copyright, cc, license, pr, disaster

So what’s got me pissed today? What’s got me pissed today is that according to Rebekka, Flickr has removed her image from their site. That’s right. Not only did they remove and kill her image and her *non-violent* words of protest, but they censored each and every one of us who commented on her photograph, who offered support to Rebekka, who shared in her frustration by wiping every single one of our comments off the face of the internet forever.

According to Rebekka, Flickr’s explanation?

“Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or
terminate your account.”

WTF?!?

So a flickr photographer gets ripped off. Dares to complain about it. Has an outpouring of support on the internet over it and Yahoo decides censorship is the way to handle this? This is the worst I’ve seen from Yahoo yet.

Many of us worried when Yahoo! took over Flickr. It seems some of those worries might be well founded.

Popular photographers like Thomas and Rebekka are people who built Flickr into the community it is (yes community, not just a picture hosting site). Even if they were not known at all, Yahoo! should be helping them not silencing them. To pour injustice on injustice is …. well, regardless of right and wrong, it’s bad for business.

Unfortunately, issue 10 will be the last one that Heather and I will have a hand in. We are no longer working for JPG Magazine or 8020 Publishing.

It’s a great shame, the magazine had a lot going for it. Probably still does. But you have to think a magazine founded on community support is at the mercy of that community. A community that loves Derek and Heather …

Thomas Hawk quotes Stewart Butterfield:

“We’re doing the final testing and design tweaks now ” and “You’ll be able to go five levels deep (beyond that seemed a little silly, but we’ll see how people end up using it).” .

I’m sure this will be a much used (and abused) feature. It got me thinking though how cool it would be to have much more control of the layout.

Right now your flickr page is organised pretty much chronologically as a stream. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to perhaps put up a welcome message? Highlight your best stuff as well as your recent stuff? Your top tags? When a visitor arrives at the moment there is nothing to orient them, unless your recent stuff is good they are unlikely to go much deeper.

I realise the way most people find my flickr photos is through my blogs or through flickr groups, but I think more people would promote their Flickr URL if they mutated into something more useful.

Thomas Hawk has reported that Flickr has rethought the cap on Flickr contacts. Now reciprocal contacts will not be counted towards the limit, allowing people to amass larger numbers of contacts.

More info at Thomas’ blog post.