ALTHOUGH FLICKR'S NEW iOS app has rejuvenated interest in its venerable photo-sharing service, liking and sharing photos happens most often with Facebook. However, Flickr's long tail remains very potent.
-- I attract more daily visitors to my images than daily readers of my website. More than 500 people see my images on my two Flickr accounts while my website records no more than 350 page views a day.
-- Since Flickr launched the second version of its iOS app, more people have been viewing my Flickr videos even though they don't actually play on Apple handsets.
-- At least one person a week attributes an image they find of my work when using it on their own sites.
-- Increasingly, people are finding themselves or their colleagues among the faces I've shot during the past eight years.
-- The private groups I maintain on Flickr are useful dropboxes for work emerging on the creative multimedia curriulum at the Limerick Institute of Technology. Some of that group work evolves to large pieces at annual exhibitions and other pieces become high resolution pages in printed catalogues and e-books.
Although I respect the easy upvoting that my images get on other social networks, I'm indebted to the stable service and add-on capabilities that have long been a part of Flickr.
Bernie Goldbach is the senior creative multimedia lecturer for the Limerick School of Art and Design. He has two paid accounts with Flickr.
