Using Flickr for Product Marketing
Hypergene MediaBlog: Using Flickr for product marketing Hypergene MediaBlog has an article out on how companies can use Flickr for product marketing. Shayne Bowman of Hypergene Media Solutions helped set one of his clients, iView Multimedia, up with their own Flickrstream. Included in iView's photostream are photos of their product packaging and screen shots designed to promote the features of their products. They make use of Flickr's notes to give their images a more interactive feel, include tips and tutorials as well as infographichs (illustrated concepts about their software program).
I have to say I think this is super innovative on Shayne's part. As I'm sure iView already had all of these images, to load them up to Flickr probably only took a few seconds and the added exposure certainly can't hurt. It also gives them a place to direct people who are looking to write articles about their products to get high quality images.
The only problem I can see in all of this and the question that I have is would this kind of a Flickrstream violate Flickr's terms of use agreement. Flickr's terms of use agreement is pretty unambigious: "Flickr is intended for personal use and is not a generic image hosting service. Professional or corporate uses of Flickr are prohibited."
When Nick Starr got into his trouble with Flickr, Flickr's Founder Stewart Butterfield was quick to point out that despite the fact that he did not like Flickr's "brand" being associated with Starr's T&A sites, that the real issue for his blocking FlickrLicio.us at the time was because they were a commercial site and not a personal site (the main distinction seemed to be the fact that Starr served up ads on FlickrLicio.us). Wouldn't these professional photostreams for companies like iView be considered a form of commercial service? And as blogs and company websites link to these photos on Flick and use Flickr's bandwidth would Flickr object?
Personally I can see where these kinds of photostreams are kind of cool and personally I like the idea. I think it would be great for cutting edge companies that I write about to have images on Flickr for me to link to. But is this a double standard when sites like Nick's are objected to as "commercial" sites.
And what makes a site a commercial site? One of my favorite sites that is in my short list for RSS reads is Scott Beale's The Laughing Squid. Scott covers much of the fantastic underground art in the Bay Area and is a great read. The Laughing Squid does have a Flickr photostream though and this photostream is frequently linked on their site (although The Laughing Squid does host themselves their largest photos on their main page site). The Laughing Squid includes what look like advertisements for Boing Boing and High Fructose on their pages (but these could in fact not be ads at all). Scott certainly sells Laughing Squid hosting services from his site, but hey what's wrong with that? Even as Scott's Laughing Squid site has a commercial element to it, it is in my mind more of a personal site and I'm really glad he's got a photostream at Flickr and I check it out all the time and have fav'd many photos in his stream. It would be a loss not to have it there. And I can't imagine that Scott's site is the kind of big business commercial site that Stewart would ever object to.
But what if a personal site for instance uses Google's AdSense? Many personal bloggers use AdSense to help defer the cost of their sites. Do they suddenly become "commercial" sites? Although I don't have any ads, I could someday and if I did would this be grounds for Flickr to kill all of my links that I have spent so much time adding to my blog?
So the question for Flickr is where do you draw the line between personal sites and commercial sites. Perhaps the better answer is that rather than specifically disallow "commercial" streams in the TOU, Flickr staff should make these kind of determinations on a case by case basis. I suppose you could always appeal to Stewart or someone senior at Flickr if you felt a determination was not fair.
As Flickr's TOU states, in addition to prohibiting commercial sites, Flickr has pretty broad control over who gets to use their service and who does not anyway: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time."
3 Comments:
We do not have any paid ads on our laughingsquid.com (never have). The Boing Boing and Hi Fructose are two projects that we really like and we link to each other, as we do with hundreds of other websites.
Regarding our web hosting services, it's how we pay the bills and keep the non-for-profit side (ie. laughingsquid.com) of Laughing Squid running.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with our Flickr photostream. Those are all photos that I have personally shot and put up there to share with the world. They are not used to sell ads or web hosting. I don't use Flickr to market Laughing Squid at all (if you look at our Flickr profile, you see that we do not even mention that we do web hosting). In fact when I link to my Flickr photostream, I'm sending traffic to Flickr and Yahoo for free, who in turn generate revenue from ads that they run on Flickr.
Scott, not suggesting there's anything wrong at all with what you guys are doing. Hope you don't read this that way. I don't think there is at all. The only question I'm raising, and didn't mean to single your site out or suggest you are a commercial venture at all, is that of where the line is drawn between commercial use and personal use. I'd certainly consider the fact that you guys sell hosting to support laughingsquid.com as completely legitimate. I'd also though feel that having an AdSense account for a blogger and linking to Flickr would also be legitimate. Certainly there are many bloggers hosting photos at Flickr who use AdSense.
Laughing Squid of course doesn't have anything to do with your Flickr photostream except for the fact that you highlight photos that you take at the site and link directly to your Flickrstream. I do the same thing by posting my flickr photos on my sites.
But the bigger question, is there a line in the sand when blogs become "commercial." If I sell t-shirts or use AdSense or sell hosting or whatever I do to support my site, would this technically violate flickr's TOU? And what about other things like iView's stream?
My own view is that there is a big difference between sites and small businesses using Flickr and that there probably should not be a stark mandate in the Flickr TOU against commercial sites but that rather softer language should be written that says something like Flickr is not intended to be used... etc. and then have Flickr staff make determinations if they see issues.
Certainly I have links on my site to other blogs I admire including both Boing Boing and your own.
And yes, Flickr does benefit from the traffic most likely.
I emailed Stewart and he advised me that one Google Adsense block would be acceptable, as that nearly every blogger out there has these on their PERSONAL site.
I would love to sell T-shirts and other items from the site, especially since becoming a FlickrLicio.us babe has almost become a status symbol to some, but I am afraid of the backlash from Flickr.
At the same time, I can probably run thru my blogroll and find 20 or more sites that sell content on their site that use flickr pictures. I think that my site personally is dispised in Flickr's eyes, and they won't allow me to do anything else to defray hosting costs, especially since I will have to move to a dedicated host soon at $99 a month.
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