Pros and Cons of Photo Sharing on Facebook vs. Flickr
Moved to http://www.danieljamesgreene.com/2009/08/pros-and-cons-of-photo-sharing-on.html
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Posted on August 4, 2009, in Communications & Media. Bookmark the permalink. 27 Comments.
We want freedom
Not risk
(For those of you who are less tech-savvy, that means that I upload the photo files to Flickr and the images you see on my blog are merely displayed on my blog even though the files reside on a server (file storage space) elsewhere. I also allow people to blog my photos as long as they leave the original photos on Flickr and merely embed image links in their blog pages. So again, Flickr is a great service for the storage and sharing of high-quality photographs.)
Here is my question 9 times out of 10 a person who uses one of my photos on flickr doesn’t ask me? And if you’re making money from your blog and one of my photos helped you isn’t that stealing my work?
Thanks for the information. I have lots of pics to share following a specific event, and I really was not sure with path to take. After reading this, I’m going with FB. And maybe those without an FB account will sign up!
Great comparison and helps kinda shuffle things intonperspective. Just started a site to share pics but every time I thought of a category (family, friends, work etc) I got to think I really needed different hosting services. So, flickr for my art photography and facebook for work/friends family I’m using Apples mobile me gallery. Mobile me is great as it flawlessly integrates to iPhone, iPad and any othe browser.
Thanks for the comparo. Take care!
Any photo on Facebook is technically owned by facebook.
http://consumerist.com/2009/02/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever.html
I can see how people might interpret Facebook’s Terms of Service it that way, Chris, but to look at both sides of the story, you might want to read Mark Zukerberg’s Facebook Blog response On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information. He makes some good points. Compare your sharing of photos on Facebook with the sharing of photos on every other photo sharing cite, and I think you’ll see that Facebook is not unique in its ownership terms.
David, I always export my photos from Apple Aperture to 640 pixels because that is the largest size Facebook will display. If I upload at the size FB displays, then FB doesn’t have to resize it. I also learned from another photographer to add a bit of extra sharpening to a photo before uploading it to Facebook to compensate for FB’s “softening” of photos.
Daniel,
I really enjoyed your summeries of both Flickr and Facebook.
I have been using Flickr for several years and I like it very muchj for the ability to TAG photos and put them ionto SETs and Groups for easy searching.
I only recently started putting my photos on Facebook.
One thing I don’t like about FB is that the quality of my photos is terrible when viewed on FB. I upload from Picasa and there my photos, taken with a Nikon D90 are very clear. However, they appear fuzzy on FB.
Is there a particular resolution that is better to upload for FB. Perhaps I’m using too big of a photo file.
Thanks again for your insightful review of both sites.
David Christman
dcsaint@yahoo.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcsaint
I use both Picassa and Flickr for sharing photos over the internet but i use Flickr more often than Picassa.
You all might be interested in the app my company just launched, Dojo:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?v=info&id=94294741637
It lets you share your hi-res originals and seamlessly integrates with Facebook photos. When your friends and family want the high-quality original for their own collection or to print (which Dojo will also offer soon), it’s available for download.
It’s also a better photo uploader, even if you’re not sharing the hi-res version, and it’s got color adjustment filters built-in. Let me know what you think!
I found an app called Bloom that uploads pictures to FaceBook, and reads IPTC info and puts any fields you want into the FaceBook caption. (I don’t have the link handy, I’m on my iPod, sorry.)
Also, after poking around Flikr and Picasa, I ended up getting an account at a site called SmugMug for photo sharing. You may want to look into it, as it has some advantages over the others (and some disadvantages of course). http://smugmug.com
Hey, good news! Flickr just added a people-tagging feature yesterday, so now you can tag your friends in Flickr photos, too.
Yes, Randy, Flickr recognizes IPTC data as well as EXIF.
Terrific summary–thanks!
I’ve not yet joined flickr, but I see a lot of people use it, and the tags seem very handy, especially to make it easy to find photos of public places such as buildings and places. I assume flikr uploads IPTC data as well as EXIF fields?
Two things that are very annoying about FaceBook: it ignores IPTC captions when uploading, and batch uploading often fails.
Judy, you are correct that anyone on Flickr could lift your photos and publish them on their photostream. If they do that, though, you could report them, and I believe that Flickr would demand that they either take them down or delete their account. Also, you are right that anyone on Facebook could remove their tag and add others. It’s kind of an honor system. But even on Facebook, you can report bad behavior. Look for the “Report” link on each page.
This is good information Dan. Thank you.
I have a question you might be able to answer. I like to limit the viewing of my photogaphs by friends only and have my privacy settings indicated like that. However, what is to prevent a person from moving the whole set of photos to THEIR page thereby letting all THEIR friends see my photos. I haven’t seen a way to keep that from happening. Is there such a way?
From what you’ve said, I guess there is not a way to prevent someone from removing their own tag or adding others.
Hola, that is false. Read the current Facebook TOS.
If you read their TOS carefully, from what I understand that FB have rights to all those pictures, videos, etc for its future advertising — also be careful that some of FB addon have its own TOS, too…
Think again.
P.S. Here’s someone else’s blog entry that compares & contrasts Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa:
http://mybluefeelsay.blogspot.com/2009/07/online-photo-sharing-facebook-vs-flickr.html
Excellent comparison, Daniel. But as always, it’s a different strokes/folks kind of world. A very few of my friends are on facebook but I enjoy keeping up with the ones that are. Even fewer of my family is on facebook.
The same actually applies to Flickr as well. (Maybe I just don’t have any friends? Need to contemplate that one.) I’ve been Flickring for four or five years now and enjoy what I see and learn there a lot. I’ve been facebooking for only a few months and have learned some great things there too. So both have their place in my universe. A couple of years ago I stopped putting family pictures on Flickr. Just felt weird about exposing family to the web, especially grandchildren. I do still take a lot of family photos but tend to share them directly with family through Picasa web albums. I can send what I want to whom I want. I put a very few of the pictures I take on Flickr and those tend to be birds and bunnies for the most part; it allows me a place to post pictures of wildlife that I find endlessly fascinating.
So Flickr is for what interests me, Picasa for family and facebook for fun.
But that’s just me. I sure enjoyed your comparison.
Bill
Great information! I will keep it to refer to for a while. Many good points. I found information on security/privacy most useful as you explained it. I am a novice on both but sure enjoy them. Flickr is mostly for photography, Facebook is for fun. Facebook has helped me connect with my family and friends throughout the world in a new way.
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