Flickr Finally Adds Video?With Limits; Sharing 'Long Photos' That Move

With length limits of 90 seconds, Flickr for video isn't likely to replace YouTube or other sites for serious video sharing but it may take casual video uploads to the next level. Flickr video sharing has been in beta; now the new variation on Yahoo's (NSDQ: YHOO) popular service is open to pro users who have paid a fee for photo sharing and storage. Some features:

-- Videos up to 90 seconds in length and up to 150MB in size.-- Just as users can makes photos public or limit access to friends and/or family, the video can be public or private.-- The videos will be integrated with photos in the user's Flickr stream. Additionally, clips can be embedded on third-party sites. Flickr's offering an API for third-party developers.-- Video can be viewed full screen.-- Most of the usual Flickr features carry over: tagging, geotagging, uploads from mobile, Creative Commons licensing.

Possible users: Yahoo and Decipher Inc. randomly surveyed 2,000 online adults a four-day period at the beginning of February. Some results: 40 percent of respondents ages 18-44 are capturing personal video clips with their digital cameras, but don't use video-sharing sites; 55 percent play back video clips for their friends on their camera device or PC; 20 percent don't share at all.

Yahoo Anecdotal: "Most videos being captured today are essentially 'long photos' ? short clips that are captured on digital still cameras or mobile phones rather than long format video taken by traditional video cameras. ... Our research suggests that most of it is actually under 60 seconds, and 90 seconds should be a pretty comfortable limit. As with (most) other features on the site, we'd love to hear feedback."