Nifty and dangerous: FlickrCash

One of the tools for Flickr I noticed recently but then lacked the time to dig deeper into is FlickrCash, finally online since March 03 this year. Here´s a quick roundup.

As FlickrCash´s founder Augustine Fou puts it, using Flickr´s API "FlickrCash turns Flickr into the world´s largest stock image marketplace by helping image buyers more efficiently find images and image owners to sell them, by accepting payments for them and archiving licenses for public inspection".

To get the basic idea, you can view here for example the impressive Sunset Lightbox of FlickrCash´s developer Jesse Skinner, or watch the FlickrCash demo on YouTube.

 

Based on what Augustine Fou recently disclosed, FlickrCash allows you to search for different types of licences (half a dozen) and offers the following main features:

• Multi parameter search with negative keywords, which returns as many thumbnails as your screen can display: http://flickrcash.com/triplescreens.html.

• Saved searches with roll-back to get back to where you left off during image research.

• Shareable lightboxes so clients can "heart" or "hate" images selected for the design project: http://flickrcash.com/rnx2nu1v.

• Auto/bulk watermarking of every image for every image owner on Flickr: http://flickrcash.com/preview/293003399_4.jpg.

• Installable lightbox grids and slideshows for publicity and marketing of images: http://flickrcash.com/lightbox_install/rnx2nu1v.

• Royalty free licenses based on Creative Commons, archived for public inspection at any time.

 

FlickrCash attracted a lot of media attention recently after the NYC Tech Meetup early this month (quoting Fortune technology):

FlickrCash could prove a real business. Founder Dr. Augustine Fou set out to build a more powerful search engine for the vast photo-sharing site and soon had created an AJAX-powered, multi-parameter search capable of returning easily-scanned, screen filling mosaics of thumbnails.

For those that would use Flickr -- with its millions of photographs (more than Getty Images or Corbis) -- as a commercial source for photos, this power searching was great.

But the bigger problem was the lack of a legit purchasing mechanism. So, on top of his search engine, Fou has built what amounts to a peer-to-peer shopping cart. We’ve seen content mashups before, but this may well be the first pure e-commerce mashup: FlickrCash doesn’t host the photos or own them, it simply facilitates their retrieval and purchase. Way meta.

Several in the audience raised the legitimate concern that Fou was forging a highly symbiotic relationship with Flickr-owner Yahoo without some form of commercial agreement ... Fou acknowledged the risk, but seemed undeterred. It’ll be interesting to see how Yahoo responds.

 

The best feature however is of course that "if you own a Flickr account, you can use the Flickr cash service to sell your images. Just tag the images you want to sell with "photoforsale:price=auto" or "photoforsale:price= 24.95" (or whatever price you want to charge)".

Fou adds that "there are far more images already on Flickr and marked with a Creative Commons license than Getty or all of the other microstock sites combined. While other microstock online agencies require photographers to post their images to their sites, FlickrCash allows image owners with images already on Flickr to simply tag them with the tag "photoforsale:price=auto" to list their image for sale. Payments and licensing are all taken care of for image owners automatically". Here´s an example how all this works in reality.

FlickrCash will exit the "beta" status in the coming weeks and will begin to charge a monthly subscription fee, but users who are already registered or register before this unknown date will not have to pay any fee for the advanced features in the future only available to subscribers, like unlimited saved searches, shareable lightboxes, etc.

With it´s commercial capabilities, FlickrCash is probably also the biggest threat to Zooomr.

 

Related:

• Most sophisticated Flickr/CC mashup yet (Creative Commons weblog. Apr. 15, 2007)
• Search Flickr Images with FlickrCash - Better than Flickr (Digital Inspiration, April 04, 2007)
• iStockphotozation And Flickrzation: User Generated Content In Terms Of Image Numbers And Image Quality (Nov. 03, 2006)
• Making Money For The Flickr Flock?: "Flickr photos would find a different niche on the marketplace, but still a viable one, Stewart Butterfield added. And then it begins to make sense" (Internetnews.com, Aug. 09, 2006)
• Will Flickr Enter The Commercial Stock Photography Business? (May 21, 2006)
• Getty Images, Flickr And The Reinvention Of Outdoor Advertising (Sept. 29, 2005)
• Flickr: How To Displace Getty Images and Corbis (Aug. 18, 2005)