Sunny Wu’s Blogging Zone

I was reading about the imminent arrival of the Flickr Video and trying to think of a killer feature I would hope Flickr would provide to create a stronghold in online video sharing hosting.

On Pronet Advertising, there was a post discussing concerns regarding to the late arrival of Flickr Video and competing in the crowded online video sharing market among the established competitors like (sucking in breath):

Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Google Video, Veoh, Dailymotion, Yahoo Video, Metacafe … I give up, just read the huge list here on Mashable.

So what is an edge that Flickr can create to get ahead of these fierce competition? Brand and implement a killer feature - Better Video Quality.

Flickr has always been the first word people think of in online photo sharing. It’s probably the first photo sharing website that “got it right” in the social part of the “Web 2.0″. Therefore, the brand itself is still bright and get attractive the current community to share more user-generated materials, in this case video. And this leads to the next point - better video quality.

I always have the opinion that Flickr has high quality of photos, be it due to the skills of photographers, the quality of the cameras, or the combination of both. Some are showcased on this site Flickrville. And if you look around, nearly all current online sharing sites use Flash and in turn the H.263 codec. For slow moving pictures like lip-sync-ing, it’s adequate. But if you have some dancing videos like “Chale Jaise - Main Hoon Na” (one of my favourite - not that I understand a word of the lyrics):

Can you see dancing in there? Imagine showcasing these qualities of videos with FlickrVille-featured photos like this one - they don’t match well do they?

I am not certain which video codec is feasible for large-scale video streamings, maybe H.264? But in the end, I hope Flickr will host high-quality video sharing to introduce more professional-class video producers to make online video browsing in Flickr to match the same pleasant browsing experience people have enjoyed for past few years in Flickr Photos.