Did you know you can now host your videos on Flick? Flickr have incorporated video streaming onto their site and you can now save up to 90 seconds of video per file. In other updates the storage capacity for each photo has been increased to 20 mb for pro members and 10 mb for free members.

[source]….you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,” of capturing slices of life to share

As can be seen, Flickr primary aim is to get short videos of ‘life’. I am sure we will soon find ways to incorporate marketing videos into the system.

You’ve no doubt heard the complaints that advertising on the social networking websites doesn’t get the return expected by online marketers. High pageviews, low click-thru rates.

However, there’s another way of looking at this: social networking websites can deliver a demographically focused audience that is not widely available online. Even offline, only TV can deliver this type of audience.

In February, the 25 top social networking sites put 155 million unique visitors face-to-face with advertisers. MySpace, Facebook & Classmates.com delivered over 70% of that total. Tacking on YouTube and Flickr increases the total to 215 million unique viewers a month. Best estimate for TV is less than 200 million unique viewers per month.

There’s more. According to ComScore Video Metrix, US web users watched over 10 billion videos just in December, 2007. Many of those were soft-pedalling commercials … and many more are ripe to have a short commercial attached to the end.

But the most attractive social networking media feature is the younger demographic with high disposable income, much sought-after by ad agencies and advertisers. It’s too big and too focused an audience for that strong marketing connection to not be made eventually.

Social networking websites may currently be struggling for traditional advertisers, but the signs point to a happy, profitable future for them - together.

Flickr is a very useful tool to social bloggers, because a blog post with an image starts out with a definite advantage over a blog post with no image. A picture book is easier to read than “War and Peace.” The image on your blog post will draw in people who wouldn’t have stopped otherwise. And a GOOD image will make your words more memorable, more effective long-term.

Flickr hosts a seemingly endless stream of images, and you can freely use many of them for social marketing, no strings attached. Many images can be used commercially. You can even modify many of these photos. What’s the catch? Just give attribution to the photographer … a link under the image, back to their website.

If you also need photos for your commercial blog, go to Flickr and search only within the Creative Commons photo area … millions of photos are available for commercial use. Just click on the “Attribution License” category to find photos available for commercial use and which you can modify as you like.

Now click on “browse popular tags” and click on the appropriate keywords. If you don’t find them, use the Flickr “Search” box to enter keywords about the image you’re looking for. It may take more than 1 search (different keywords) to find what you want. When you see a result you like, click to see the full-size image. If you like it, then clicking “some rights reserved” brings up the Creative Commons license.

If everything checks out, download the image and use it on your blog as you want. Be sure to add a photographer credit under the image (”Photo by …”). Link the photographer name to their Flickr profile page.

“Googling” is everywhere. We’ve all heard of employees getting fired - or applicants not hired - because of their Facebook or MySpace profile. And when you search for a potential employer, you might find a list of lawsuits, complaints and “IHateAcme.com” websites. Or you might find a list of company press releases. Either way, there’s a good chance what you find will influence your impression.

To monitor that “you” brand:

1. Set up Google Alerts for your name
2. Check Technorati regularly for your name in blogs
3. Check Google Video for your name in videos

How can you help make sure that your “YOU” brand shows up positively & accurately?

Don’t reveal everything to the world in your social networking profiles or on your blogs. Think what you would want to find in the social media if you were hiring “you”. Then create a professional profile to match for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.

Register “yourname.com”, if it’s available. If not, get the .net domain or .org or one of the others. Set up a blog, if you don’t have one, with this domain name. Anyone who links will probably use your name for anchor text. Your blog can link to your Facebook profile, or YouTube video, or Flickr photos, etc. You can write up a bio for your “About me” page & link to a resume.

Link from your blog to your articles posted online, and to the positive pages created about you. Be sure to go to Digg & StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites to bookmark these pages.

Whenever you put something online, remind yourself: “This is eternal.” Because it pretty much is.

You don’t need to do all this reputation management today. But long-range, this plan will strengthen that brand of “YOU.”

You can post and share your photos on Flickr, a website that Alexa ranks in the Top 40 for internet traffic. The “photo sharing” part is what makes Flickr such a hot social networking site.

A couple of strategies to get the most bang for your buck with Flickr:

1. Be sure to create a relationship-building profile, so social networkers can connect and bond with you. If you want to use Flickr to promote your “WidgetsRUs” business, tell them about you and tell them what you love about widgets. Link to your website and to your email. Use some part of one of your photos to make an icon to identify you on Flickr.

2. The photos you upload from your camera to your computer have some worthless gobbledegook jpg name. Change your photo name to “BestWidget.jpg”. Now the Search Engines can index your photo with a term that people are actually likely to search. And as you share this photo with other social networkers, encourage them to use their Flickr option of applying their own comments and tags to it. That will get you more Search Engine love.

Two simple strategies. Do the first and be consistent with the second, and you improve your social networking results from Flickr.

If you like sharing your photos, Flickr is a cool way to do that. There are some ways to use Flickr to network with others who like photos. But it’s also not all about photos.

Flickr is a social site that allows users to upload photos and other graphics and share them with each other. Like other social media sites, you can browse the photos of other people, vote on them if you like them, or against them if you don’t, comment on them, and even add the users to your friends list.

There are many different uses for Flickr, but one powerful way to use it is to store your photos so that you can hotlink to them from your blog. I’ve known several bloggers who use Flickr for that purpose. But you can also use Flickr to network with others who have blogs and enter into an agreement with them so that you can use each other’s photos on your blogs.

Through Flickr’s Creative Commons library, you can set the rules of use for all of your photos. You can reserve all rights or make your photos open domain. You can set your rights to anywhere in between. There are even social applications out there that allow you to write slideshows for your photos and show them on your website.

Flickr is a great way to make new friends and everything you can do there you can do for your business or for personal pleasure. I strongly recommend using Flickr as a networking tool.

The first Open Web Awards hosted by Mashable was a success. The awards night was a bit late since the winners were already announced last December 21, 2007. But still, it was a success and I’m hoping this won’t just be a first.

The conference was held yesterday January 10 at sunny San Francisco, California at the Palace Hotel. The whole Social Media and Web 2.0 community has finally got to recognizing the best of the best. A total of 250,000 votes were cast. Next year, I am certain it’ll be bigger— more nominations, more finalists, and hopefully more sponsors so the prizes will be bigger.

Here are the winners of Mashable’s first ever Open Web Awards.

1. PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Mainstream and Large Social Networks
Netlog

Applications and Widgets
WidgetBucks

Social News and Social Bookmarking
digg

Social Search
facebook

Sports and Fitness
SPORTME

Photo Sharing
VOIS

Video Sharing
Kaltura

Start Pages
iGoogle

Places and Events
myspace.com

Music
PANDORA

Social Shopping
ZliO

Mobile
Google Mobile

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks
cafemom

3. JUDGE’S CHOICE
Mainstream and Large Social Networks
facebook

Applications and Widgets
Flock

Social News and Social Bookmarking
digg

Social Search
Mahalo

Sports and Fitness
ESPN

Photo Sharing
flickr

Video Sharing
YouTube

Start Pages
netvibe

Places and Events
Meetup

Music
last.fm

Social Shopping
woot!

Mobile
twitter

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks
FilmCrave

Websites like facebook and digg are lucky to have been awarded twice. I agree more with the Judge’s Choice than with the People’s Choice though.

Congratulations to the winners! Here’s to a more successful and social Web 2.0 and Social Media in 2008!

It seems just about every one has a Flickr account nowadays, but the question is why don’t you?

It’s free, it’s indexed numerous places, and depending on your picture, it has the potential of going viral. If you are going to be putting up a MySpace profile, and you have pictures you want to post anyway, why not put them on Flickr? You need to upload them somewhere anyway, so you can kill two birds with one stone.

What type of pictures should you upload though? Show off your business, let people see events you’ve had, have an internal contest in your company that challenges your employees to do something creative (the best type of content for going viral) and then put the results on the account. The more pictures, the better, because with each picture, your odds of a potential customer/client of coming across it accidentally goes up.

And best of all, it costs you nothing. Have you noticed how much social marketing really costs you nothing but a little time?

One often overlooked social marketing media site, and one which I highly recommend, is Flickr.

Flickr is a photo sharing site with a lot to offer. You can upload as many as 100MB of photos without any charge before having to upgrade and there are a lot of photos you can get online with that kind of space. You can share your Flickr photos publicly or you can keep them private, just between you and your friends. You can even select certain ones that no one can see but you. Total control.

Flickr will also allow you to assign certain rights to each photo. In other words, if you want to allow anyone and everyone the right to use your photos without charge or attribution then you can. Or if you want to offer them to the Creative Commons area, you can do that too. If you want to restrict your photos from public use altogether, that option is available as well. However you choose to use Flickr, I say use it because you make friends and add them to your network and expand your base of online people you know and do business with.