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When you hear the phrase “social network”, what do you think of? Facebook? Myspace? Maybe Twitter? One online service that I had never thought of as a social network is Flickr - at least not until today. Today, I discovered why Flickr is so addictive and fun, and why at the core, it is a social network, although it may not seem like that on the surface.

For those of you who don’t know, Flickr is a service that allows users to upload photos to the Internet for free. But underneath, it is a whole lot more. Today I discovered the true nature and appeal of Flickr - it’s a social community. And not just a community of plain text, but of pictures and images and stories. Like most social networks or communities, Flickr works on the basis of adding friends and family members as contacts. You can comment on people’s photos, watch slideshows, and get notified when your contacts upload new photos. Flickr allows you to stay connected with your contacts, and share your life stories with them.

Today I spent a lot of time on Flickr. It gets very addicting after awhile. I would search for something I was interested in, and then expand and explore off of that search. Isn’t that the way all social networks work? When you are reading or looking at one thing, there are a variety of other related things along the side, that can lead you on a never-ending trail throughout the site. That’s what happens to me when I watch Youtube videos. After watching one video, I am likely to see another related one and click on that, and continue with the cycle. The same applies to Flickr. You see one photo, and then you may see the person’s other photos, which leads you to an intriguing comment which leads you to that commenters profile, and so on.

Flickr also works as a very valuable resource for bloggers. I have begun to use it for most of the photos on my blog posts. There is such a wide variety of photos and talent on Flickr, that you can find almost anything you are looking for. There is even an advanced search feature, that will allow you to filter your results to only photos you can use in your blog, by looking at the creative commons licenses.

When you begin to move past the simple “storage for photos online” mentality, you begin to realize that Flickr is a lot more than that. It is a community of people, connected through their photos, and sharing them with the world. Due to the number of photos uploaded, Flickr is also a valuable resource for searching and finding photos for many different uses. Flickr has become one of my favourite online, social communities, and I use it everyday to share my life with the world.