So Mike Arrington says in a post over at TechCrunch that Flickr is going to be adding video soon — really. This rumour has been around for awhile, as Mike himself acknowledges, and in fact Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield has been talking about adding video for at least a year. One obvious question is why it has taken so long (likely answer: Yahoo red tape), but a related question is: Why bother?
This could all be part of Yahoo consolidating services, I suppose, and until we see exactly what the company has in mind, I guess it’s unfair to completely pan the idea. But I still don’t see what adding video brings to Flickr. If you’re a die-hard Flickr devotee, maybe you want to have all of your photos and video together on one site. But there are already plenty of sites that will host your video, including a big one named YouTube. What will Flickr be bringing to the party?