Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo sharing site, has unveiled a redesigned site today that puts new emphasis on photos and all of the extra data – and the stories they tell – hidden inside of them.
The site had been in testing since mid-June by more than 800,000 members, but now the final version is available to all.
One of the first changes you’ll likely see is that the photo you’re viewing has gotten bigger by default – by 28%, actually. Clicking on photos or on the magnifying glass dims the rest of the screen and enlarges the photo even more for closer viewing.
Flickr has also worked to streamline navigation, making it easier to browse photos or switch from one function to another. The most interesting part, to us at least, is the background story for each photo that is now included. Josh Nguyen describes the changes in a post on the Flickr blog:
Your photos already carry the narrative elements of who, what, where, when and how whenever you upload them to Flickr. Browse Flickr and you’ll see stories within stories – photos within photostreams within groups or any kinds of combinations. So we’ve made it easier to find when a photo was taken, it’s location, camera/exif info and your name in one location to the right of the image, along with the title and description. We think that photosharing will increasingly become story-sharing.
At the same time, we would caution users to make sure that they understand what information they are sharing when putting their photos online. Much of this can be altered or hidden, rather that unwittingly sharing location information along with your photos. For example, under the iPhone’s settings, including location information in photographs can be toggled on or off. Although many of us often share location information with all of our photos, this new feature will highlight this information, making it more prominent.
