Laurent Kretz

… or not.

I was recently speaking with a friend about how Flickr was an amazing tool. I have been using it for years now. I love the ease of upload through the Flicrk Uploader, the flexibility of the API, the feeds for tags/sets/collections/….

However, I was also saying that for my last trip in India, I uploaded my pictures on Facebook and a specific site I did for the trip. But almost none on Flickr.

And I was arguing that on Facebook, pictures get a second life. Yes, you can comment pictures on Flickr, but that’s all. On Facebook, you tag your friends, they are notified, their friends see the new pictures, you can comment the pictures and your comment will be in your news feed, … and your pictures live longer. Numbers are here to prove it: Facebook hosts more than 15 billion pictures, as Flickr only hosts 3.4.

I was advocating for a more social use of Flickr, which hadn’t come to surface yet. Imagine if you could tag your Facebook friends no Flickr. You would benefit both from the Flickr interface and platform (dedicated to make sharing pictures online better) and your Facebook social graph.

And BOOM! Last week I read about Polar Rose and tried it this morning: powerful and great service that does exactly that. The seamless integration of Facebook Connect and Flickr Authentication makes it a brease to connect your account to your flickr pictures and facebook frends. Then Polar Rose finds faces in your pics and your can tag them.

Works pretty fine, see the screenshot below of the interface: it recognizes my father and a friend - impressive, no? I then pushes back the tags to Flickr (see 3rd screenshot).

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