Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp’s Web 2.0 blog

The Library of Congress has continued to add photos to its Flickr account, at a pace of about 20 per week.  Enjoy them.  Be inspired by them.  Tag them.

Here’s a cool photo of the Austrian Calvary:

One question I get asked a lot is “how do I make my content/app/video viral?”  Everyone wants to know the formula or the secret sauce.  While I can’t tell you the formula (because I don’t think there is one), I do think there is a pretty foundation element that you’ll have to have.

If you want your content, to go viral it has to be shareable. People have to be able to pass it from one person to the next.

This week Flickr has made the move of making their content more easily shareable.  In the upper right portion of each page, there is now a big “Share This” button.  You can quickly e-mail the photo, grab a link, embed it, or blog about it.

So yeah… Flickr has launched Flickr Video and the big surprise is that the videos can only be 90 seconds long. Before you start moaning and groaning about it, let’s sit back and think about this.

Didn’t we all moan and groan when we found out Twitter had a 140 character limit?  Now Twitter is a Web 2.0 darling.

Constraint brings simplicity.  90 seconds mean that most likely the video is raw and unedited.  It’s the video that comes from the digital photo camera or from your camera phone.

Constraint can also bring great beauty.  Think of haiku. Think of Twitter.  There is a certain level of clarity in what you say when you have a limit on how you can say it.

I’m confident that if people keep an open mind Flickr Video will be a medium for creativity and expression for many years to come.

While at the Library of Congress, I had the pleasure of helping with the Library’s participation in the Flickr Commons project.

It’s very exciting for me to see that the Flickr Commons project has expanded to also now include 200 images from Australia’s Powerhouse Museum.

These look like they equally beautiful photos.  As described by George Oates from Flickr, these are “wonderful old photos of Sydney and New South Wales from the turn of the 20th Century.”

So enjoy them, be inspired by them, tag them.  Contribute to this AWESOME project.

Also… the Library of Congress is continuing to add to it’s Flickr account.  Go check those out also.  Currently those are additions to the Bain Collection.

(Photo from the Powerhouse Museum’s Flickr account)

After much waiting, the Library of Congress has FINALLY added more photos to it’s Flickr account.  The 50 new photos were added to the 1910s Bain News Service set.

Hopefully the love and excitement, that started with the Library’s foray into Flickr in January, will continue here.

Go there. Enjoy the Library of Congress photos on Flickr. Tag them.

Okay… so a lot of crazy things have happened in my life but this is on a whole new level…  The Library of Congress/Flickr project that I helped architect got a mention in this week’s Newsweek magazine.

This week has been kind of crazy.  At the Library of Congress, we made 3000+ photos available on Flickr and the level of positive and warm responses has exceeded all of our wildest expectations.

It’s been thrilling to watch as people from around the world have gone back in time to the early and mid 1900s and gotten to know eras of decades ago.

Also… it’s been rewarding to see in some instances these photos are starting to spark creativity and discussion in the folks that have enjoyed them.

Well, I look forward to seeing what the future of this project will hold.

Here is a sample of some of my favorite photos from the Library of Congress sets that were made available on Flickr:

Every once and a while you’ll notice that i’ve gone a day or two without blogging.  This doesn’t mean that i’ve gone completely off the grid.  It just means that I’ve probably gotten really busy between my work and after work lifes.

Chances are that during a lull you can probably find some type of my activity on a number of different Web 2.0 applications…

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Del.icio.us
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• Cork’d
• Pownce
• Digg

If you wanna keep up on my various comings and goings when I’m not blogging, by all means please add me as a contact or friend on one of these services.

If it’s possible to put in a message with your “friend request”, just say that you read my blog.

The crew over at Flickr have just released a new product, Flickr Places. It aggregates together photos, photographers, and groups around certain geographic areas.

You can type in “Florence, Italy” and seconds later you’ll be flipping through the most interesting or most recent photos for that area. I have to say this is way cool! I’ve already spent two hours tonight just flipping through photos in various parts of the world.

My journeys have taken me to:

• London
• Barcelona
• Florence
• Vatican City
• Shanghai

I have seen some really amazing photographs. Plus I think I have my next 30 years of vacations planned out. :-p

This reminds me a lot of when I was growing up and my dad and I would surf on telnet. It was a game to see how many different Web sites in different countries we could see in an evening. The Web gave me the ability to see a world beyond my own.

I can totally see Flickr Places being used by people all over the world to get excited about areas or places that they’ve never been before and maybe even make connections with people they’ve never met before.

Also… I could totally see someone seeing a place on the news like Baghdad and wanting to see more photos from that location.

Oh oh oh… there’s one things I forgot to mention. Flickr also has this new map view which displays the keywords of what people are taking pictures of in that region.

It was just recently announced on their blog that Flickr has passed their 2 billionth photograph.  I want to personally congratulate the Flickr crew on this impressive milestone.

Flickr has helped me in so many ways.  I now feel like I can stay better connected through the photos of my family and friends.  I also feel empowered to instantly touch the other side of the world through someone’s photos.  It’s awesome!

*raises a glass to the Flickr crew*

What’s the coolest photograph that you’ve seen lately on Flickr?