Yesterday Flickr released their Flickr2Twitter integration into the wild after a brief testing period (previous post). There are two uses for the new integration: the first is that Flickr users can now upload a photo to Flickr and have it tweeted by sending the photo to a special email address (functionality similar to Twitpic). The other use is that photos already on Flickr can be sent to Twitter; they’ll be posted along with a shortened-url link back to the original photo on Twitter.
On Twitter, @jkuramot wondered about the licensing and legal implications of the new service. For posting/tweeting one’s own photos, it’s not much of an issue, but it bears looking at the situation where any user could tweet a link to a photo taken by another user. After examining the implementation of the feature, I don’t think there are any issues at all. Since the posting to Twitter isn’t actually posting the photo (only a link), the photo isn’t being redistributed. Anyone who clicks the link will view the photo on its original Flickr page, which will include license information.
Flickr has implemented the Twitter feature under the “Blog This” button, so users can further restrict the ability using Flickr’s existing set of permissions that control the blog-ability of a photo.
For more information on how to use the new Flickr Twitter integration, see the help links in the announcement blog post.
These other posts might be of interest to you:
