But wait.... Flickr's primary focus is a photo sharing website... You mean members of Flickr have formed communities around common interests and communicate through online discussion and photo sharing sessions? YES!
Although Flickr's main priority to sort, store, and share photos... there is a secondary goal to form communities around common interests and demographics. Although the creators of Flickr had a primary focus of creating a visual communication tool; somewhere along the way it was decided that social networking may be equally as important. Richard Giles, the author of “Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution” acknowledged that “What’s so fabulous about the internet today are the social repercussions it’s fostering. So Flickr enables families to share photographs, like I do with my brother in China, or my mother who lives about 20 minutes away. What’s more fun are the communities that you can discover in Flickr. I’ve found people interested in street grafitti, derelict buildings, and cats that think they’re Karate senei.” (What is Flickr)
So, why did the creators of Flickr add on social networking to their agenda?
There is a lot you can do with photography in general, and a user friendly site that allows you to do that is always in high demand. But by adding the option of social networking with the communication already flowing, the creators of Flickr are just creating more fun. It gives the user alternatives for communication with other members. The Flickr communities allow members to simply have more fun using their resources provided to its members.
Although I do have another theory… With an online photo sharing site there is not all that much you can do. Sure, you can share photos; but then what? When the creators of Flickr added social networking for their members, they created a reason for their members to use Flickr more frequently, and to stay on their site for much longer sessions. Now that people are communicating on their site, there will be much better numbers generated for how often and how long this site is accessed.