Flickr is ten years old

Photo-sharing community Flickr turned ten years old this week. At Time, Harry McCracken takes a look back.

Earlier photo sites were mostly concerned with letting you put your pictures in front of friends and family. Flickr did that, too. But from the start, it was building a community of photo lovers around the world who wanted to share images with other photo lovers, as well as thousands of special interest sub-communities. It was about storytelling.

I was at Etech when Flickr launched and was one of the site’s first few hundred users. The photo chat room they launched with was not that interesting to me, but when they turned it inside out, I was hooked. Happy birthday, Flickr.

• Flickr
• Harry McCracken
• photography