I was puzzling over a note in Dave Gray’s Flickr account, and by note, I mean a photo of a note he’d taken at a conference, when it struck me:

Flickr is not a photo sharing tool. It is a platform, and it could be exceptionally useful for businesses.

Flickr Business Hacks

  • Upload a product design for review- mark it “friends only” and have your “friends” (coworkers) share their thoughts using Flickr’s built in NOTES format. Have people download the design from the Flickr page, edit it in their image editing software, and put it back up.

  • Upload office candids- use the software to “catch people” doing something you want to promote as office cultural norm.
  • Share status quick- upload images, screenshots, slice-of-life pictorals to accompany textual status reports. Again, between the notes feature and the comments feature, there’s a rich swirl of metadata around what you’re doing.
  • Review stores- if you’re in retail, snap store photos and use them for reviews, updates, and strategy meetings.
  • Capture meetings/conferences- use the photos mixed with a PowerPoint deck to recreate the spirit of a presentation. Was the audience yawning? Show it to make it better for next time.
  • Make customer image bases- show your customer base as a Flickr stream with a similar tag, like the company’s name.
  • Expand your brand- use a Flickr stream around your company, product, or service, and entice Flickr users to join the group and evangelize.

If I were Flickr, I’d consider offering corporate implementations to manage such concepts. But until then, there’s precious little stopping you from implementing something along these lines. How else would you expand on this idea?