Flickr for Hire

For decades, people have been taking photos and home videos and sharing them with their friends and family. But it wasn’t until YouTube that UGC (user-generated content) became a legitimate – albeit mind-numbing – mass-market entertainment form.

Now I’m certainly not one who believes that Fred and LonelyGirl15 are going to replace Seinfeld and GossipGirl, but when the most respected stock houses in the world — GettyImages — announces the launch of its “Flicker Collection“, it makes you wonder if the rules of publishing are being rewritten as we speak.

Getty is calling their Flickr feed, “handpicked images with an originality and authenticity rare in stock photos” — [yet as familiar as the photos you can take yourself]…? But hey, if a brand wants to use photos of my kid sister’s Quinceañera party for their next print ad, all I can say is “CHEESE!”