Flickr, Now Available In 8 Languages

I like Flickr. I use it quite a bit. As do millions and millions of others. Throughout the world.

Because it’s something of a global enterprise, however, its long-held English-only existence has come as a significant limitation in its drive for expansion. So Flickr has finally decided to do something it should have done long ago: support additional languages.

Some of our higher ups here at Profy likely won’t take too kindly to the fact that Flickr has not chosen Russian as one of the languages added to the fold. But just the inclusion of Spanish, French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, and traditional Chinese in its database will clearly help Flickr make many more friends around the globe. Besides, it’s bound to increase support with time. Hopefully they'll do so relatively speedily.

I don’t need to explain at lengthy why Flickr has chosen the abovementioned languages to include in the site’s expansion. The statistics tell all. English, by far, is the dominant language on the Web. Following are Spanish, French, German and Chinese (listed in no particular order here), with Korean, Italian, Portuguese, among many others, populating the remaining portion of the pie. Japanese is near the top as well. I can only imagine Flickr has chosen the seven that it has simply because demand for those specific picks has been greater than for all others.

Flickr is a photo-sharing site through and through, therefore it’s been possible for the company – now a Yahoo! entity – to grow its audience without having to address the lack of language support for quite a while. Images themselves are universal in their reach, and because text clearly takes a back seat to the visual at Flickr, the site’s managed to do very well thus far.

English, however, only permeates borders/barriers so much, and Flickr has realized it is now necessary to make itself friendly to foreign tongues if it is, in the words of Flickr co-founder and general manager Stewart Butterfield, to continue to “see a significant uptick in growth” in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Butterfield “expects membership growth” as a result of this move. I agree. It won’t balloon to phenomenal new heights, as it’s already worked its way into many regions of the market over the last several years, but the addition of seven languages will certainly help the site win over at least a few million more photogs, amateur and professional. Which really will be a benefit to everyone. After all, who doesn’t like thumbing – or mousing – through tons and tons of images? The more the merrier, I say.