Friends and Groups On Flickr.com - Getting Comfortable in the Flickr Community

Friends and Groups On Flickr.com - Getting Comfortable in the Flickr Community
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Finding Friends on Flickr

Let’s discuss friends and groups. Friends can be people you already know, people who take photos you like, people from a group that you’re in, pretty much anyone at all who tickles your fancy. You can search for people that share your interests, or you can search for people by name or e-mail address. At the top of your home page is a bar going across. There’s “Home”, “You”, “Organize”, “Contacts”, “Groups”, and “Explore”. If you click the blue arrows next to each topic, a bar comes down explaining what you can do under that category. Click on the “Contacts” arrow first. Scroll down to “People Search” and click on it. If you know a friend who uses Flickr, go ahead and type their name in, otherwise you can either add me as a friend (peckphotographs@hotmail.com) or just type an interest such as skiing or scuba diving. If you used my e-mail address, you’ll come right to my page because I’m the only person linked to that search string. If you typed an interest, you’re now faced with everyone on Flickr who has that interest.

Go ahead and click on someone’s profile. You can now see their contacts, any testimonials written about them, where they’re from, and other tidbits they’ve decided to share with the Flickr community. To add this person as a friend, click on the right-hand side where it says “add (username) as a contact”. You can now mark them as a friend or family, or just do nothing and keep them as a normal contact. After you’ve added a couple friends, go ahead and click on the “Home” tab at the top of the page.

Flickr Groups

Now we’ll work on groups. Click on the “Groups” tab at the top and scroll down to “Search for a Group”. You can search for a group by title and/or description, or you can search for a group by discussion topics. Type anything in that box that sounds like a fun group to be a part of. You’ll then have a list of all the groups that have that interest or title name. Find one that looks interesting to you, and click on it. You can now look around, see some of the photos in the groups “pool” of photos, and decide whether or not you’d like to join. If you do, click on “Join this group”, otherwise click the back button on your browser and do another search.

In Closing

You now have at least one friend, one photo, and are a part of at least one group. You are well on your way to gaining recognition in the Flickr community! There are many other things to do on Flickr such as making a profile, inviting friends, checking your stats, and even buying a Flickr Pro account for yourself or a friend, but I’ll let you “Explore” for yourself.

I wish you great luck in your exploration of Flickr.com. Before you know it, you’ll have a photo in Explore, a list of friends as long as your arm, and be a part of so many groups it’ll be hard to keep up!

This post is part of the series: Flickr Beginners

New to Flickr.com? This series of articles is for the Flickr.com beginner. They explain how to set up a Flickr account, how to upload your photos, and how to network by joining groups and adding friends.

  1. Flickr - A Guide for The Beginner
  2. Getting More In Depth With Flickr.com
  3. Networking On Flickr.com-Groups and Friends