Why use Flickr?

These days, you can't trust your hard drive, external drive, and even optical discs to save your neck when your files suddenly evaporate. Second rule of thumb: back-up the back-up of the back-up. [See: First rule of thumb] Now, we all have Dropbox's 2-gigabyte free storage and all, but that's for writers. We also have Apple's iCloud, but that's another story altogether. We also have, incidentally, Flickr. And unlike the more popular--albeit arguably more useless--service of its parent company, Flickr easily becomes the single best thing Yahoo has ever offered us. I've been using Flickr for years, but primarily as a hosting site for my blogs' photos, not much different from the way I use Photobucket, until a year ago when a good friend, who goes by the name Jack the Scribbler, decided to gift me with a Pro account for my birthday (gee, thanks again). I've been using Flickr since then as the primary backup of all my backups, having, before that, lost all my hi-resolution photos taken before 2009 when my old external drive conked out. So I've been worry-free for the past year now, knowing that all my photos are somewhere in the Yahoo cloud readily accessible anytime in full resolution. No need for DVD back-ups (admit it, burning is a hassle). Flickr also works well with Flickr Uploadr, a freeware that lets you upload photos through simple drag-and-drop. From here, you can also add tags, include them in a set (or else create a new one), customize the filters, etc. Because, I have to admit, navigating through the Flickr website to upload could be a hassle sometimes (the site's too heavy). This also helps make my website content load faster since I simply paste HTML codes of my photos (with the spanking cool Flickr rendering too) instead of uploading them to my website directory, which often causes lags in page loading. And yes, whether Wordpress or Blogger, the compression of uploaded photos sucks. Hey, I'm trying to brainwash you to get a Flickr Pro account NOW. Not being paid for it, no. I just believe in products that work. =)