Flickr, as anyone who regularly reads blogs knows, has been an global sensation, a must for professional and amateur photographers around the world. Since the birth of Flickr and photo sharing sites, I’ve been content to casually watch the development of this industry from the sidelines, occassionally visiting someone’s pictures posted on a blog, but never bothering to register for an account myself. I’ve just never had the inclination to expose my digital photographs to the global community.

My indifference towards photo sharing networks and Flickr in particular probably could have continued forever, if it weren’t for my serendipitous discovery of Moo and subsequent order of personalized Moo Minicards using the convenient upload tool from Flickr. As fortunate would have it, I arrived on Flickr in time to learn about a relatively new feature which should really appeal to anyone with a passion for product marketing. Flickr has added a new “Camera Finder” service, ostensibly aimed at helping Flickr users find the most popular camera brands of fellow photography enthusiasts. Flickr collects the data from the meta data (EXIF data) on uploaded pictures, which usually reveals the make and model of the camera used to take the pictures. Why publish this information? The answer is self-evident from the convenient links to Yahoo! shopping (Yahoo! purchased Flickr in 2005).

For a product marketer, this information is a rare and fascinating glimpse into the lifecycle of consumer electronics. Products at all phases of the lifecycles are clearly visible on Flickr’s charts. Here we have Nikon cameras in the last 12 months. The venerable D50 shows clear uptake through most the year, but has probably reached maturity, while the D70 is showing its age and a steady decline. Meanwhile, a new entrant, the D80, is achieving market share, but is still in an early launch phase.

Most products have a steady and lengthly uptake and downtake, but certain cameras such as the Kodak EasyShare C330 Zoom, appear to have run through their entire lifecycle within the course of a year. Its possible that this model has not met consumer expectations or is running into strong competition from other models positioned in the same segment.

A marketer or photographer can easily spend a couple hours examining the Flickr camera data and, one would suspect, industry analysts and camera manufacturers are probably dissecting this data and cross-checking with their own market research at this very moment.

Even if you are not enthralled by electronic product lifecycles, this information is a wonderful demonstration of the hidden value of data in a business. Data, when linked to a business vision, can become information and knowledge. Its unlikely that the founders of Flickr expected to one day use photo meta data for marketing purposes, but somebody at Yahoo realized there was potential for this data and managed to create an amazing service.