Flickr, the popular photo sharing service, is now stepping into the video sharing market with video support, a special function supposed to let people insert their own into Flickr photostreams. Although it may sound like a good competition for other such sharing services on the web, it's not because the idea of Flickr Video is not similar to YouTube's: while Google encourages members to upload and share videos, Flickr only wants to let users insert a shorrt clip into their photostreams.

And when I say short, I'm actually talking about 90 seconds because that is the videos' maximum length which can be uploaded on Flickr. But what's worse is that only pro members are able to use the new video functions although all users can see them. For those of you who don't know, you can get a Pro account by paying $24.95 per year. However, beside the video support, the Pro membership also brings you unlimited uploads and storage, unlimited sets and collections, stats of the account and ad-free browsing.

The clip interface is quite simple and shows you the video title, the name of the uploader, lets you control the volume, play and pause the clip or switch it to full-screen mode. No embed or link and no URL for the time being.

What's interesting is that Flickr seems to try to avoid the copyright disputes encountered by Google's YouTube and published detailed guidelines section that clearly explains users that copyright infringing content is not allowed. At this time, Flickr only supports 5 video formats, as it follows: AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG and 3GP.

In case you're a Pro user and you'd want to upload a video on Flickr, you can do this by using the Web Upload form or wait a while until the company releases an updated version of Upload that will also provide support for videos (beside photos).