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Flickr unveils camera finder

Photo sharing site Flickr has found a new use for all that user-generated content.

It now analyses the type of camera used to take each picture on the site (assuming the info hasn’t been deleted by the user before uploading) and presents the data in camera popularity rankings.

And, guess what, the camara rankings are linked to Yahoo! Shopping. (Yahoo owns Flickr.)

Venture capitalist and blogger Paul Kedrosky hails this as a savvy use of meta data:

… web services are, among many other things, honey pots for data. Usage of such services throws off wonderfully rich data that is almost certainly of use to someone …

but commenters on his blog raise concerns about data privacy and validity.

I would also suggest that just because a camera is popular with Flickr users doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a superior camera or even superior value.