I’m absolutely loving Flickr’s new ‘Places’ feature. It’s one thing to look at pictures from another place (which of course you always could do), but it adds an entirely different element when you get some context about that area – such as its place on the map, other interesting photos from that area, or even the weather there – all of which Flickr ‘Places’ offers.

I’ve probably spent a couple hours already simple refreshing the ‘Places’ main page and finding new areas to look at the most interesting pictures from (right now I’m looking at some great pictures from Utrecht in the Netherlands – a place I had never even heard of before). This reminds me very much of something that prompted me to write a post last month: YouTube videos in Google Earth. Both of these features lend to the idea of using technology to help people feel more connected to and a part of the larger world – something that is truly remarkable considering 20 years ago no one would have ever dreamed of any of this.

I would love nothing more than for Google (the company behind Google Earth and YouTube) and Yahoo (the company behind Flickr) to set aside the fact that they are rivals for a second and combine these two awesome programs into one. Imagine if you were flying through Google Earth and you could click on a city and its Flickr ‘Places’ page would open as an overlay – on this page would not only be the content that is currently on ‘Places’ pages, but there would be a new column with YouTube videos for that city as well. Doesn’t that just make sense?

I’m sure Google is perfectly happy using Panoramio as the provider of pictures within Google Earth – but lets face it, everyone knows that Flickr pictures would offer a much richer experience. I have a Panoramio account, and it’s nice, but it doesn’t have nearly the community that Flickr has behind it to build comprehensive ‘Places’ pages.

What do you say guys? Can we play nice and get this done?