The biggest photo-sharing site unveiled today a new addition to its services: video. From now on the users will be able to upload not only photos, but also short clips or as Flickr’s team wrote in the FAQ, “long photos”.

And this is the catch. Flickr Video is trying to position itself not like a video-sharing site. Instead, the video service is promoted as a useful addition to its core business: a web platform for adding and sharing photos.

Flickr’s intention to try a new approach on video-sharing is quite clear and the new service is available only to the paying customers, who are not allowed to upload video clips longer than 90 seconds.

So don’t expect to find on Flickr video, Britney Spears’ latest video, but rather a nice clip in which her pictures are put together by an artist or a fan.

Also, the videos will be displayed along with the photos and they will show up anywhere photos do (in search results, photostreams, Explore, RSS feeds, etc) but they won’t play automatically, Flickr’s team explained.

The users could opt-in if they wish the videos to be played automatically or they will have to click to start them.

The formats supported for upload are AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG (1, 2, and 4) and 3gp and the maximum size of file can’t surpass 150 MB.

Similar to other video-sharing sites, Flickr Video offers the “embed” feature. “You can choose a size and whether or not to include the owner’s name and the title of the video as an introduction to the video itself. Based on your choices, a little snippet of code will be generated for you that you can cut and paste, and insert into another web page, or blog post” reads the Video FAQ posted on Flickr website.

It will be interesting to see how Flickr’s approach will play out in the end, but seeing a web site that does not try to mimic YouTube features, is refreshing. And the rules will surely encourage the users’ creativity, so in the next few months, I’m sure we will find tons of original content on Flickr video.