At least it was yesterday, when the LA Times checked in on Flickr’s stats; at the time, Apple (AAPL)’s handset had passed the Canon (CAJ) EOS Digital Rebel XTi as the most popular camera on Yahoo’s (YHOO) photo site. The stats are updated daily, though, and as of this afternoon, the Canon had pulled back in front by a few hundred users.

But the precise numbers don’t matter. The takeaway here is that people who like taking and sharing photos are happy to use an inferior camera–even the newest iPhone sports just three megapixels and lacks rudimentary features like zoom and flash–if it’s easy to use. And most important, if it’s already on the phone they’re carrying around.

I’m not the first to point this out, but I’ll reiterate: There are important/worrisome lessons here for other gadget makers.

Cisco’s (CSCO)’s Flip camera line, for instance, is great, and I used my Mino HD twice today for interviews. But if I was carrying around an iPhone 3GS or any other handset with video-recording capabilities, I’m not sure that I would have packed the Flip. And I’d probably end up filming a lot more interviews if my camera was always with me.

Same goes for Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle, or any other would-be e-book reader: I appreciate that they’re designed specifically for reading and boast low-power screens that are easy on the eyes, hold up well in variable light, etc. But I read a newsstand’s worth of copy every day on my rudimentary BlackBerrry 8830, which isn’t designed for that at all; plenty of iPhone fans say they’re happy reading full-length novels on their gadgets.

That doesn’t mean that people who are passionate about cameras or novels or whatever won’t prefer specialized devices. But that leaves a very big chunk of the market–those of us who find that good enough is plenty good–for the iPhone or any other all-in-one tool.

[Image credit: Erik Pitti]

For those of you who don’t watch CNN or visit CNN.com with any frequency, iReport is the news service’s attempt to create its own user-generated news hub. It’s supposed be to be able attract eyeballs on its own and in some cases, feed the Web site and the cable channel with free content donated by viewers.

To date, iReport is best known as the place where someone posted a bogus item about Apple (AAPL) CEO  Steve Jobs. But CNN says it has been using the site heavily to augment its Iran coverage. From a press release it sent out earlier this week: “Since last week, we’ve received 4555 iReport submissions related to Iran–including more than 1600 this past Saturday and Sunday alone, and an additional 689 just yesterday. To date, 150 of the Iran-related iReports have been vetted and verified by CNN producers for use on CNN air or online–something the likes of YouTube or Flickr just aren’t equipped to do given their lack of newsgathering infrastructure.” (Yesterday CNN told me it added another 399 Iran-related iReports, and that seven had made it onto air. Presumably those numbers are still increasing.)

The breast-beating seems a bit much given that CNN, like every other cable network, has been happy to play up any bit of social media it uses in its Iran reporting. But the point about the vetting and verification is interesting.

I checked with CNN rep Jennifer Martin, who spelled out what that means: That CNN producers have contacted the people who sent in all of the Iran-related iReports it has featured on the network and at least verified that they are who they say they are. That in itself seems worthwhile, and maybe even worth bragging about.

Andy Plesser at Beet.TV has more, including an interview with CNN.com producer Lila King.

Here’s an example of some the “verified” footage the network has used so far. For some reason the play/pause/etc. controls don’t show up on these embedded videos, but I’ve been able to get them to start and stop by clicking on the image:

Iranians shouting “Allah O Akbar” at night:

A pro-Mousavi rally:

Instead, the New York-based company has just raised a $4.5 million Series B round that its CEO, 22-year-old David Karp, says will fund it for two and a half years. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, which led the company’s first $750,000 round a year ago, also led this financing. My educated guess is that its investors now value Tumblr at around $15 million.

Tumblr is a “microblog” platform that is supposed to let its users quickly create nice-looking posts with a minimum of effort; it sits somewhere between Twitter and full-fledged blogs like Blogger and TypePad. It is popular with a relatively small but prolific user base: Its 500,000 users have created pages that draw 15 million unique visitors and 61 million page views a month, Karp says.

Money? Nope. Tumblr is free–and has no ads cluttering up its hipster vibe.

Way back in 2007, those kinds of numbers would have been catnip for the likes of Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO). Now, though, even deep-pocketed buyers aren’t racing to snap up revenue-free start-ups. But Karp says raising money from his previous investors was easy: “These guys came to us with a deal that made us incredibly comfortable.”

Karp says he’s going to start generating money in early 2009. Not by selling ads on his members pages–Karp thinks the site will eventually incorporate ads in some way, but not yet–but by selling users “premium” services, most of which he’s not ready to describe. He does promise they will be “really sexy.”

More practically, Karp points out that other Web services, like the WordPress blogging platform and Yahoo’s Flickr photo service, have been able to upsell many of their users with goodies like extra storage. He figures many of his users will pay up, too.

The new money means he’ll have time to prove his thesis. Karp has just doubled his staff–which means there are now all of six people on payroll. One of them, hired in September, is John Maloney, Karp’s former boss at Urban Baby, where he started his Web career. Maloney is now in charge of business operations.

The money also means there are heightened expectations. Karp has done much more than people twice his age (and has the press clips to prove it). But the newest funding round means his investors think the company will be worth as much as $50 million by the time he sells it or raises more cash. In order to prove them right, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.

[Image Credit: David's Log]