Last year, Flickr and Getty Images teamed up to build what they called The Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com. It’s available now at http://www.gettyimages.com/flickr
What happened behind this collaboration? Flickr General Manager explains:

For the past few months, editors at Getty Images have been busy exploring the Flickrverse to find the right photos to be part of the collection — a task that is somewhat daunting when there are more than three billion images to choose from on Flickr. The goal was to choose photos that created a commercially viable collection, while preserving the inspirational and unexpected nature of the kinds of images that are so prevalent on Flickr. Like Flickr itself, this is a “living collection” and Getty Images will continue to add thousands of new images every month from here on out.

At the Getty Images’ landing site, it’s said that:

These are handpicked images with an originality and authenticity rare in stock photos. Images that are available exclusively on our site, in both rights-managed and royalty-free options.

More photos will be added into the collections.