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The Slow Death of Flickr

posted on November 18, 2011

I uploaded my first photo to Flickr on October 13, 2004 and have uploaded almost 14,000 photos since then.

I loved that people could leave comments and that my family and friends around the world could see what I was seeing at home and on my travels.

But, this morning as I took this photo of the iced leaves beside my driveway and shared it online, it quickly became apparent to me that Flickr is on the slow death slide to not mattering any more.

Besides Flickr, I now post photos to my Google+, Instagram and 500px accounts.

There is overlap in some of the communities and what photos I share to each is sometimes unique to how I use the services. For instance, I only publish my very best to 500px and Instagram is my home for day to day snapshots.

What got me thinking about this today is that when I uploaded this photo I instantly got reactions and comments on G+ and Instagram. I even tweeted the link out to the Flickr photo and while a bunch of people viewed it not a single comment was left as of me writing this.

I share photos because I love hearing what people think about them. The power of Instagram to me isn’t the filters, but the community of friends that have gathered to see my little snapshots of life and I get to peek into their lives as well. What Jane Quigley calls “moment sharing.”

The interface and displaying of photos on 500px and Google+ is so much more beautiful and interesting to a photographer like me. Flickr hasn’t seemed to make any changes in years.

I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for Flickr because they were one of the first and my favorite for a long time. But, they’ve grown old, stagnant and I wonder what is going to happen to them.

Looking at them feels like looking at a friend on life support and wondering how much time they have left before they pass on into the night. I don’t want it to happen, but if it is going to happen I wish it would happen quickly.

 

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Categories: Photography
  • http://twitter.com/drwh0 Richard Hudak

    CC, what was the process by which you brought the photo into the blog? Sometimes I find that the route through Flickr is on the path of least resistance from iPhoto to WordPress.

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      I uploaded the photo directly from my computer to WordPress to put it on my site.

  • Bob Goyetche

    Yeah, it’s sad, flickr has (had?) the best communities ..

    Yahoo’s done a poor job keeping it up to date, and it feels like using CD’s when everyone’s got ipods or something.. and to date, flickr is still one of the only sites I ever paid a yearly fee for the “pro” option – something I probably won’t do next year..

    Knowing how Yahoo kills products unexpectedly, it’d be nice to see flickr sold/absorbed into a site with a better future… 

    In my utopian vision, google buys flickr, and merges it with google photos/picasa/whatever they call it now, the communities follow, and it’s all free. 

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      That would be a beautiful thing for sure, but I wonder if it’ll ever happen.
      Yahoo does have a track record of killing off great things and they’ve certainly just left Flickr hanging out there and doing nothing with it since they bought it.

      I’ve been a paying Pro member since it was first offered and I think that is one of the reasons I’m sad that I haven’t seen any innovation from them in so long.

  • http://bargainista.ca Eden Spodek

    This just makes me sad probably because I like(d) flickr and know you’re right. I’m waiting for the day when Instagram launches their Android app. Bummed it hasn’t happened yet. 

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      Yeah I’m sad as well. I love Flickr and have happily paid to use it for years.

      But, about the time Yahoo bought them they seemed to have stopped doing anything to improve it and I hate that.

      Who knows, maybe they’ll get a jolt of life support and come back bigger and better. I’d be the first to cheer them on if it did happen.

      • http://bargainista.ca Eden Spodek

        I have a paid account too although I only have a fraction of the photos uploaded that you do. I should make sure I have copies of everything saved elsewhere. There are some private collections of family events – like my cousin’s wedding where the official paid photographer went missing with all the photos – that I need to keep. 

        Maybe conversations like these will be a wake-up call for Yahoo! I like how Google+ integrates photos directly from my Android smartphone but I never really got into using Picassa.

      • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

        I NEVER used Picassa either.

        It is a very new thing for me to upload photos to Google, but the level of interaction and how nicely they display them has really been bringing me around lately to using it more.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve been thinking about this myself lately, and you really nailed it. The flickr interface is old & tired, there’s not really much community there anymore and there are so many alternatives that they haven’t kept up with.

    I do have to agree with Richard in the above comment that Flickr is the easiest way to store images for WordPress. At this point, that’s all I’m really using it for and contemplating if it’s easier to just host the images myself for my blog.

    Great post, gave me some food for thought!

  • http://web.mac.com/frankdmking Frank King

    I get the feeling Yahoo, which owns flickr, doesn’t really care what happens to it. All the evidence (i.e complete lack of upgrades and promotion) points that way.

  • Stefano Brozzi

    I had a paid account, now it’s expired but I’ve no willing to renew it. 
    Many other websites are doing a better job in… (hard to say)… look and feel, perhaps.
    Perhaps it’s just time to move over.

  • http://twitter.com/Tochilin Andrey Tochilin

    Hi guys, hi Bob, Hi Eden. My name is Andrey Tochilin, we met many times before at Podcamps and PABs. Let me know if you’ll have questions regarding 500px. I’m one of the people behind the project :) Thank you!

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      Andrey, thanks for swinging by and saying hello. Have WE ever met before? I was at the original PodCamp Montreal and have been to Toronto several times.
      Big fan of what you guys are doing with the site, the app and everything else.

      Keep up the great work.

  • http://twitter.com/dangorgone Dan Gorgone

    I used to love throwing all my photos on Flickr, but I let my paid account lapse more than a year ago.

    Almost none of my social connections are on Flickr; they’re on Facebook. And once FB finally made their photo features better with easier uploading and better presentation online, it was an easy decision to not use Flickr anymore.

    I have installed and uninstalled the Flickr app twice now. I just don’t want to use it. It looks so boring.

    Instagram and its mobile friendly usability makes it FUN to explore the photos out there from your friends and beyond. And while I haven’t been out to the 500px site before, I’m absolutely going to check it out now. :)

  • http://www.davemadethat.com Dave Delaney

    It’s sad to see too, but they (Yahoo!) gave up on it long ago. It’s usability for a luddites like my parents made it frustrating to privately share family photos.

    Stats now show Facebook far beating Flickr in photo sharing. This troubles me, because users don’t understand the TOC. They are basically handing their photos to Facebook to use as they wish.

    I’ve recently started hosting photos privately using Google (Picasa). It’s dead simple, password protected and looks great on an iPad. It’s perfect for my parents.

    Lately, it seems that Yahoo have been upgrading Flickr again. It all seems too late to me though.

    One thing I love about Flickr is it’s use and promotion of Creative Commons. I think they did a lot to educate users on what CC is all about. I often use photos in presentations from Flickr with full attribution of course.

    As for Instagram… I love it. I know many “real” photographers sneer at the filters and such, I can even appreciate this to some extent. I love the community too there too. The open API has also allowed for some incredible complimentary services like Postagram and Statigram.

  • http://www.smallbizsurvival.com Becky McCray

    Speaking of the community that used to thrive at Flickr, it was (and still is) open to all, no matter what device you used to take the picture. I loved that variety. I’m sad that Instagram seems to be the new place for community, but it’s limited to iPhone users. One of my Flickr friends went through a pin-hole camera phase. Not with filters, but with an actual pin-hole camera. That was truly cool to observe. 

  • http://twitter.com/stevegarfield Steve Garfield

    These days when I visit Flickr, it’s a page of shared Instagram photos.

    I share my best Instagram photos on Flickr too.

    Here are some things that I like about Flickr:

    Creative Commons
    Flickr still has it’s good points, like Dave said Creative Commons. I like how I can choose a CC license for my photos. Myself, and may others have complained for YEARS that the CC license is not displayed on photo embeds. It’s such a simple addition. I even went as far as getting the head of Creative Commons to ask Flickr about this. There are also many posts on their message boards.

    No one ever listened and changed it.

    Embeds and Sharing
    Flickr also still has great sharing features for embedding photos on blogs. Instagram doesn’t. I also love the Flickr integration on Storify, where when you write a story, you can simply click and drag a photo into your post. That’s a great integration.

    View Counts
    Instagram doesn’t track view counts. When I post to flicker via email and cross-post to twitter, I see lots of views on my photo. When I post to Instagram and cross-post to twitter, I see a lot of LIKES and comments. I really like the ambient intimacy of that, but I’d still like to be able to see view counts.

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      All great points.

      I’ve always wondered why Flickr did a great job giving us the option to license under CC but then they don’t do things like you mentioned or make the licensing MUCH clearer for everyone.

      I hope Flickr revives itself, but every day I’m losing hope :(

  • http://me.dm phil campbell

    sometimes, even in the digital world things just get to the point where they run their course, like working and personal relationships you need fresh ideas, fresh concepts and a new outlook to breath life into ‘the old girl’

    i will always love flickr for being with me from that digital journey start back in 2004 – bit like our relationship.  it’s formed on solid foundations of our digital messaging to the wider world!

  • http://thetorg.com Bill Torgerson

    Your line about wanting to hear what people think of photos has me thinking about audience and the importance of audience whether the “writer” is using texts or pictures. 

  • David Jacobs

    As an old school social media guy like you cc, it is very sad for me too see this. Yahoo took on some of the most loved social media properties and have wasted them away. Heck, even Yahoo itself was once so loved and is a pale shadow of it’s former self. Time marches on and so does technology. Unfortunately, Yahoo has not been able to keep pace. 

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