Comments on: The Slow Death of Flickr

By: So Long Flickr | James Koole

So Long Flickr | James Koole — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:51:13 +0000

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By: Looking Back at 2011 | C.C. Chapman

Looking Back at 2011 | C.C. Chapman — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:57:23 +0000

[...] The Slow Death of Flickr [...]

By: So Long Flickr | James Koole

So Long Flickr | James Koole — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:28:38 +0000

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By: David Jacobs

David Jacobs — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:36:00 +0000

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.

By: Bill Torgerson

Bill Torgerson — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:56:00 +0000

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.

By: phil campbell

phil campbell — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:03:00 +0000

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!

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:12:00 +0000

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

By: Steve Garfield

Steve Garfield — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:20:00 +0000

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.

By: Becky McCray

Becky McCray — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:32:00 +0000

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.

By: Dave Delaney

Dave Delaney — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:42:00 +0000

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.

By: Dan Gorgone

Dan Gorgone — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:16:00 +0000

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.

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:35:00 +0000

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.

By: Andrey Tochilin

Andrey Tochilin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:30:00 +0000

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!

By: Stefano Brozzi

Stefano Brozzi — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:15:00 +0000

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.

By: Frank King

Frank King — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:09:00 +0000

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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:24:00 +0000

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!

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:15:00 +0000

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.

By: Eden Spodek

Eden Spodek — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:13:00 +0000

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.

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:08:00 +0000

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.

By: Eden Spodek

Eden Spodek — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:54:00 +0000

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.

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:50:00 +0000

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.

By: Bob Goyetche

Bob Goyetche — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:45:00 +0000

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.

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:44:00 +0000

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

By: Richard Hudak

Richard Hudak — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:42:00 +0000

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.