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Flickr is dead

thomashawk.com

61–70 of 102 posts

Re: Flickr is dead

#61
post #36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm a bit of a photography buff, a Flickr Pro user for years, and I'm not sure I want my photographs to be in the same place where I update friends and acquaintances about my status. It's an entirely different thing to me." Absolutely agree. I'm a hobbyist travel photographer, so I end up with essentially two kinds of photos: photos of a place, where I try and form a nice composition, post process (crop, colors, bal…

How can you possibly take 20,000 photos in a week? The math just doesn't work out, if you spent only 10 seconds composing a shot (and I'd argue it takes longer than that if you are a "photographer" and not a drive-by "snapshotter") that amounts to 8 hours per day of JUST picture taking, leaving no time to even move from location to location. Also, the average DSLR has a shutter life expectancy of around 100000-150000…

It's really not that crazy. I know lots of photographers who went to Africa for a week and took 10k+ photos. I can take 500+ in about 30 minutes with an animated model if I'm doing more of "do your thing and I'll try to catch some good shots" versus "a carefully planned out set of poses".

Re: Flickr is dead

#62

Maybe it's just because I'm not a photographer, but I'm surprised that something like photo sharing can generate this much passion.

Wait till they start discussing quick release mechanisms for tripod heads. You haven't seen anything yet.

Re: Flickr is dead

#63
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flickr is beyond irritating at times. I uploaded duplicate photos by mistake on Flickr and had to go through hundreds of photos one by one deleting them. There's no option to delete duplicates based on file name or file name/creation date etc. because Flickr has basically been dormant from a development standpoint for years.

Your need is very unique and it's something you only do once in a while. And yes, you can delete all the photo at the same time using organizer, or you can use the API to write your own delete method.

I think you're right that duplicate detection is not a commonly-desired feature among photography enthusiasts. They generally upload a small set of carefully-chosen and edited photos, so duplicates will be uncommon.

For people with large collections of their memories, I think it's more common. That's why Snapjoy launched with duplicate detection as part of their MVP. My site (OurDoings) got compliments from a new user on several features, but duplicate detection was apparently the only feature that was capslock-worthy:

duplicate detection. EXCELLENT! Not encountered elsewhere and what a difference it makes, it means that people can dump their stuff even though they havent quite optimised/tagged/cleaned up their local stuff. It detected both duplicates in the file sets I sent (it happens with multiple computers, synchronisation, and multiple aborted organisation efforts) and when i sent files already uploaded. Removes a lot of work :)

Re: Flickr is dead

#64
One thing I always thought that Flickr lacked was an integrated, easy way to buy photos. I don't want to contact the photographer and wait for a reply, when I need a photo for a slide, I want to be able to buy it instantly.

At this point Flickr seems like a site that just survives by inertia, nothing new seems to be done, they have pretty much accepted defeat, I guess.

Re: Flickr is dead

#65

Yahoo, which once held great promise, seems to have become the company that buys things and fails with them. Some examples off the top of my head: Konfabulator (Yahoo Widgets), Geocites, Delicious, Flickr, Broadcast.com. Heck, they don't even provide their own search results anymore. Can anyone think of something that Yahoo has bought that has flourished under them?

That's their business model. Yahoo is a media slaughterhouse, not a farm.

[deleted]

Re: Flickr is dead

#66
post #41

I'm surprised he hasn't disclosed it himself, but it's worth noting that the author has tried his own hand at this problem with the site Zooomr.com. Things didn't work out though and the site never took over Flickr.

Exactly, I am at a loss to explain why so many people continue to fanboy this blowhard. He has expressed on multiple occasions his dissatisfaction but fail to disclose his conflict of interest as well as the fact that if he really really hates the service so much he can take it elsewhere or try to start his own (oh wait, that didnt work out).

Be careful not to accidentally commit a Circumstantial Ad Hominem. His so-called conflict of interest has no bearing on whether his argument is cogent.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2868269

;-)

Re: Flickr is dead

#67

The whole photo-sharing space is ripe for a massive disruptor. Photographers and enthusiasts have been drifting away from Flickr for ages, but up until now there's been no offering that's really a suitable full replacement. On the one side you have sites like SmugMug, which has an awesome API, detailed controls over your images... but is devoid of any of the social features Flickr users have grown to love (and loathe…

There is one thing Flickr has going for it that can't be replaced on a feature-for-feature basis: Its community has a large number (if not necessarily proportion) of good photographers.

The dashboard is clumsy and ineffective, the whole groups system is backwards and doesn't encourage quality, the Explore algorithm can be quite nice but is too random, the "interestingness" algorithm seems to have crashed somewhere in 2007 and never changes for a given search, and the "contacts" feature has far too much friction for what is essentially a follower system... But as long as I can see new photos from the talented people I follow there, and can share my work with those who enjoy it, I'll keep using Flickr.

Here's my suggestion/plea to Yahoo, however:

The whole user experience really should be rethought with the Twitter-era follower-followee paradigm front and center. Imagine a Flickr where instead of wading through hundreds of redundant, poorly-curated groups to find something captivating, you find photographers whose work you enjoy and easily follow them. Great photos get "re-flicked" throughout the network, prolific members get added to lists that people can follow, and the whole experience becomes much more dynamic, social, and quality-driven.

Re: Flickr is dead

#68

The whole photo-sharing space is ripe for a massive disruptor. Photographers and enthusiasts have been drifting away from Flickr for ages, but up until now there's been no offering that's really a suitable full replacement. On the one side you have sites like SmugMug, which has an awesome API, detailed controls over your images... but is devoid of any of the social features Flickr users have grown to love (and loathe…

I'm surprised nobody mentioned IMGUR yet - it is a fantastic img host - but the premium accounts allow a lot of flexibility. Albums, galleries - privacy settings etc.

Plus it has mobile uploaders and is super fast and easy.

At $24/year for unlimited access/features- I have dropped all others for it.

Re: Flickr is dead

#69
post #40

Thomas Hawk is a well-known Flickr hater. He keeps bashing Flickr at every chance he gets. And then he continues to use Flickr. I've been reading his "Flickr is dead" and "I hate Flickr" rants for years and years. He tried to start a competing service, but it failed miserably; so he continues to bash Flickr instead. Dude: if you don't like Flickr, don't use it. Plain and simple. And if you think you can build a bette…

[deleted]

Re: Flickr is dead

#70
post #23

I'm a weekend photographer and I recently became a paying Flickr user. For my simple use-case of uploading files and sending off the URL to a couple of friends per email Flickr is the perfect service.

Why not use free PicasaWeb for this? $5 gets you bbasically unlimited storage. The only answer I can say myself is that PicasaWeb uses the ugliest possible lossy compression settings on all photos it displays.

Picasa is all integrated with the other Google services (which I'm a heavy user of), but in the case of Picasa it results in a messy UX for me.

Eg. I just went to picasaweb.google.com to check out whether it's $5/mo or $5/year, and what is shows me is a bunch of pictures from my G+ stream, but the whole UX is confusing. It doesn't even have a front page (like flickr.com). Where do I find pricing?

It seems to me that Flickr is better at the whole "do one thing and do it well" paradigm and it results in a much smoother UX compared to the integrated G+ mess.

EDIT: There's a tiny "Upgrade your storage" link at the bottom, pricing is $5/yr for 20GB.

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