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Flickr is dead

thomashawk.com

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Re: Flickr is dead

#11

Post by hopeless »

Here are a few things that have killed Flickr for myself and 80% of my photographer friends:

- Poor quality of work (or, rather, the good photography is buried under mounds of dross). 500px has the advantage of being new, and limits monthly uploads, so the quality there is surprisingly high

- Vacuous comments. "Nice capture!". "Great shot!". This is only made worse when looking at the horror-movie-esque overdone-HDR monstrosity.

- Group and all flashing badge icons in comments

- woeful mobile interface which is slow and eventually displays a non-zoomable postage stamp sized image. I cringe whenever I see a Flickr link on twitter

In short, Flickr might still be a place for photographs but not for photographers. Actually, I think photoblogs or 500px combined with twitter provide a great way of showing off your photos and getting great feedback from people you respect.

Re: Flickr is dead

#12

Post by potatolicious »

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 sometimes - YOUR PHOTO HAS BEEN INVITED TO [INANE GROUP HERE!]).

Or you have beautifully designed sites like 500px... which also has no API and forces its users to operate the whole thing painfully in manual. But it does have really good discoverability features, maybe better than Flickr.

I'm not confident that Facebook and Google+ will take over the photography enthusiasts' world. I believe that most regular people will share their pictures there (and they already do, on Facebook), but the photography community won't jump on board until there are some very significant leaps (solid API, discoverability features, more niche-specific social features).

But in any case, Flickr is feeling old and creaky, we're all just waiting for something better to come along. Honestly, I'm surprised it's taken this long.

Re: Flickr is dead

#13

Post by Terretta »

Except that this gentleman has previously complained about Flickr censorship, yet completely ignores that Google+ is far more restrictive and has already been accused of pulling people's photos (e.g. Lego cleavage[1]) and pulling non "real name" accounts. I don't think he's thought this through.

1. http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/did-google-ban-cl...

Re: Flickr is dead

#16

Post by ugh »

Tichy wrote: post #3

Not that I have high hopes for Flickr, but sampling the trends going on a walk with Google employees is probably a bit biased. As for Flickr: isn't it strange how the products with the worst user interfaces always seem to become the most popular? Same with Facebook.

Both Flickr and Facebook had awesome interfaces when they first became popular. They just didn’t change enough or went in the wrong direction afterwards.

Re: Flickr is dead

#17

Post by vijayr »

potatolicious wrote: post #12

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…

Thank you for mentioning 500px. I didn't know of it, just checked it out, it has some incredible photos.

Re: Flickr is dead

#20

Post by acangiano »

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.
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