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Whatever happened to Flickr?

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Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#71

Post by krallja »

greyface- wrote: post #65
grumblepeet wrote: post #61

Did you know that Flickr actually started out as an online multiplayer game, with file sharing as one if its features. The game flopped, but the file sharing bit was redeveloped into Flickr. Some of the files used to have .GNE in their url's, with GNE standing for 'Game Never Ending' which was the same of the game. See https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Neverending for reference. Looks like the game is going to be…

Stewart Butterfield, one of the founders, then went on to give the MMO thing another shot, starting one called Glitch in 2009. In 2012, it was deemed unprofitable, and they pivoted, re-developing their internal communication tools into Slack, which was wildly successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(video_game)

The lesson here is, if Stewart Butterfield starts another MMO, get on the rocket.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#72

Post by soneca »

krallja wrote: post #71
greyface- wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stewart Butterfield, one of the founders, then went on to give the MMO thing another shot, starting one called Glitch in 2009. In 2012, it was deemed unprofitable, and they pivoted, re-developing their internal communication tools into Slack, which was wildly successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(video_game)

The lesson here is, if Stewart Butterfield starts another MMO, get on the rocket .

But not on the game art or game design department, apply to internal tools team.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#73

Post by objektif »

ksec wrote: post #45
petilon wrote: post #19

What happened to Flickr? Marissa Mayer. She counted user experience as one of her core skills. She revamped Flickr's user experience. When she was done the site was unusable. I think she realized it, because along with releasing the new UX she compensated for its suckiness by upping free storage to 1TB. A couple of takeaways: (1) A lot of people who think they are good at UX, aren't. (2) When people in power make mis…

I often think Marissa Mayer would have been great as COO. Not so much as a CEO or Product Designer. I remember Yahoo had another candidate that planned to turn Yahoo into a media company. Which even at the time I thought was a much better idea and direction. Instead the broad choose Mayer, and try to compete head on with Google. In some sense it wasn't just Marissa, it was also the board's fault.

It is always the boards fault.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#74

Post by dehrmann »

severak_cz wrote: post #31

This is the same problem as with Imgur and it's various clones - https://drewdevault.com/2014/10/10/The-profitability-of-onli...

A lot of people are blaming Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer, changing pricing, missing the boat on mobile, but I'm not convinced the model would have ever worked.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#75

Post by dahart »

petilon wrote: post #19

What happened to Flickr? Marissa Mayer. She counted user experience as one of her core skills. She revamped Flickr's user experience. When she was done the site was unusable. I think she realized it, because along with releasing the new UX she compensated for its suckiness by upping free storage to 1TB. A couple of takeaways: (1) A lot of people who think they are good at UX, aren't. (2) When people in power make mis…

I think Flickr just never figured out what it was for.

I got whiplash from their spastic business decisions. At first it was unlimited storage, and then it became paid storage. It was good for a while and I paid, and then they released the 1TB plan which made my pro plan pointless (and IIRC they promised it’d stay that way forever), so I cancelled the pro plan, and then the next year they reneged and decided to limit the number of photos and started deleting things. Back and forth and back and forth. The end result is I couldn’t rely on Flickr to keep my pictures or even tell me whether I should pay or not, and if so what for.

The other major issue IMO was back when Flickr suddenly decided that “Flickr is for photos” and started actively blacklisting all artwork from search, with no clear definition of the lines between all the massive gray areas this idea opens up, like manually modified photos, digitally modified photos, photos of art, and pure art. I was using Flickr for both pure photos, and mixed photo-art, and pure art. Having a bunch of my images pulled down with very poor justification was pretty demotivating.

I don’t think UI/UX is in the top 3 reasons why I stopped actively using Flickr.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#76

Post by hakfoo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #37
ComputerGuru wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing that happened to JC Penney (Ron Johnson). Buying a big name that was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time with the right idea for the right company doesn't mean you magically get their success.

JC Penney was on its way out, or at least in terminal decline. It did not matter who took the helm, the change to online shopping meant there was going to be consolidation as demand for in person shopping went down. Even Macys is struggling, and now they have a part of the store that sells basically non returnable junk, like a dollar store. There is typically only room for 1 or 2 retail businesses now per market segm…

Macy's seemed to slide significantly downmarket over the last few decades. I feel like, growing up in the 80s and 90s, in a place where they weren't, it was seen as an upper-tier product, a notch below Neiman-Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue, but decidedly fancier than Penney's or Sears. Then they either went acquisition-mad, or started rebranding other stores they owned (not sure which) because a local chain became Macy's, and it never lived up to that hype.

Now they're doing their own take on Kohl's Kash, which just screams "premium retail experience."

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#77

Post by johannes1234321 »

kaichanvong wrote: post #51
simonw wrote: post #20

I don't fully remember the details, but my understanding is that the thing that most hurt Flickr was internal Yahoo politics around mobile apps. The Flickr team were understandably very keen to get a great mobile app released - but Yahoo had a separate division (I think called "Connected Life") which had the internal monopoly on mobile development - and the Flickr team weren't allowed to release their own application…

good point! Instagram happened!

While Instagram and Flickr (at least in theory) serve a different audience.

Flickr is for the professional or aspiring amateur photographer, to manage their photos and build show cases. Maybe even selling their photos online. Instagram is a mass market social network

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#78

Post by [deleted] »

petilon wrote: post #19

What happened to Flickr? Marissa Mayer. She counted user experience as one of her core skills. She revamped Flickr's user experience. When she was done the site was unusable. I think she realized it, because along with releasing the new UX she compensated for its suckiness by upping free storage to 1TB. A couple of takeaways: (1) A lot of people who think they are good at UX, aren't. (2) When people in power make mis…

[deleted]

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#79

Post by geodel »

ksec wrote: post #45
petilon wrote: post #19

What happened to Flickr? Marissa Mayer. She counted user experience as one of her core skills. She revamped Flickr's user experience. When she was done the site was unusable. I think she realized it, because along with releasing the new UX she compensated for its suckiness by upping free storage to 1TB. A couple of takeaways: (1) A lot of people who think they are good at UX, aren't. (2) When people in power make mis…

I often think Marissa Mayer would have been great as COO. Not so much as a CEO or Product Designer. I remember Yahoo had another candidate that planned to turn Yahoo into a media company. Which even at the time I thought was a much better idea and direction. Instead the broad choose Mayer, and try to compete head on with Google. In some sense it wasn't just Marissa, it was also the board's fault.

> I often think Marissa Mayer would have been great as COO.

Really? What was her operational expertise?

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#80

Post by neilk »

simonw wrote: post #20

I don't fully remember the details, but my understanding is that the thing that most hurt Flickr was internal Yahoo politics around mobile apps. The Flickr team were understandably very keen to get a great mobile app released - but Yahoo had a separate division (I think called "Connected Life") which had the internal monopoly on mobile development - and the Flickr team weren't allowed to release their own application…

Simon is correct. There are a few Quora threads about this with information from insiders. Kellan Elliot-McCrea has the most complete answers about the failure to jump to mobile:

https://qr.ae/pGzfWU

https://qr.ae/pGzfWd

And here's another thread, started by a former Yahoo executive, Ravi Dronamraju, with lots of replies from the founders of various acquired startups (del.icio.us, Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc). It is very illuminating. They're showing you in public what the discussion was often like in private.

https://qr.ae/pGzfiw

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