«
»

Flickr Lost Its Appeal

Guest Post written by Ilan Peer

flickr sad icon

I never get deeply upset or let emotions get the better of me when it comes to dealing with web services.

I mean I do expect them to deliver and  fulfill their added value but if the service doesn’t deliver, i don’t take it personally nor get angry (..at least I don’t get angry for longer than 2 minutes).  I remind you we are talking about web services and most of them do not cost us money.

So what about a web service where i am a paying customer? Should i take it to heart when the web service “hurts me” personally? Do I feel bad after I terminate our relationship?

Flickr is a web service where I am a paying costumer and I was a happy customer until a few months ago. I used Flickr for a few years and right from the start I knew I want to ’store’ my photos there (rather than just share them). In a sense it was a storage room for my pics.

Flickr has a great community, lots of social and sharing features and they had a great team leading their services .. they were on the golden path to becoming the nicest brand on the web. So what happened?

I can only tell you my personal opinion, but lately I’ve read some blog posts from mighty users such as Thomas Hawk, Yaniv Golan.  Thomas Hawk and Yaniv Golan are known figures in both the tech/internet world and the photography one. Thomas Hawk, who writes almost daily about Flickr and other photography related issues attempted to overthrow the flickr empire with zooomr (’nuff respect for him) I appreciate the way he uses the site – see what i mean?

Whether it’s Flickr’s censorship policy or technical hiccups, the service is not running smoothly. The site is not respecting the users feelings nor how they are behaving on the site.  Seeing new features is quite rare these days on Flickr. I remember when Flickr add the flic.kr service which allowed you to post photos directly to your twitter stream (check the short url service that came along – http://flic.kr) it was great news but apparently the hype faded real quick.

I knew Caterina Fake was one of the founders of Flickr. I used to follow her photo stream. I enjoyed seeing some Flickr HQ pics and all, but ever since she left for her new start-up called Hunch , I personally feel a little abandoned :(

I don’t consider myself a photographer. Most of the pictures I take and upload come from my cell phone camera (I use the Nokia N95) and in essence show my life stream.  I love to share my photos with outsiders and not only with the photography freaks on flickr (hence the flic.kr service).  I really can’t put the finger on what’s bothering me right now, yet coming across other blog posts and status updates of  how others feel exactly the same way I do about Flickr only solidifies the feeling. Perhaps Flickr will wake up soon and change things?

This is not a threat post, ‘Satisfy-me-before-I-am-leaving’ kinda post. I still have a pro account till October 21st, 2010 which I intend to use fully.  If you own a Flickr pro account – i’d love to hear your thoughts.

The lovely picture comes from: Peter Renshaw a.k.a. bootload

Tags: , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 8:28 am and is filed under Applications, Community, Internet Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Ilan, i share your loss ;) flickr started out great. but while the social part of the net evolved fast, flickr got left behind because they didn't adopt functions and features that where made common by other social platforms. i refer mainly to the fact it's hard to follow your friends stream on flickr and hard getting to know other interesting people and groups in your social circles.
    on the other hand i don't know of a photo sharing site better than flickr. without counting functional ones as facebook and twitter related as twitpic. so not all is lost. ;)
  • Flickr is one of the few web services I pay for as well. While I've been troubled by their lack of innovation for a while, my usage has grown significantly (maybe ridiculously) since becoming a member. I've delved much deeper in my admittedly amateur exploration of photography because of Flickr. I keep coming back to the quality of the community. The folks I've met there are the most generous and supportive I've found anywhere online. Not sure if this is because of the shared passion for common subject or the slight monetary barrier to entry. In any event, that community seems to be their greatest asset right now. I think many of their current problems can be traced back to the acquisition by Yahoo. I really hope they can stop this decline and get back on track.
  • You touch on a lot of the problems Ayelet. That said, there's no way I think I could ever abandon Flickr. I'm pretty tied into that community and for better or for worse it is the primary place for emerging photographers to congregate on the web.

    Flickr is an amazing resource. A cultural jewel of our times. Unfortunately, however, the current overseers of the service have put the values of censorship above the values of artistic expression. To make matters worse they infantilize their users, dismissing their concerns with a condescending "mother knows best," tone, rather than genuinely embracing the challenge that constructive criticism can represent. That's too bad.

    Web 2.0 is supposed to be about openness and transparency -- a two way communication between users and service providers. But rather than allow that, the current Flickr/Yahoo staff instead seeks to bury negative criticism and obscuficate when they are called out on acts of censorship and poor customer service. I've been banned from the Flickr Help Forum for example.

    Hopefully at some point staff changes may result in Flickr taking on a more customer friendly attitude. A respect between user and service provider that Web 2.0 ought to represent.

    Thanks for this insightful post.
  • (it was ilan who wrote this insightful post)
  • Ah, and so it was, sorry about that! :)
  • shims
    Sadly. Voices like yours are being ignored or actively silenced. Hopefully, not for too much longer.
  • funny - i just renewed my Flickr account a week ago...
    and i got a chance to go on a little graffiti day shoot with Thomas Hawk last summer when i have been in SF (http://cafe.mouse.co.il/view.php?t=649139).

    lots to say about this topic - as a photographer Flickr is working pretty well combining together a good platform for storing, sharing and building an armature and professional community around photography (and later video...) with lots of by products (Moo cards, posters etc). Flickr was one of the big site that really supported and gave a nice push to "creative common" idea.

    as an artist (i used Flickr as a platform for my first exhibition - http://www.flickr.com/photos/rei_dishon/sets/72... ) Flickr brings up some interesting questions about what is the value of all that - playing the favorite game of "Look through the photostream of the person above you and choose your favourite" and in 18 min you have 32,373 replies - who is going to look through all these photos ? (and some of the user don't even know how to use HTML and they are adding the link instead of the photo).
    there is a big question of Censorship Issues on Flickr (as Thomas Hawk posted -"Flickr Censors Political Image Critical of President Obama" and another cases here and there of uses that their account been shout down without any notice), nudity is a big interesting case on that in a community web site that also teenagers hang around.
    Flickr mail still sucks - you can't really send mail to more then one person.

    i don't really see right now anyother web site that gives a good fight for Flickr when it comes down to community based web site - with his ups and downs...
  • 'Secret Artist' I hear what you're saying. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for photographers such as yourself to create a new Flickr that better serves your needs!
  • I share your pain, Ilan. You asked me on Twitter - what will I switch to. I don't have an answer yet, but one thing I know is that I will not be so quick to switch to another service that holds that much power over my content *I've* created. Power corrupts :)

    One thing though - while I appreciate the compliment, I do have to say that this is not doing Thomas justice :) in fact, when I grow up, I want to be a Thomas Hawk.
  • i used to be a flickr addicted user. Flickr had opened my eyes to the huge creativity out there - through all ages, all kind of cameras and equipment, professionals and beginners, retro and modern techniques, etc etc...

    but i think that Flickr had lost it.
    I believe that Yahoo is praying hard that Facebook or some other service will rise and take this headache called Flickr from them.

    I believe that Yahoo will be more than happy if some startup or even facebook would pick this burden of storing zillions photographs on their servers and maintaining it. It costs lots of me, and roi is rather low.

    I'm not cynical

    The day that Flickr would disappear would be one more victory for Yahoo. Its not part of their business. They really cross fingers for Facebook to launch multi size photos albums, social and geo tagged large sized photos and bless Flickr with a RIP.
  • ah!
    and Yahoo had changed the FLICKR logo tonight.

    disgusting!
    :-(

    Yahoo behaves like a web 1.0 company.
  • oh, right you are ronsho,
    didn't see this coming, guess they don't love us anymore :)
    this act simply strength your point of view.
blog comments powered by Disqus