Giles Turnbull, In defence of Flickr:
The thing with Flickr (and I say this as a declared Flickr lover) isn’t that it is no longer awesome (because it most definitely is), but that it is no longer fashionable.
The web has matured a lot in recent years, to the point where websites have become brands. Brands that can advertise and market themselves, brands that work hard to influence the minds of the younger internet users.
Wrong. The problem with Flickr is that Yahoo forgot about it while the web moved on with better tools, better presentation and context for the explosion of mobile devices, and, yes, better socialization.
Turnbull has half a point with his criticism of “free” services like Facebook eating Flickr’s lunch with “the promise of free stuff and social networks, in return for personal information.” But I wonder if he’s had a paid account for so long that he forgot Flickr does the freemium thing, and in fact always has. Many Flickr users, probably a good majority, are in the same boat as Facebook users: they see it as a free, ad-supported service that collects their personal information in exchange for a place to store and share photos online.
I’m not saying there’s no hope for Flickr to turn around. If anything, I’m a little more hopeful now that Mayer is at the helm. But the web and the devices we use to explore it are experiencing an unprecedented period of growth, and Yahoo stopped growing Flickr. That’s all there is to it.
As another self-professed (ex) lover of Flickr, I’m not so sure there’s time to turn around. Possibly by tearing it all down and starting from scratch, although what will happen in the world of social media in the meantime?
I had a paid account on Flickr from 2004 – 2011, when I decided to stop paying and uploading. During that time, my Photostream garnered over 111,000 views… But, what was the point, after all, when I was now uploading to Twitpic, then Facebook, then Twitter itself? Sure, I had lost the Flickr community aspect, but I had whole new communities who were much more vibrant and responsive.
I’m not sure what Flickr could do to regain its popularity, but I do still miss its functionality. Honestly, seeing them rolled into another, more active social network (a la Gowalla and Instgram, et al), might be the key.
I think there’s plenty of room here. Simply updating its tools and presentation, and giving it a fresh round of marketing would be a good start, but so would offering finer control over sharing photos—a feature that Facebook users seem to really appreciate. I love the fact that I can share one album on Facebook with just my wife, but no one else can see it; another album with my Family list, another with coworkers, another with just Friends, etc.
Flickr could also ape or buy some of the challengers to its throne, such as ThisLife, which I’m really enjoying:
http://thislife.com
It’s sort of a Photo Service To Rule Them All. It can pull in your online and offline photos, iPhoto, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc., then store them all privately online and let you share just the ones you want to. There’s a ton of room for Flickr to maneuver in that area.
Flickr has a lot of work to do but can and should improve the service. This is what is needed.
1. Clarity of vision and a well communicated emphasis by Yahoo and Flickr staff on improving Flickr. More statements from staff on the fact that Flickr is improving, will continue to improve, and has the desire to become the premier place on all platforms for people to share photos. What Flickr is today is not exactly clear. As part of this Flickr should adopt the perpetual beta model that has made Google+ and Facebook successful in their own social networks. The attitude that Flickr is "good enough" or that it’s already awesome as it is should be unacceptable. Mark Zuckerberg’s relentless pursuit of improvement should be emulated: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/7184819764/
2. A clear commitment to Flickr from Yahoo’s very public new CEO Marissa Mayer. Mayer doesn’t even use the service today. She can’t be bothered to take 5 minutes and set up an account. She can even use her Google account to set one up saving her time. The message that this sends is that she does not care about Flickr. To make matters worse she uses Instagram, one of Flickr’s largest competitors as the primary place to share her photos.
3. The recruiting and hiring of new talent in evangelism/marketing, community management, engineering and design. Mayer should use her deep connections to the tech world, her past leadership of APM at Google, etc. to recruit the best of the best to work on Flickr.
4. The leveraging of all other Yahoo properties to utilize flickr imagery. Flickr imagery will enhance other Yahoo properties. They should be thinking about how they can better integrate Flickr into their properties.
5. Mobile. Initial focus should be on building a first class mobile application that does one thing really well: allows you to view and fave your contact’s photos. It should be super easy and super simple to simply scroll your contacts and your own photos. Perhaps integrated or perhaps a separate app even should be created to easily browse and comment on Flickr Group threads.
6. Better blocking tools. Flickr has a troll problem similar to youtube commenters. Because Flickr allows anonymous accounts especially trolls have infiltrated the deeper more significant communities on Flickr. Flickr must give users more robust tools to completely block other users from their Flickr experience. Today’s block on Flickr is weak and allows harassment to persist.
7. Flickr needs to better enable filtering and noise control, especially in groups. I need to be able to hide anything I want to filter out of my flickr experience. Most specifically, I should be able hide any thread, any thread by specific user, etc. I should also have a single page on Flickr where I can view my subscribed threads that pulls them in and organizes them by recency from any group on Flickr.
8. Flickr should build in SuprSetr/SmartSetr functionality. Smart playlists on iTunes are smart. Third party tools already exist but are not widely known or used.
9. Flickr needs better contact organization. Google+ has circles, Facebook and Twitter have lists. At present I only have 2 buckets I can put my flickr contacts into: Friends/family or contacts. I need customizable buckets.
10. Flickr needs a personalized "explore" section. I need to be able to view my contact’s most interesting photos by the last hour/24 hours/48 hours/week month.
11. Flickr needs better privacy controls on your favorites. Flickr staff with likely strongly object to this. In fact they’ve gone the other way in the past year by not only keeping your favorites public but by implementing a search tool for individuals as well. In Flickr’s view this probably is something that community management feels helps them manage proper behavior on the site. For example, if your favorite’s are public and you are a pedophile, you’ll be less likely to go around favoriting only shots of children in swimsuits if your favorites are forced to be public and searchable.
At the same time this allows your favorites to be stalked and scrutinized which drives some people away from Flickr and also discourages a lot of favoriting. Google+ +1s can be seen on any post, but they are not aggregated, publicized and searchable like Flickr’s are. Flickr could keep favorites public by default but should give Flickr users an option to make favorites private or restrict their view to friends/family or a specific bucket only. Flickr should make it known that they can always view your favorites to address concerns of abuse.