There has been a building storm of web chatter about the decline of Flickr lately. I think it's overdone and while I have a list of gripes about Flickr, which I'll tell you about, I don't think Flickr's days are numbered just yet. Competition is good and frankly Flickr has been a little laaaazy for years.
500px, Tumblr, and Color are getting the buzz lately but are they really better than Flickr? 500px shows some promise and it looks nice, but has gaps. Tumblr?.... I'm not sure I have knowingly seen anyone's pictures other than my own...I've certainly never meandered through the site looking for random photos. Color.. Really? $40m in funding for that? Repeat..Really? What are the odds that anyone around me are going to be on that app and that I would want them to see my pics. No thanks.
So why do do I still like Flickr:
Volume of Photos: I still like Flickr as they have the widest user base which allows me to search for specific things or even locations. I always get good results in search. As a photographer hunting for locations often, Flickr is really good about showing me other pictures done at the same site.
Community: Flickr still has a good sense of community for me. People often tag and or send their photos to specific groups which brings out views and comments for a niche group. I like to collect custom pocket knives and Flickr has several groups oriented towards that. It was even easy for me to create and administer my own groups.
Easy of upload: Very simple here. Flickr gives you lots of flexibility in uploading. Flickr has a mac/windows desktop client, they have their own mobile apps, even for the iPhone and they have an open API where developers can write their own upload software, desktop, ipad, mobile. Its all there. On top of that if I don't want to tag or rename anything I can do that to. Most importantly they have several methods to upload and synch directly from Adobe Lightroom, this single factor blows it for many competitors.
Mobile: I feel they have it! There are multiple Flickr mobile apps available. FlickStackr is one of my favorites.
What I would like to see more of or where they need to fill in gaps.
Social abilities: They are just starting to introduce links to Twitter, blogs, Facebook, need more more more. I would like to see the contacts turned into more social abilities. Flickr should also just give me the direct link to my picture if I want it.
Navigation: This drives my crazy.. For everything you want to do on Flickr its alway one more button or link away from what it needs to be. Arggh. The website is very slow to use. I also want the ability to see many more pictures on screen at one time, similar to what is done in the FlickStackr application. I also want the ability to have my own organized Flickr home page or gallery. Not the current state of collections or sets. I may want to choose some images to always be the ones that people first see, not my last upload.
Keep at it Flickr and stay motivated. I think you are Yahoo's biggest asset.
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