5 ms·

Yahoo did not kill Flickr, Facebook did. Turned out the secret sauce to putting photos on the internet was the social interaction with your friends, not a bunch

Yahoo did not kill Flickr, Facebook did. Turned out the secret sauce to putting photos on the internet was the social interaction with your friends, not a bunch of photograph amateurs obsessed with lens quality (not that there's anything wrong with that), but that's not what regular folks care about and Facebook really took this aspect of the web by storm.

beedogs 10y ago
I'd say Instagram did a better job of killing Flickr.
- nxsynonym 10y ago
  Agree with this. Outside of the normal complaints wedged against Flickr, people moved into a mobile-first world and left Flickr in the dust. If flickr wanted back in the game they'd have to jump in the mobile market and re-design their traditional web platform.
- pier25 10y ago
  It could argued though that if Yahoo had cared about Flickr it could have become Instagram.
et-al 10y ago
> Turned out the secret sauce to putting photos on the internet was the social interaction with your friends Flickr actually did the social aspect well with their communities. What they missed was transitioning this social component to mobile. And the UI change around 2013 where they got rid of the grid layout and moved to some Pintrest collage / infinite scroll ostracized a lot of users.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  Was there ever a community like, say, Reddit or Facebook Page. Flickr has become just professional photographer's closet. Unless you link the photo on FB/Instagram/Twitter, not that many people would go there to look for photos. Do you go there every time to find a photo? I do go there occasionally to look for open license photos to include in my presentations, but that's about it. Flickr could be made really useful if Yahoo provides a "make a photographer website" with Flickr backing as photo storage backend. Imagine I am looking for a wedding photographer nearby. I need to browse their work, want to know their rates, and even book time. Perhaps also an option to "sell my photo for use" and even a way to search for illegal usage of photo (it is a concern for many professional photographers).
  - et-al 10y ago
    > Was there ever a community like, say, Reddit or Facebook Page. Flickr has become just professional photographer's closet. Flickr had a relatively active blog that would showcase photos relative to special days (e.g. Pi Day photos). On top of that, there was Flickr Explore that could be thought of as the front page of interesting photos. And in terms of communities, anyone could make a community. So if you were a plane spotter, you could start (and there are), communities dedicated to that. You live in Boston and want to have a Boston Photographers Group? Done! Wedding photographers? Here you go: https://www.flickr.com/groups/weddingphoto/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/weddingphoto/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickr_wedding_photojournalism/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickr_wedding_photojournalism... There were plenty of communities on Flickr and that's one thing I feel like hasn't really filled the void. 500px and VSCO exist, but they're a bit too focused for most amateurs or casual photo snappers. Flickr for many was this soup of personal vacation photos, along with people visually documenting their non-photographic hobbies, and photographic-focused photographers. Their photostream was the lifestream for many. I met a handful of friends from Flickr not because of photography, but because they seemed like interesting people. Perhaps this also speaks of social media now--we're fluent with the medium and now carefully polish our online identities. But in this process of self-curation, we've lost what makes us real and interesting.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Like you, I go to Flickr to look for Creative Commons licensed photos to use in presentations. (Which I do attribute.) For me, that's super-useful as I give a lot of presentations. But I mostly grew out of browsing for photos just because I want to look at interesting photos. I do find flickr a useful place to upload my selected photos. I can display "slideshows" from there, share them with friends, etc. But, if flickr didn't exist, I'd easily enough find some other way to do the same thing whether self-hosted or otherwise.
roadbeats 10y ago
Flickr is used by many respected artists, not just "photography amateurs"
exodust 10y ago
What? Not sure where you got that idea, but Facebook was never a good choice for photographers to showcase their work in isolation from other noise, or for people to browse photos in specific categories and collections. The social part makes it all "oh, I was there too it was such a nice day, are you coming to my party next week?".... I'm guessing that's FB. Facebook = happysnap. Instagram = happiersnap. This article is from 2012, and is off the mark. Flickr is still up and running, even if crammed with ads sending uBlock into a frenzy. If anything, photographic collections and studies don't have the appeal they once had due to the trillions of images we see everywhere now. The eyesore of over-sharpened, over-saturated, too high dynamic ranged retina candy. Good photography now is back in the galleries where it should be...IMHO, the image resting on a print not emitting any light of its own. No blinding pixels, and hopefully matte paper, no glass.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >What? Not sure where you got that idea, but Facebook was never a good choice for photographers to showcase their work in isolation from other noise, or for people to browse photos in specific categories and collections. What the parent says is that this, even if true, the above is totally irrelevant. There's not much of a market for "photographers to showcase their work in isolation from other noise" or for "people to browse photos in specific categories and collections". What there's actually a huge user base for that can be turned into ad money is casually sharing photos AMONG other stuff, with friends and relatives. Which is what Facebook offers. This killed Flickr, except in the way you describe -- which nobody (as in: few millions of people) cares about.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    > There's not much of a market for [...] "people to browse photos in specific categories and collections". I would venture that Avenue Q had a more accurate view of this (in the song "The Internet is for Porn").
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Nice catch. I forgot those categories and collections :-)
vvanders 10y ago
Many photographers I know won't touch Facebook since their attribution at the time was incredibly permissive and photographers are touchy about that.
tedmiston 10y ago
For the photographers, it was 500px or VSCO that replaced Flickr.
gertef 10y ago
fun fact: Flickr was originally created as a social video game, but the photo-sharing component overshadowed the game component. Flickr users weren't obsessed with lens quality, they were obsessed with good looking pictures. Facebook spent 10 years (and maybe still) adding horrible jpeg compression to photos.
1_2__3 10y ago
This is nonsense. It was nonsense back a few years ago when everyone though social networks were the entire internet and it's even more nonsense now. Flickr always occupied a different space than FB and could have leveraged that. They chose not to.
makecheck 10y ago
Maybe I am in the minority but I would rather have simpler things with options to add more, rather than all or nothing. One of the reasons I hate posting on Facebook is that you can comment on every little thing, and frankly not everything warrants a comment thread. Despite what is warranted, some people cannot help themselves and write pointless things on just about any picture. Instead of just a nice posting of $PICTURE, I then have $UNWANTED_TEXT next to my picture, forever (unless I erase and repost the image but that will just trigger Facebook's "HEY WORLD, LOOK WHAT HE JUST POSTED" algorithms again).
shp0ngle 10y ago
Well, while Flickr would never be Facebook, they could have been Instagram. Turns out people still like to snap pictures and post them online in 2017. And they don't care that much about quality. If people cared about quality, vimeo would be bigger than youtube. It isn't.
pier25 10y ago
I was a heavy Flickr user for about 5 years and I have to disagree with you. Facebook certainly brought photo sharing to the masses, but most Flickr users were actually "a bunch of amateurs obsessed with lens quality", at least the active ones. Most of these didn't move their photography to Facebook but to other sites like 500px and later Instagram. I agree with the article, Flickr died because Yahoo let it rot.
- petre 10y ago
  > Flickr died because Yahoo let it rot. And then placed ads on the corpse.
bborud 10y ago
No, Yahoo did by not keeping up the pace and evolving. It was static because Yahoo was under terrible leadership that never could figure out whether to shit or get off the pot. To quote some execs I had a meeting with at Yahoo when we were acquired by them "we don't innovate: we copy what others do and make it better". Not only is this an idiotic strategy, but it was one they consistently failed at. They never made anything better. I did point out at the time that I thought they were being delusional. I left in 2005 because it was obvious the company didn't have any actual leadership. Just indecision and half measures. I left because I used none of the products anymore. Yahoo handed the victory to Facebook.
jlarocco 10y ago
Not true at all. The serious Flickr users switched to other photography sites, like SmugMug and 500px, and the not so serious ones went to Instagram. Not to say all those people don't also post photos to Facebook, but saying Facebook killed Flickr is akin to saying Facebook killed Google Code and everyone is uploading their code to Facebook now. Obviously that's a silly comparison, but my point is, for people using Flickr as intended, Facebook isn't really a substitute.
bigbugbag 10y ago
Facebook has nothing to do with photos. Simple example: I'm looking for a creative common photo of a cat to reuse how do I find this on facebook ? Facebook is not shutterstock or getty, photo is not their business, providing their useds with as little friction so they can be exposed to the customer's ads longer is their core business.
dickbasedregex 10y ago
I would argue Flickr's target audience was people who really care about photography and not social butterflies. As soon as it started to go down the toilet, the real audience left. So you're left with the social butterflies who were probably just as content with every other craptrap website at the time that would host photos. Those people will always flutter to next shiny thing with a crowd around it.

beedogs 10y ago

I'd say Instagram did a better job of killing Flickr.

nxsynonym 10y ago
Agree with this. Outside of the normal complaints wedged against Flickr, people moved into a mobile-first world and left Flickr in the dust. If flickr wanted back in the game they'd have to jump in the mobile market and re-design their traditional web platform.
pier25 10y ago
It could argued though that if Yahoo had cared about Flickr it could have become Instagram.

et-al 10y ago

> Turned out the secret sauce to putting photos on the internet was the social interaction with your friends Flickr actually did the social aspect well with their communities. What they missed was transitioning this social component to mobile. And the UI change around 2013 where they got rid of the grid layout and moved to some Pintrest collage / infinite scroll ostracized a lot of users.

yeukhon 10y ago
Was there ever a community like, say, Reddit or Facebook Page. Flickr has become just professional photographer's closet. Unless you link the photo on FB/Instagram/Twitter, not that many people would go there to look for photos. Do you go there every time to find a photo? I do go there occasionally to look for open license photos to include in my presentations, but that's about it. Flickr could be made really useful if Yahoo provides a "make a photographer website" with Flickr backing as photo storage backend. Imagine I am looking for a wedding photographer nearby. I need to browse their work, want to know their rates, and even book time. Perhaps also an option to "sell my photo for use" and even a way to search for illegal usage of photo (it is a concern for many professional photographers).
- et-al 10y ago
  > Was there ever a community like, say, Reddit or Facebook Page. Flickr has become just professional photographer's closet. Flickr had a relatively active blog that would showcase photos relative to special days (e.g. Pi Day photos). On top of that, there was Flickr Explore that could be thought of as the front page of interesting photos. And in terms of communities, anyone could make a community. So if you were a plane spotter, you could start (and there are), communities dedicated to that. You live in Boston and want to have a Boston Photographers Group? Done! Wedding photographers? Here you go: https://www.flickr.com/groups/weddingphoto/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/weddingphoto/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickr_wedding_photojournalism/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickr_wedding_photojournalism... There were plenty of communities on Flickr and that's one thing I feel like hasn't really filled the void. 500px and VSCO exist, but they're a bit too focused for most amateurs or casual photo snappers. Flickr for many was this soup of personal vacation photos, along with people visually documenting their non-photographic hobbies, and photographic-focused photographers. Their photostream was the lifestream for many. I met a handful of friends from Flickr not because of photography, but because they seemed like interesting people. Perhaps this also speaks of social media now--we're fluent with the medium and now carefully polish our online identities. But in this process of self-curation, we've lost what makes us real and interesting.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Like you, I go to Flickr to look for Creative Commons licensed photos to use in presentations. (Which I do attribute.) For me, that's super-useful as I give a lot of presentations. But I mostly grew out of browsing for photos just because I want to look at interesting photos. I do find flickr a useful place to upload my selected photos. I can display "slideshows" from there, share them with friends, etc. But, if flickr didn't exist, I'd easily enough find some other way to do the same thing whether self-hosted or otherwise.

roadbeats 10y ago

Flickr is used by many respected artists, not just "photography amateurs"

exodust 10y ago

What? Not sure where you got that idea, but Facebook was never a good choice for photographers to showcase their work in isolation from other noise, or for people to browse photos in specific categories and collections. The social part makes it all "oh, I was there too it was such a nice day, are you coming to my party next week?".... I'm guessing that's FB. Facebook = happysnap. Instagram = happiersnap. This article is from 2012, and is off the mark. Flickr is still up and running, even if crammed with ads sending uBlock into a frenzy. If anything, photographic collections and studies don't have the appeal they once had due to the trillions of images we see everywhere now. The eyesore of over-sharpened, over-saturated, too high dynamic ranged retina candy. Good photography now is back in the galleries where it should be...IMHO, the image resting on a print not emitting any light of its own. No blinding pixels, and hopefully matte paper, no glass.

coldtea 10y ago
>What? Not sure where you got that idea, but Facebook was never a good choice for photographers to showcase their work in isolation from other noise, or for people to browse photos in specific categories and collections. What the parent says is that this, even if true, the above is totally irrelevant. There's not much of a market for "photographers to showcase their work in isolation from other noise" or for "people to browse photos in specific categories and collections". What there's actually a huge user base for that can be turned into ad money is casually sharing photos AMONG other stuff, with friends and relatives. Which is what Facebook offers. This killed Flickr, except in the way you describe -- which nobody (as in: few millions of people) cares about.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > There's not much of a market for [...] "people to browse photos in specific categories and collections". I would venture that Avenue Q had a more accurate view of this (in the song "The Internet is for Porn").
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Nice catch. I forgot those categories and collections :-)

vvanders 10y ago

Many photographers I know won't touch Facebook since their attribution at the time was incredibly permissive and photographers are touchy about that.

tedmiston 10y ago

For the photographers, it was 500px or VSCO that replaced Flickr.

gertef 10y ago

fun fact: Flickr was originally created as a social video game, but the photo-sharing component overshadowed the game component. Flickr users weren't obsessed with lens quality, they were obsessed with good looking pictures. Facebook spent 10 years (and maybe still) adding horrible jpeg compression to photos.

1_2__3 10y ago

This is nonsense. It was nonsense back a few years ago when everyone though social networks were the entire internet and it's even more nonsense now. Flickr always occupied a different space than FB and could have leveraged that. They chose not to.

makecheck 10y ago

Maybe I am in the minority but I would rather have simpler things with options to add more, rather than all or nothing. One of the reasons I hate posting on Facebook is that you can comment on every little thing, and frankly not everything warrants a comment thread. Despite what is warranted, some people cannot help themselves and write pointless things on just about any picture. Instead of just a nice posting of $PICTURE, I then have $UNWANTED_TEXT next to my picture, forever (unless I erase and repost the image but that will just trigger Facebook's "HEY WORLD, LOOK WHAT HE JUST POSTED" algorithms again).

shp0ngle 10y ago

Well, while Flickr would never be Facebook, they could have been Instagram. Turns out people still like to snap pictures and post them online in 2017. And they don't care that much about quality. If people cared about quality, vimeo would be bigger than youtube. It isn't.

pier25 10y ago

I was a heavy Flickr user for about 5 years and I have to disagree with you. Facebook certainly brought photo sharing to the masses, but most Flickr users were actually "a bunch of amateurs obsessed with lens quality", at least the active ones. Most of these didn't move their photography to Facebook but to other sites like 500px and later Instagram. I agree with the article, Flickr died because Yahoo let it rot.

petre 10y ago
> Flickr died because Yahoo let it rot. And then placed ads on the corpse.

bborud 10y ago

No, Yahoo did by not keeping up the pace and evolving. It was static because Yahoo was under terrible leadership that never could figure out whether to shit or get off the pot. To quote some execs I had a meeting with at Yahoo when we were acquired by them "we don't innovate: we copy what others do and make it better". Not only is this an idiotic strategy, but it was one they consistently failed at. They never made anything better. I did point out at the time that I thought they were being delusional. I left in 2005 because it was obvious the company didn't have any actual leadership. Just indecision and half measures. I left because I used none of the products anymore. Yahoo handed the victory to Facebook.

jlarocco 10y ago

Not true at all. The serious Flickr users switched to other photography sites, like SmugMug and 500px, and the not so serious ones went to Instagram. Not to say all those people don't also post photos to Facebook, but saying Facebook killed Flickr is akin to saying Facebook killed Google Code and everyone is uploading their code to Facebook now. Obviously that's a silly comparison, but my point is, for people using Flickr as intended, Facebook isn't really a substitute.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Facebook has nothing to do with photos. Simple example: I'm looking for a creative common photo of a cat to reuse how do I find this on facebook ? Facebook is not shutterstock or getty, photo is not their business, providing their useds with as little friction so they can be exposed to the customer's ads longer is their core business.

dickbasedregex 10y ago

I would argue Flickr's target audience was people who really care about photography and not social butterflies. As soon as it started to go down the toilet, the real audience left. So you're left with the social butterflies who were probably just as content with every other craptrap website at the time that would host photos. Those people will always flutter to next shiny thing with a crowd around it.