Ronald_H
Don't call me Ron
Amen, brother.
Flickr. Am I the only one who likes it?
- Thread starter segedi
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Amen, brother.
raid
Dad Photographer
I hardly ever visit flickr.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
And they are 100% totally right to think that way. Why would anybody be happy if they were delivered a car with no door handles and only three wheels? 😕 Especially if their trade in had those things. It frankly doesn't matter how much better the new windshield wipers are if more some of the basic stuff is lacking. 🙂
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
I think it's a pretty bad attitude to say of negative feedback as "nothing new". What is the point of getting feedback from actual users (not paid QA testers) if "we're always going to get that"?
Again, completely missing the point. This is not "the Yankees are better than the Red Sox", where "there's always someone who'll hate the Yankees" and "well, that's your opinion". This is a company messing up a rollout and completely mishandling beta testing and post-rollout customer service.
Dismissing the numbers when it comes to feedback, no matter how knee's bees one thinks the product is, if the customer is not happy, perhaps you should think about how to soften "the blow" or provide options. There is no evidence that this release was properly handled. The day and days immediately following, the site was buggy, slow (you can chalk it up to site load, but even after the site's traffic "stabilized", you can tell that their JavaScript code isn't the most efficient), and at times it would be downright faulty (clicking on a photo would take you elsewhere).
I think a company should not adopt a "customer is hardly ever right" or "there will always be haters" attitude. Feedback isn't hate. If there's a high percentage of geniuine "hate", perhaps you should take a look at why, not at how to tell them the customer is just a predictable crybaby.
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
Very likely they'd be the ones who'd figure out they're being duped. Like the kid that said the Emperor forgot to dress.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
Frankly if you get a hundred opinions on a product, and only one person likes it, and two say it doesn't suck, and everybody else hates it or is frustrated to tears by it... it's probably not ready for launch. Of course that is coming from a naive person who doesn't think companies try to spite their customers on purpose.
Not to *** on anybody's parade who likes it. If it makes you happy then it's good enough for you and that's fine too.
I'm personally feeling rather indifferent except as regards a few design flaws and some subjective aesthetic issues which are "amusing" (or I guess inexplicable) and tedious. Overall though I think it was a step down rather than up.
Sparrow
Veteran
My experience too ...
Sparrow
Veteran
... no, so that that's you, flicker and that other Jarski chap then
SayCheese
Established
Last Monday, when I first saw the new layout of my photostream, i was like "oh, how beautiful, is this really flickr?".
It looks like what it actually is: a social network website in 2013.
On the other hand, my photos are now displayed as an endless flood of meaningless thumbnails. The Ken Burns effect in Slidshow is ridiculous and really anoying.
In the end i came to just like it how it is now, it does everything i need it to in a contemporary way.
SayCheese
It looks like what it actually is: a social network website in 2013.
On the other hand, my photos are now displayed as an endless flood of meaningless thumbnails. The Ken Burns effect in Slidshow is ridiculous and really anoying.
In the end i came to just like it how it is now, it does everything i need it to in a contemporary way.
SayCheese
Michael Markey
Veteran
Today , for the first time , my Set page isn`t a jumble of overlapping pictures and I can actually see what is there.
What a half baked roll out.
What a half baked roll out.
Highway 61
Revisited
Howzabout thinking that a lot of those who are liking it just behave like Panurge's sheep ? This wouldn't be more interesting as for a discussion basis, would this ? 😛
More seriously : I think that all those who are complaining never said they didn't like change, but rather very clearly explained what they didn't like through that very change.
Too many pictures at once on the homepage, no space around the pictures, Instagram-FB-Tumblr inspired design, site now aimed at quantity rather than quality, hidden profiles, maps, tags and comments, all in all, stressful and very poor design in spite of all could be said onwards from now.
Then - for me - the discussions about the former Pro and the new free accounts are accessory ones but legit though ; my main concern regards the homepage design and for me it's clear : poor and crappy, looking like it was made by apprentice webdesigners.
For instance, the only solution I found so far to remove the stupid image banner at the top of my homepage was to create a plain empty gray image with PhotoShop then to upload it in my gallery, then to make it unvisible but for *me* in my gallery, then to choose it as my "cover photo".
I'd be keen to acknowledge that this is the result of a brilliant user-friendly web interface design, but at this point I'd not bet it was... 😀
henri klein
Established
The new layout is truly awful. It looks cheap, almost pornographic, no space around pics anymore and I am forced to look at pictures I do not want to see. I just left.
++++++++
Lick a shot
++++++++
Lick a shot
btgc
Veteran
Mate, I feel you pain....they had idea everyone eat burgers and drink cola, and extended menu with new offers. Everyone's wishes now are fulfilled as long as you eat burgers and drink cola.
It just shows what happens when tech savvy people without knowledge of social aspects of business are allowed to make decisions. They make several too similar sites without any warnings and options to choose from. Sadly, we are living in a world of burgers made from same generic meat, just looking differently because of print on wrap.
Bille
Well-known
Yes, thats the spirit.
henri klein
Established
On the other hand the average DSLR user with 1Tbyte of unedited snaps may feel more at home now. It just isn't about photography anymore.😀
btgc
Veteran
Yes. As this business is about volume to choose from, then lots of free space is right direction. Now they are setting up cheese in mouse trap. Question is if flickr will change their TOS (ownership related things) or just skim money from ad display, backed up by user and visitor volume.
That said, flickr has largest user base I'm aware and fantastic value that there hardly are alternatives. But people change habits....both ways. Ones will become OK with new layout. And some will abandon flickr and move somewhere else despite they were paying subscribers for years.
Anyone following discussions on ads? Pro account provides "Ad-free browsing and sharing ". New ad-free account is said to provide "No ads in your browsing experience". $50 and viewers may still see ads? Pheeew.
hteasley
Pupil
I tend to avoid conducting debates where the opposing argument is a bad analogy. You have misread and misconstrued what I said.
SausalitoDog
Well-known
I guess I'm baffled by all the effort. It seemed to me that for the last two years, people of been complaining loud and wide that Flickr was not as good as it should be, that it was broken, that they wanted more features, and on and on.
Now they've rolled out something new, given customers more space, it has the full backing of Yahoo. Marissa, if nothing else,Listens. Why not give her break, and wait a few weeks and see if she doesn't make some response to all this hullabaloo.
For my two cents worth, She's put new life in Yahoo and will put new life and Flickr. I'm gonna wait and see.
Now they've rolled out something new, given customers more space, it has the full backing of Yahoo. Marissa, if nothing else,Listens. Why not give her break, and wait a few weeks and see if she doesn't make some response to all this hullabaloo.
For my two cents worth, She's put new life in Yahoo and will put new life and Flickr. I'm gonna wait and see.
bwcolor
Veteran
I keep opening my Flickr stream. I'm getting frustrated in that I can't seem to find the anger within. I really want to feel a part of this movement away from Flickr. I can only conclude that I'm just not an artist and that my images feel at home sitting on a mediocre photo site. Sometimes self-examination hurts.
mani
Well-known
I posted this on LUF, but it seems the over-reaction is even more extreme on this site, so I've made some changes to address the issues here.
People seem to be overreacting a little bit, it seems to me.
The new site is vastly more 'image-rich' than the old design.
With all the lyrical nostalgia I've been reading on various fora around the net the last couple days, anyone might think the 'old' flickr was some sort of design classic - but this cnet capture from the last revamp in 2008 reminds me of what I was actually looking at every time I logged-in to the old (lack-lustre) site. On an image page it was a ramshackle jumble of bright blue links and pink headlines and maps and random text surrounding a crushed and sad-looking little picture. Now I can see a large and crisp image almost filling my entire screen. At last imagery is at the center of flickr!
The tight look of the new masonry layout can easily be changed by the site designers - it's just a couple of css settings in the stylesheets: if enough people request it, I imagine flickr will allow for some sort of simple personal preference settings which increases the margins between images, allowing for more whitespace. Or they may introduce tiling with fewer images: the design of the page with just one cascade of large images is luscious - and surrounded by plenty of whitespace.
Or they may just change the name of the layout to 'The Contact Sheet' and all the traditional photographers will be happy again. 😉
The same goes for the black backgrounds of the larger images - a one-line change to the css. Someone here said that the black background was somehow in bad taste, and that grey would be 'good design' - in my view, this is simply a case of mistaking personal preference for 'good design'. In any case, I certainly believe that with gentle persuasion flickr/yahoo will introduce a lot more customizability to the site.
flickr has an incredibly rich database of images - for instance, you can search for the most obscure lens and get thousands of images to look at. Try a pretty obvious search like 'Summicron' in ipernity: 'no results'.
Talking of ipernity, one of the things I read some photographers were most annoyed about was the 'Ken Burns' panning effects on the new flickr slideshow. What do I see when I look at ipernity's 'Explore' page - yeah, Ken Burns panning! So to all the people migrating from flickr: good luck on ipernity!
Naturally flickr need to address some serious usability issues - the (pretty much universally-hated) infinite scroll isn't suited to groups with 67,000 images for instance (how do you resume where you last left off?) And the interface does need a lot of tweaking and fixing, but when the dust has settled, and the disgruntled few have left, flickr will be a much better place to show and look at images (imo).
As for the quoted 'beta testers' - it seems to me that flickr was naive in choosing people at random for that test. "You're making a 60-year old woman cry" is not really useful feedback, nor is "IT SUX I HATE IT CHANGE IT BAK!!!" Constructive comments would have been far more valuable to everyone.
Complaints about small bugs or performance issues should wait a few days for the new site to 'bed in'. I'm already finding it loads and performs MUCH faster than the first 2 or 3 days.
People seem to be overreacting a little bit, it seems to me.
The new site is vastly more 'image-rich' than the old design.
With all the lyrical nostalgia I've been reading on various fora around the net the last couple days, anyone might think the 'old' flickr was some sort of design classic - but this cnet capture from the last revamp in 2008 reminds me of what I was actually looking at every time I logged-in to the old (lack-lustre) site. On an image page it was a ramshackle jumble of bright blue links and pink headlines and maps and random text surrounding a crushed and sad-looking little picture. Now I can see a large and crisp image almost filling my entire screen. At last imagery is at the center of flickr!
The tight look of the new masonry layout can easily be changed by the site designers - it's just a couple of css settings in the stylesheets: if enough people request it, I imagine flickr will allow for some sort of simple personal preference settings which increases the margins between images, allowing for more whitespace. Or they may introduce tiling with fewer images: the design of the page with just one cascade of large images is luscious - and surrounded by plenty of whitespace.
Or they may just change the name of the layout to 'The Contact Sheet' and all the traditional photographers will be happy again. 😉
The same goes for the black backgrounds of the larger images - a one-line change to the css. Someone here said that the black background was somehow in bad taste, and that grey would be 'good design' - in my view, this is simply a case of mistaking personal preference for 'good design'. In any case, I certainly believe that with gentle persuasion flickr/yahoo will introduce a lot more customizability to the site.
flickr has an incredibly rich database of images - for instance, you can search for the most obscure lens and get thousands of images to look at. Try a pretty obvious search like 'Summicron' in ipernity: 'no results'.
Talking of ipernity, one of the things I read some photographers were most annoyed about was the 'Ken Burns' panning effects on the new flickr slideshow. What do I see when I look at ipernity's 'Explore' page - yeah, Ken Burns panning! So to all the people migrating from flickr: good luck on ipernity!
Naturally flickr need to address some serious usability issues - the (pretty much universally-hated) infinite scroll isn't suited to groups with 67,000 images for instance (how do you resume where you last left off?) And the interface does need a lot of tweaking and fixing, but when the dust has settled, and the disgruntled few have left, flickr will be a much better place to show and look at images (imo).
As for the quoted 'beta testers' - it seems to me that flickr was naive in choosing people at random for that test. "You're making a 60-year old woman cry" is not really useful feedback, nor is "IT SUX I HATE IT CHANGE IT BAK!!!" Constructive comments would have been far more valuable to everyone.
Complaints about small bugs or performance issues should wait a few days for the new site to 'bed in'. I'm already finding it loads and performs MUCH faster than the first 2 or 3 days.
