"It Looks Like Flickr is Now For Sale"

[randolph]

what's the latest consensus now on flickr? there seems to be more reports of inability to login, slow response, etc.

are you guys transitioning to something else??

 

[ForestCap]

They messed up the groups; for one.

+1

I've been using flickr for 3 years, which is a short time. My impression is flickr is good at fixing what's not broken (e.g. the Groups). I remember they made many changes on thingamajigs but I can't recall any actual improvement.

I use tumblr more but it's a completely different site.

 

[Talus]

I started with Flickr in 2006, had a pro account for a while and then let the subscription lapse. In 2009 I dropped out of photography due to work/life taking over and just recently started back with my love of looking through the lens. I naturally went back to Flickr and just a few weeks ago started wondering if Flickr was even relevant these days. Everyone seems to have gravitated to Instagram, blogs and forums. Many of the photographers I followed hadn't posted anything new to Flickr in months or years. Then, earlier this week, I was having dinner with a friend and commented about a photo essay I've recently been revisiting in Flickr. She said ," Flickr? Do people even use that anymore?"

Seeing this thread seems to have answered the question. As a platform, it's ok for my minimal (hobbyist) shooting, and I certainly like it better than the thumbnails that Instagram lets you see. Is there another place where photogs are gathering these days?

 

[filmtwit]

Ya, most of friends basically left flickr because of this. They used to really like the groups and social interaction within them. Now they just instagram.

They messed up the groups; for one.

 

[sara]

I liked Flickr, before they tried to make it all "in trend" with the new design :/ then I got confused...

 

[Pioneer]

Photobucket works for me with the exception of the ads. If I subscribed, then the ads would and the subscription price would increase. 🙂

Sometimes the ads are interesting so I keep them.

 

[Jdi]

There is nothing broken (my opinion).

As a non member without a Yahoo account (part of the vast majority of photography enthusiasts), Flickr is a total pain. To the point I avoid it. Every page, every mouse click, has a pop-up. Organization is beyond my ability.

Perhaps great for people who like to view their own pictures. But then a local drive would do as well.

 

[Bingley]

In the last few days Flickr has started including new additions to groups on the user's main page. So what I'm seeing when I log in is not only the latest photos posted by my contacts but also new posts to groups that I'm a member of. I see pros and cons: I like seeing additions to my groups but it can also lead to a lot of repetition since posters (myself included) post photos to more than one (and frequently many) groups. It also adds clutter to the main Flickr page.

IMO, Flickr went off the rails several years ago when it unilaterally adopted a "tile view" of photos. User reaction was intense, and Flickr eventually reverted to displaying single photos in the continuous feed, and at a decent size. Flickr did not completely restore the old interface which allowed easier commenting on photos; now you have to click on the photo to leave a comment.

I still think Flickr is the best photo display platform out there, although it has its problems. I'm also posting photos on FB and Instagram. Instagram seems to be quite popular with younger photographers and bloggers who are interested in photography, but as noted above the size of photos is small. Instagram has the advantage of allowing you to review photos that you've previously "liked"; you can't do that on FB. FB has groups, but I find it harder to search FB groups than I do on Flickr. Instagram allows you to create defacto groups using hashtags, and the third-party Padgram app allows you to search and display Instagram feeds in a way that's similar to Flickr. Then there's Tumblr. I like Tumblr's interface, as well as the ability to look at a photographer's prior work quickly by using the Archive link, but Tumblr doesn't seem to be attracting as much interest since it was acquired by Yahoo. Tumblr seems to work better for the photographer who's mainly interested in displaying his or her work than for those who want to interact with other users over shared photographic interests.

Who knows what will ultimately become of Flickr, now that it's part of the Verizon acquisition of Yahoo. I've enjoyed and learned a lot from my Flickr contacts, and have uploaded a lot of photos to the site (too many, probably). It would be a real loss to have a buyer wreck the site.

 

[peterm1]

I am a pro member of Flickr and am pretty happy with it overall. It is better than anything else I have discovered. The best thing is that by subscribing images to groups it allows others to find your images easily. Partly as a result, my images have had about 500,000 to 600,000 hits which overall I am happy with. But if new owners come in and start hitting pro users with ads or screwing with presentation or functionality i am not happy with, I will dump it like a hot potato. I used to use PhotoBucket but now it's a total mess, ugly, ad filled and unusable. I dread the thought that Flickr might become like this in the pursuit of $.

My main gripe with Flickr right now is the official Flickr app for tablets which is very basic. OK for viewing images, or showing my stuff to others, but most high level functions (eg viewing stats, organizing etc) are just not accessible. This makes Flickr on tablets a bit useless to pro users for most purposes. This is not unusual I suppose as most tablet apps do have cut down functionality, but for me it severely detracts from the product. I actually prefer some third party apps like Fluidr or Flickr River for viewing my images on Flickr.

 

[charjohncarter]

I am a pro member of Flickr and am pretty happy with it overall. It is better than anything else I have discovered. The best thing is that by subscribing images to groups it allows others to find your images easily. Partly as a result, my images have had about 500,000 to 600,000 hits which overall I am happy with. But if new owners come in and start hitting pro users with ads or screwing with presentation or functionality i am not happy with, I will dump it like a hot potato. I used to use PhotoBucket but now it's a total mess, ugly, ad filled and unusable. I dread the thought that Flickr might become like this in the pursuit of $.

My main gripe with Flickr right now is the official Flickr app for tablets which is very basic. OK for viewing images, or showing my stuff to others, but most high level functions (eg viewing stats, organizing etc) are just not accessible. This makes Flickr on tablets a bit useless to pro users for most purposes. This is not unusual I suppose as most tablet apps do have cut down functionality, but for me it severely detracts from the product. I actually prefer some third party apps like Fluidr or Flickr River for viewing my images on Flickr.

I don't know anything about Ephone and tablettas but I agree Flickr is the best out there I would hate to see it degraded. I am also a PRO member.

 

[pepeguitarra]

Me too. Go Flickr.

 

[farlymac]

I look at it this way. After all the crap that we users have had to go through with Flickr, with all their idiotic changes, any more change from a new owner just might be for the better.

But if Verizon holds on to it, then I don't have much hope it will stay as a photographers site. It will be monetized to the max with adverts and links to all sorts of nonsense, eating up CPU space on my already way out-of-date desktop, to the point I'll have to use my laptop that I hate. Can't win here as far as I can see.

I do remember when I signed on to Verizon for my DSL line, and they became my IP provider, every day they tried to install some kind of monitoring software on my computer until I deleted their Help section from my desktop. If they try that with Flickr, I'll drop them like a hot potato, and switch to a cable provider.

PF

 

[Keith]

Any time I think flickr has problems I go and check out photobucket. Flickr is great and I now have a Pro account but how anyone can use photobucket mystifies me! 😀

 

[DanskDynamit]

I like flickr, I got used to the "new" design, sure things could be better but its not bad IMHO.

 

[Michael Markey]

I didn`t like the changes and still don`t but the alternatives just don`t have the community feel which Flickr has.

 

[ChrisLivsey]

Too many posters I know and follow on Flickr for me to leave, the other sites are full of strangers 🙄

 

[JoeV]

I am a pro member of Flickr and am pretty happy with it overall. It is better than anything else I have discovered. The best thing is that by subscribing images to groups it allows others to find your images easily. Partly as a result, my images have had about 500,000 to 600,000 hits which overall I am happy with. But if new owners come in and start hitting pro users with ads or screwing with presentation or functionality i am not happy with, I will dump it like a hot potato. I used to use PhotoBucket but now it's a total mess, ugly, ad filled and unusable. I dread the thought that Flickr might become like this in the pursuit of $.

My main gripe with Flickr right now is the official Flickr app for tablets which is very basic. OK for viewing images, or showing my stuff to others, but most high level functions (eg viewing stats, organizing etc) are just not accessible. This makes Flickr on tablets a bit useless to pro users for most purposes. This is not unusual I suppose as most tablet apps do have cut down functionality, but for me it severely detracts from the product. I actually prefer some third party apps like Fluidr or Flickr River for viewing my images on Flickr.

I've had issues with Flickr from the Safari browser of the iPad/iPod tablet platform, mainly with the more complex features like grabbing links of Flickr images to share elsewhere. Turns out it's really more of a browser issue. I recently purchased Puffin Browser Pro for iOS, which is an app that accesses a virtual desktop browser running on a remote server in California. Through this virtual browser I can access the more complex features of Flickr on an iOS platform.

There are also more Flickr features available for tablets simply by requesting the desktop version of the website, which you can do from the Android browser, Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS.

~Joe

 

[citizen99]

I've got used to the current Flickr status, which now 'fits' quite nicely with the current versions of the (desktop) browsers that I use. Occasionally I use an Android tablet.
I like that there are plenty of 'gear-related' communities on Flickr (not only photography related) as well as images.