Flickr falls behind

There was a time when flickr was the standard for photo sites. It's easy to use, easy to share and had all those "Web 2.0" tools to take content from the site and put it where ever you want to. In terms of just pure photo sites, I guess I'd say that flickr still dominates.

However, in terms of all photo sharing sites, it's not the number one site. It falls well below Photobucket. Many say this is mainly due to Photobucket's integration with MySpace. So what? I use Photobucket when helping launch a MySpace page for a client and I have to say that Photobucket is way beyond flickr in terms of tools and integration. Maybe MySpace users don't care about the "strategic partnership" between MySpace and Photobucket, maybe they use it because it's, well, easier to do what they want to do with photos. Maybe, just maybe, segmenting users into "photo users" and "myspace users" is really just a smoke screen to explain why flickr hasn't caught up.

Yesterday, without much fan fare, Yahoo! announced that flickr would be adding video. One in every three videos viewed online is viewed through YouTube. Everyone knows that YouTube sets the standards in terms of sharing, embedding, group development, etc. At best, flickr is two years behind where YouTube is.  I'm not sure the audiences for the tools are that different. flickr has it's work cut out for it if the service expects to come anywhere near YouTube in terms of video sharing.

I'm cheering for Yahoo! I've been a fan for a long time. I'd love to see the type of innovation that made them a leader in the late 90s and early 2000s return. Here's hoping they have something else up there sleeve that will create a new standard.

(Cool flickr logo courtesy of www.aoddesign.com )

- Paul Herring

Comments

[Dusan Vrban]

In all my efforts to use Flickr, I couldn't find it as nice and easy and useful and interesting as Panoramio. What am I missing? Perhaps I'm just not enough social. :-)