Mat Honan for Gizmodo:
This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.
And thus begins and impressively long and detailed accounting of photo sharing service Flickr’s rise and fall. As a long-time Flickr user, I’ve been really disappointed with how Yahoo has mismanaged it. It’s great to see Mat Honan deconstruct the situation and explain it for exactly what it is.
I’ve been using Flickr for almost 5 years. I still love the services. It’s my lifeblood for creativity. However, what has Yahoo done with it in the past 5 years. Nothing. Theres been almost no innovation.
It is a slow, painful death. My dilemma is what replaces it in OS X/iOS? Nearly every app I use (645 Pro, Camera+, Camera!, Instagram, iPhoto, Snapseed, Lightroom, etc.) can post to Flickr, so it works well as an online repository of selects.
Google+ for iOS (via Picassa): Beautiful new interface but the web interface is hideous, and there still isn’t anyone there. None of my apps will publish to it directly.
500px: Looks very promising but no iPhone app, and very limited integration from any apps.
Instagram: I don’t like posting non-iPhone photos through the service, and there’s a growing backlash against non-mobile pics being uploaded.
Facebook: Since the TOS fiasco a few years back, I am loath to post any real content there, and the photo uploading/handling is atrocious anyway. Did I mention the iOS app is stunningly slow?
Right. Other than back-end support for an order-of-magnitude increase in users, maps/geotagging/geofences, one of the most robust public APIs, galleries, support for third-party logins, eliminating bandwidth restrictions for paid accounts (and increasing what you get for free), slideshows, one of the first (if not the first) “web app” iPhone sites, HTML5 photo upload, and an increase in maximum photo dimensions, nothing’s been done at all.