Is flickr dying? [closed]

Question

Sorry if the question sounds flippant, it isn't meant to be, and I know that this is asking an opinion rather than a verifiable fact but bear with me...

I'm looking for somewhere to start uploading some of my better older photos and some of my new photos, and also to group photo project photos together and that kind of thing.

I know how Flickr works, I don't think it's the best of the photo-sharing sites I've seen, but it's ok and the crucial thing is I want to use to follow/share my pics with other photographers and in high resolution (I already have Facebook for sharing photos with friends). Flickr seems to be the best place for this as it's so well established with loads of users.

However I've heard a few people mention that 'flicker is dying' and that photographers are starting to exodus to other services. I don't want to commit to a service that is in decline, and although nobody can predict the future, can anybody give me an opinion on this?

(additionally, although I'm not looking for a review of Flickr, if anybody knows of any extremely important reason to either use it or not use it that I may have overlooked, please let me know) (I do know about the upload limits for free accounts)

Answer 1

Flickr is dying in the Yogi Berra sense: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." That is, it's lost some of its social media impact because it has become so dilute. Earlier on, a good photograph could get a bit of traffic, sharing and commentary (and a good stream could get a significant following) just by virtue of being among the few good photos on a browsably small site.

The Flickr problem can and will happen anywhere and everywhere. There was a great hue and cry for Marissa Mayer to revive the Flickr magic, but the best that can be hoped for, really, is for the technical aspects of the site to be updated and kept (relatively) bug-free. When a few hundred million people all want their fifteen minutes of fame in the next couple of months, things like discoverability are going to suffer badly. It doesn't matter who's running the site or what the back end is built on, there just isn't enough room for that many famous peers—and it's the missing opportunity for instant fame that's driving most of the "Flickr ain't what it used to be" talk.

When I created my (now disused) Flickr account in 2004, there were only a paltry few thousand of us with a handful of photos. You could actually visit the entire site back then. Those days are gone forever. When a new site pops up, it, too, will be discoverable for a shortish time—until everybody wants to be discovered.

As an online photo gallery with directed links (stream/gallery cross-links, followers, likes) it's at least as good as it's ever been, and it will likely improve. An incestuous little group can thrive there quite nicely. If your aim is to stumble into fame, though, it ain't going to work. At least it's not going to work without the same level of marketing and promotion that putting your photos on any other site (including your own) would need.

Answer 2

How many other similar services can you name? they're really few.

So, no, I don't think that flickr is dying, considering that they're relatively unique in this business. truth is there are not many online services like flickr.

If you don't want to pay for it, flickr is still the best available service IMO, it lets your visitors to interact with you and share your photos easily, you can create groups, you can use CC licenses, you can also share your Exif if you want... and many other reasons why I think flickr is still unique!

But in case you're willing to pay, I prefer the 500px.com, although their Awesome account is more expensive than flickr's pro account, but they allow me to use my own domain for my gallery and I get visitors statistics from Google Analytics.