My Thoughts on the New Flickr
When I first noticed the major flickr changes yesterday I absolutely LOVED them! They looked similar to the changes Google+ recently made. However, now that I’ve been using it for a day or so, there are a few things that are kind of bothering me a little bit that I wanted to talk about; so I’ve decided to make a list of things I like and dislike.
What I like about the new Flickr!
- The pictures are MASSIVE. You’ll notice this one on the other list as well but I’ll tell you why I love this, it’s making them stand out more and look even more beautiful. I’m faving more pictures than I did before because of this reason.
- I miss my collections but I do like how the sets are displayed. The sets are only an easy click away and are displayed with a nice big picture. They are easily modifiable in the “organize” option of flickr.
- Easy scrolling of contacts’ pictures. I’ll admit that before the new flickr, I very rarely clicked through to look at my contacts’s pictures. However, now flickr has made that a lot easier by eliminating a bunch of steps and clicks. I’m actually enjoying just continuously scrolling through the main page looking at all the gorgeous images my contacts create.
- Newer and sleeker design. The old flickr design was getting old and boring compared to all of the sexy new changes that were happening on other social networks. I really do like the design, it just seems so much more current and the scrolling option makes it easier to see more pictures a lot faster.
- Sexy new Android App – Today my flickr app started updating itself and I got a little scared because I must admit I am quite attached to it. I absolutely love the update though, it’s very smooth and fast and easy to use.
- Cover Photo idea is totally hot! I love the idea of the cover photo. All of the major social networks have them now (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, etc..) and it’s about time flickr stepped up. I love looking at what pictures people choose for their cover photos as it can tell a lot about a person.
This is my current cover photo on flickr. I estimated the cover photo size by creating it at the following dimensions: (2000×300) I will probably play around with it some more to see if I can get it to look more polished but for now I believe that ratio + dimensions works well.
What I dislike about the new Flickr!
- Fewer image and blog hits. Now that the pictures are MASSIVE on flickr, more people are scrolling their contacts’ pictures and that has made the faves on the pictures increase. However, now less people are actually clicking on the image to see what’s written in the description. What does that mean? That means less views for the individual picture itself and also fewer clicks on any links listed in the description of the image, thus decreasing blog hits. A lot of people also share quotes or poetry with their images that add more to the experience of viewing the image and now that people are less likely to click over, that experience is lost.
- I miss the white space. As you can probably tell by my blog theme, my plurk background and a lot of my pictures, I love white backgrounds and nice, clean white spaces. Now everything is black on flickr. This is not a huge deal, but for example if you click over to this image on flickr, you’ll see that I designed it with the previously white flickr background in mind so the avatar would stand out better.
- Pro accounts can no longer be purchased. If you were a Pro member from before, than you are lucky to be grandfathered into it, however if you weren’t now the only option to get an ad-free experience is by paying double the price that Pro was for an ad-free account.
- Massive pictures may be a bit too massive and inappropriate. Now we all know that I have nothing against nudity and some of my favorite pictures I’ve taken are my nude ones. However, seeing a massive huge penis or vagina or boobs across my screen can be a bit jolting. I’m thinking of changing my account status so safe search is on, but I’m not really sure I want to do that. Plus, a lot of people don’t set their content filters correctly anyways. I did a Flickr Content Filters Tutorial a while back that may help you understand them better if you are not familiar with them.
- Not sure if I want to keep my Pro Account. I discussed this with my plurk friends earlier. Basically free accounts have everything a pro account has except for unlimited uploads, storage, bandwidth and also stats. The ability to replace a photos is now also available for free accounts. This has got me wondering if it’s really worth it to stick with a pro account as I can’t imagine I would ever exceed all of the benefits of a free account. So I’m not sure and it’s a bit of a dilemma. However, I have until October to decide as I’ve got pro till then and I can see what I want to do after that.
Why I’m not going to leave Flickr for another photo sharing site.
I’ve heard some buzz of people leaving flickr for other photo sharing sites such as Pinterest, DeviantArt, ipernity, 500px and more… I actually do have accounts on three of these sites and I have to tell you, the community is just not the same as flickr. I have been a member of flickr since July 2007 and I have so many memories there. If you scroll back to my very first images on there (please don’t :P) you will see how horrible they are but I would never ever delete them as they show my past and how much I’ve grown and progressed. They include images of friends and loved ones I’ve met over time and fell in love with, along with all the fun comments I’ve shared with them over the years. If I leave flickr, I will lose all of that!
Flickr to me is more than just another social network. It’s the first social network that I ever joined with my SL avatar and was the first place I started sharing my SLife on, even before my blog. It’s like a second home to me and I’m just not ready to leave it. Flickr has been a very huge part of my Second Life journey. So, even with all my complaints about the new changes, I still love it dearly and I’m definitely not going anywhere.
Earlier this morning I asked people on plurk to share their flickr links so we can have a flickr link exchange and that plurk has exploded with everyone adding each other. If you’re on plurk, please feel free to add your flick link to this plurk as well.
So these are my thoughts about the new flickr. Overall I must admit I am very happy with it. I do wish for certain changes but I know that nothing is ever perfect so I’m willing to work with it. What do you think of the new flickr? Is there something you would like changed?
Related Links:
Flickr link exchange on plurk. Add your flickr link!
Flickr Content Filters Tutorial
Couldn’t have expressed my feelings any better than this. I feel very similar about all the points you’ve made! 🙂
I’m honestly just too lazy to leave.
thanks for the tip on dimensions of the cover photo. I’ll be playing around with that!
I just wish the home page was more like it use to be. With YOUR recent activity and then contact activity. I’m seeing a lot of duplication from my main page and the Contact Recent pics page and all that black is very hard for me to see when something is happening on my stream. A main page remodel and I’d be all set.
I really hate the comments being included on the home page. That was totally unnecessary.
Frankly I prefer the thumbnail size of my contacts’ work since it was faster to scan through and click over if I wished.
With the black background and the current popularity of very dark images it is very hard to see some of these images and where they begin and end.
The advantages of continuing to pay for pro are so minimal I am sure few will do so and they could have reduced the price for those to receive those few benefits.
It’s also become unbelievably slow to load and I have a powerful computer less than 6 months old.
It could do with more tweaking in my opinion.
I agree with a lot of your points. A LOT of them. Honestly, I really can’t stand what they’ve done to the front page. I feel like it takes away so much of what Flickr was.
While I know I could get use to the changes, there’s one thing that bothers me a little too much for me to stick around like I had before, and that’s Flickr making a profit off of my hard work and energy while not sharing a dime by putting ads over my pictures.
Flickr used to feel so professional. I felt proud to send customers, peers, and friends to my flickr to view my work. Now I feel like I’m sending them to any other free to use website. But on top of that, raising the price of a “doublr” membership to FIFTY dollars a month just to keep them from making money off of me with ads… doesn’t that feel a little backwards?
1TB is nice, but I feel as a pro member I lost everything that I originally purchased flickr for. I’m disappointed in them, in the way they treated the community, and their disregard and disrespect for how this would effect a lot of their long time users.
I’ll still be posting product related stuff relating to Second Life in Flickr, but I don’t know how much I’ll keep up with other people now, let alone comments, favorites… basically the social side of the community I loved. Now that’s what I use ipernity for.
Thanks for sharing. <3
Err… Read month as year*. I derped while typing. I literally just woke up. xD Sorry about that!~
Thank you Strawberry for sharing your views and the cover photo size.
I have to say I am not at all impressed. I do not like the home page at all. I am running at the moment from my laptop, so it has gotten extremely slow loading for me, it is very frustrating. I do not like the comments on top of the photos and I find the homepage just overall confusing! I loved the old home page and went there several times a day to see what new was posted and commented and fav’d photos, but now as you say…that will happen less as, well…I don’t want to sit here all day waiting for pages to load!! They certainly did not think of people with bandwidth issues or slow PC’s when they did these changes.
I love photos on black backgrounds, I feel it makes them pop more, but this is just ridiculous with the black really, way to much.
I know this will definitely slow down my use of Flickr and possibly send me looking for other sites, but like you say, the social part of Flickr is what was great.
Thanks for sharing
I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m going to hang on to my pro acct for now and see if they have any tweaking in store now that they’re getting bombarded with feedback. I’m sort of torn about the changes, I don’t like the new home page at all, my contacts pics are just so big, and it’s taking forever to load, but I like the sets page, and I do like the way I can scroll down through people’s photos now. I wish there was more white space, though. It just seems sort of cluttered to me.
I’ve always used my Flickr as mostly a place to store images and share links rather than comment or be social, maybe having an easier time looking at other people’s pics will make me more inclined to explore the social side of it.
The clickthrough has definitely dropped- but the rest of it I can cope with. My only issue with the change, honestly, was the sudden drastic nature and no warning email or notification at all. To log in and YIKES!
Change is good. Change is necessary to stay in business. Not all change is great- but I suspect we’ll all get used to it and be just fine.
I’ll be hanging onto my grandfathered pro account for now. We’ll see come August when its due to roll over.
Interesting. Most seem to hate it totally:
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/72157633547442506/
and the new price plans are a mess:
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/72157633531669359/
I liked the old look, it felt more professional. The new look seems made for kids with tablets. But I can adapt.
What floors me about it all is the total mess it all was at launch: The FAQ contradicted itself in several places; many broken links, etc. Much of that is now fixed, but the fact that it rolled out that way doesn’t speak well of the organization. Very shoddy job.
As for the new pricing, the top level is just nuts, IMHO. “Ad free” is also crazy because you’re paying double, for less (Pro was unlimited storage). Plus it still isn’t really clear whether Pro members can continue as is or not. I went to check and I still have the ability to add to my Pro subscription (I am not on auto-renew, so that should not be possible… I don’t think).
All told, the entire thing was VERY badly done. And yeah, I can’t help but remark that they V2’ed it.
I’m still not so sure if i like the new flickr or not…
I do like how our own pages look now. and that All the white background is gone (sorry, i like black) and our photos are a lot bigger. that’s a big plus for me.
I do agree with you on the image and blog hits!
i also noticed that it went down after this new flickr popped up 🙁
But there’s one thing that i truly hate!.. The home page!
I think it’s horrid! Big boobies and penises on my screen as well, normally i don’t care that much but they almost poke my eyes out with the new picture sizes. everything is so big that it confuses me to death, and it seems that i keep missing things from my contacts.
I think that if the home page would have stayed the same (or more subtle than what it is now) then i would have been perfectly fine with the new changes
As a Flickr employee, longtime SL resident, and armchair digital artist, I want to thank you for a very fair and level assessment of the changes that were made. Your sentiments are shared across a broad swath of users and believe it or not, opinions ARE being listened to.
SL users on Flickr are given far more attention from us than you might assume. Please, if you have constructive criticism, get on the forums and tell us what you want to see. We are watching and listening.
Flickr is one of those rare places where the team providing the product is every bit as passionate as the users enjoying it. Stick with us- change is always disorienting, but you won’t find a photo sharing site out there that cares more about its user community.
@SLFlickrTech:
One suggestion: To make the upgrade accounts more attractive, please consider bringing back the stats. That will be extremely useful.
And, by the way… If you don’t want to see prim boobies and prim genitals on your Flickr, perhaps you’ll want to reconsider which contacts you’ve chosen and which groups you’re a member of. Just sayin’.
Sigh…I’m with Berry and a lot of you on many of the issues. While it does look ‘sexier’, it also takes forever to load. While I like seeing big images, I’d rather (selfishly) see my own first, and then my contacts. While it is easier to see your contacts images, it’s harder to see what’s up with your own. And most of all…whaaaaaaaa…why can’t we see # of times each image was favorited, without drilling all the way down??? Right now it shows # of comments when you hover over each image – but that gets sent to my email anyway. So…why hide the favorites??
I’ve only been photographing in SL for about 18 months (of my 6 years) and so haven’t used Flickr – seriously – until a short while ago. Maybe it’s my newness, but having someone view it is great…having someone favorite is faaaaaaaaaaaaab.
Well said… now that I don’t post as much and the 200 photo limit for free accounts is gone, I’m on the fence about staying Pro.
Time will tell.
-ls/cm
For anyone looking for some further clarifications, Mashable did a good review as well: http://mashable.com/2013/05/20/flickr-pro-changes/
It could be very interesting to know how much free place we have in each account (like for wordpress).
By lucky, i have bought an upgrade for two years ^^ (44,95$) and the new upgrade is 49,99 !! i dont know why they up the price for less options (to compare with free account) …
i will see in 2014 if i change or not 🙂
I’m staying too. Thanks for the fair assessment Strawberry!
Mal
Pro no longer offers much of an incentive for me now that the limits are gone. I find it a mysterious decision on the part of Flickr/Yahoo to give me a disincentive to pay for Pro.
I’m not one to reject change outright, but in this case, I prefer the old flickr look. To me, the new Flickr looks like it was probably implemented before the designers were completely finished – touch some buttons, and you are back to the old Flickr with a banner across the top.
I think the worst part is that it does nothing to enhance one of Flickr’s greatest strengths, community. In fact, with the burying of things like favourites, it diminishes it somewhat. It’s still there, but I have to poke around more.
“Pro no longer offers much of an incentive for me now that the limits are gone.”
Pro has one thing that free doesn’t: no storage limit. Free and ad-free both have a 1TB limit.
I just put photos up for the first time. I hope you don’t mind that I “friended” you.
Food for thought:
http://www.techhive.com/article/2039414/the-new-flickr-goodbye-customers-hello-ads.html
You hit on my concerns exactly. I noticed I was getting a lot of faves on my newest pic, but no views… and I really don’t like that! And I have been pro about as long as you too and it totally shows my history and how I’ve grown…..I’d hate to lose that!
@Gala Caproni
Exactly!
I’ve seen amazing photo’s that had over 30/40 faves, and only 15/20 views… that doesn’t seem right to me 🙁
Pingback: Thinking and speaking about the new Flickr | Mona Eberhardt
Hi Berry… like yourself I have concerns about several things about the new Flickr. I have a Pro account because I wanted “unlimited” storage for my photos, plus the ability to have many sets and collections. It really baffles me why they’ve taken collections off the main display.
I’m about a year into my two year subscription and as you’ve pointed out, the Free account has all the benefits of the paid accounts. So, it’s hard to justify paying $50 for ads free.
Also like yourself, I’m pretty loyal to Flickr, even though I’m nowhere near as active as you are. If I return to SL, I’m pretty sure Flickr will remain a part of my experience.
Hugs & Luv,
Yordie
Personally, I think they can restore the “Collections” link to the main photostream page with ease. I think they should at least consider it. And yes, as it stands, I woudn’t pay $50/year just to have no ads; I already don’t have ads, courtesy of AdBlock Plus, which cost me the princely sum of $0.00. So, they should add the stats back as a feature of the paid options, otherwise I don’t see any incentive to pay.
Wow, I really messed up my account the first time I tried it. I deleted it and started over. Hopefully, I’ll be more organized now.
A great alternative to Flickr.
http://www.ipernity.com/explore
Thank you everyone for sharing your insight and views. It’s interesting to see all of the different responses to the changes. I am still getting used to it but liking it more and more as time goes by. Still wish I had more white space though! 😛 LOL but I guess that will take time to get used to as well.
Good blog. I own a (very) small media company in Toronto and had originally considered using Flickr to host community images etc. But with the new changes, Flickr has really lost the professional look it once had; it comes across cheesy at best; the only thing preventing a mass exodus is a viable alternative – yet.