The one and only question I need to ask: will flickr stay alive?
The rest had been obsolete for a while anyway.
The rest had been obsolete for a while anyway.
My guess, someone will buy it and it'll languish for a year or two as the product strategy is developed and migration of technology occurs, then the new vision by new owners will be executed.
Personally, I'd find it something of a bummer if flickr were to go away or seriously decay. I could switch but it would be a definite pain. (I also find flickr a great source of CC photos.)
It's the archives I'd really, really miss, from people who more or less stopped taking photos.
If Flickr was to offer what Smugmug and 500px does for pros ( like direct upload from Lightroom, eyecandy portfolios, etc. ) instead of focusing on an app that uploads every picture it finds by default, I believe they'd see a return of the many and probable could become profitable. But this would need immediate and massive changes, which I don't think will happen at all.
I agree that galleries of some sort would be a great addition. I put a lot of photos up on flickr so they're available to myself and others. But I'd like the ability to showcase a more curated collection.
Actually, I think that's built in to Lightroom.
That's fair. The greatest loss if flickr were to go away at some point would be that a lot of content would be permanently removed from the Web. And flickr's scale is such that I can't really imagine something like the archive team being able to copy flickr content and archive it in a useful searchable way. I may be wrong though.
Given that there are functioning businesses in the flickr vein, I'm reasonably hopeful it will continue on though. Even if that's wishful thinking on my part.
Then "Origami" was supposed to launch and solve that - but they shut down before they could even go live!
The reality is that most people are just fine with uploading their camera phone pics to Facebook and be done with it. The number who are willing to spend $25-50 per year for a premium site is probably a pretty small percentage--and would be even smaller if you up that to $100+.
Even if
Flickr/Yahoo! have taken some steps related to allowing users to monetize their photos over the years. There's been an agreement with Getty and they've done some other things as well. At its heart, though, flickr started out with very much a community orientation and, while they haven't necessarily done the best job of it, they've maintained more of a community than a commercial flavor.
Aside from the young, female, and attractive though, it's pretty hard to commercialize a flickr presence in any significant way. Even microstock sites which are explicitly about selling aren't a great source of income for most.