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And even worse, rewind to 2008 and the Flickr API was considered the gold standard of API design. There were books written about it and it was regularly mentioned at conferences.

They had all the pieces to build a great mobile experience. The interest and support wasn't there from the leadership.

I don't think Flickr had any interest in becoming yet another gallery app. It always marketed itself as a place of photography with above average content from professional and hobbyist photographers. As a photographer who uses Flickr I'd almost guarantee that if Flickr put emphasis on mobile photography a lot of DSLR and Analog users would leave. I sure would.

And the Flickr redesign guy went on to ruin Chowhound.