Really hope this is nay-saying… I have 3 Flickr accounts, don’t relish moving them all to… where? Picasa Web Albums? Meh.
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.
I don’t think it’s quite as apocalyptic as that, though that Yahoo screwed the pooch on this is quite clear. I’m not as interested in the social aspect of photos (let alone doing photo stuff through Facebook, blech) as having an online repository for my photos.
The only alternative I’d consider at this point — and the the thought does keep occurring to me — is Google and Picasa. I actually use the Picasa client on my machine for basic photo editing and cleanup, so in theory it would be pretty trivial. And I believe I have all (most? many?) of the albums built via Picasa, so changing over to it as the Web service would be fairly straightforward.
Last time I tried it (2.5 years ago), I ran into problems on the Picasa end.
I really don’t feel like making that jump … yet. But it Yahoo teeters into the abyss, or if Google makes the whole integration thing easier than it is now, it will be my next stop.
And some of the comments in the article (hopefully not just whistling in the dark) are a bit more positive.
I’m hoping that Flickr won’t actually go into decline, but it definitely needs refreshing that it hasn’t gotten since Yahoo took over.