I love flickr. Every day something new. A proper source of inspiration. I’m a very loyal customer. But dig in and the place is turning into a branch of Athena (British poster shop famous for that poster of the tennis player scratching her arse). Photos ranked by ‘interestingness‘ are frankly cheesy: puppies, semi-nude girlfriends.
I guess what’s happening is that flickr‘s audience is spreading out, losing differentiation, getting less geeky/exclusive as it grows (thanks to Yahoo!). This can’t be a bad thing but it must affect the brand, potentially destructively. Like when working class women started wearing Burberry and the brand practically imploded. I wonder if flickr’s clever, streetwise management are ready for an influx of chavs.