In which I try, after 25 years of blogging, to drop my ironic stance a bit.
More like this on old-school photo-sharing site Flickr. And, incidentally, I’ve been sharing my pics to Flickr for twenty years, which is making my head spin a bit. Still the only place that gives me the control I like over metadata, privacy and ownership, though. Seems crazy that Flickr still has essentially no competition, even from the brilliant, AI-assisted Google Photos and Apple iCloud.
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.