It looks like the whole Instagram fiasco has hordes leaving the platform looking for a better place – somewhere with a stable TOS?
InstaWannnaBe’s are popping up here and there. Twitter announces new filters for their photo uploads and somewhere buried deep in my Feedreader I heard the buzz start about Flickr’s new Photo App. Then, like the Who’s in Whoville, it kept growing louder and louder. Ok, I’ll download yet another App (that I’ll probably never use) on my already crowded phone.
I’m an old timer at Flickr. I remember the good old days before it was gobbled up by Yahoo and then left to wither and die. Back then we had a real sense of community. We actually saw the photos others uploaded and had discussions about them. Ahh, the good old days.
Flickr really has a new App. Yahoo actually spent money for developers to create an app? Good for you Marissa Mayer!
I downloaded the App and shot the first thing I saw, our christmas tree. No staging, no lighting – just snap and go.
The Flickr App has filters as well. These days every app has to have filters. I slap a filter on it, give it a title and description and publish it. Let’s see what happens…
I connected my Facebook Profile to the App as well so it also published to my Timeline. What an App does (on your behalf) on social networks is very important.
The picture went up pretty easily to both platform. On Flicker it shows my title and description just like I created it. On Facebook the Title ended up buried in the post metadata and the Description – that became an ‘ALT’ tag of the title. That means that 99% of the people on Facebook will never see the title nor the description you use.
As an App, I’m not impressed. What does it do? It uploads my pictures. It allows me to put a filter on it to mask my inability to take artful photos in the first place. Nothing ground breaking there.
Here’s the one shining ray of sunshine I spotted. The home screen of the app has a news feed. I can see what my friends have liked, comments they’ve left and who’s added who to the fold. Could this one feature bring back that sense of community from the old Flickr? Is it too late? Or is it destined to be just another InstaWannnaBe?
Right now, I’m not sure. Let’s see what happens.
UPDATE: Somewhat related…
Flickr just rewarded Pro users an extra 3 months. That’s not something you see with a dying company is it?
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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