Flickr used to be fun. It started small in 2004. The atmosphere and group discussions were great fun. Among the users where many creative spirits. In a few years Flickr became popular and grew bigger, then it was bought by Yahoo. Do remember the Chinese dissidents and human rights when you say Yahoo. How many Chinese citizens are now in jail because of information Yahoo provided to the Chinese government?
Because Yahoo bought Flickr every member was forced to set up a Yahoo account to be able to sign into their Flickr account. Flickr Yankeefied further when earlier this year several countries where massively censored because they were not allowed to turn the safe search filter off (Germany, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore). Many Flickr members left Flickr for other sites like Zooomr or Ipernity because Flickr staff did not resolve this issue in a satisfying way.
So nowadays Flickr is not so special anymore. Too many people and too little creativity. This week I made almost all of my pictures private. You will not be able to see those unless I can give you access by adding you and your Flickr account as a ‘friend’. Let me now if you want to see all my pics, send me a message and we’ll see…
Flickr now is the database where I store pictures for friends and family, it is not the cool network site it used to be. So many people, so many group discussions and photo pools but all this does not inspire me as it did before…