Flickr: Yahoo black hole swallowed image community crown

Flickr's dead image of a Flickr user hanging out on the site Sina Tech Zheng from Silicon Valley this week's biggest tech news is Facebook's $1 billion trillion acquisition of photo-Instagram. The blockbuster news has sparked a global sensation, and Twitter and Sina Weibo are rife with discussions about the deal. Instagram is seen as a triumph of entrepreneurial miracles and picture socializing. In the hustle and bustle of the photo-studio, a once brilliant website is extremely lonely: Flickr. Once upon a time, Flickr was the crown of the field of picture sharing. This is the world's largest photo gallery, gathered in fine-quality, content professional pictures, attracted the best photographers and photography enthusiasts, Getty and other professional photo company partners. In contrast to the Instagram, many people ask the same question: What if Flickr wasn't sold to Yahoo? Sadly, today's Flickr has gone through its golden days, and has become a niche site for photographers, under the impact of mobile internet and social networking sites. Tech blog TechCrunch even wrote last August that Flickr was dead. Once a picture community crown in February 2004, Canadian couple entrepreneur Stewart Buttfield (Stewart Butterfield) and Katrina Fick (Caterina Fake) couple started Flickr in Vancouver. Their company Ludicorp originally intended to create a large multiplayer online game, the never-ending game (Game neverending), and Flickr is just a by-product of the game. At the beginning of the creation, Flickr was more focused on real-time image exchange based on the multiplayer chat function, and then as the image storage requirements of the growing, the site focus shifted to provide users with image upload service. 2004 is the gradual popularization of digital cameras in the era, like photography of the Internet users need a picture community to share their works, Exchange photography experience. Flickr meets this market demand, provides a more professional picture service, and thus rapidly developed into the most important network image area. On Flickr's fastest-growing period, in March 2005, internet giant Yahoo bought Flickr for 35 million dollars, and the site moved from Canada to the United States. The deal was once seen as a winning game, and Buttfield that Flickr would get more resources and better space in Yahoo's hands. Yahoo, which is dedicated to providing a full range of internet services, wants to use Flickr to improve its image service experience. After joining the internet giant Yahoo, Flickr quickly became the world's largest photo-store. Yahoo Photo also gradually abandoned its own Yahoo photo album, will flickR set for own picture portal. Flickr's positioning is to provide the best picture sharing experience, so the quality and content of uploaded images made specific provisions, but also divided into ordinary and pay two levels. Initially ordinary free users can only upload 20MB of pictures per month, as digital camera pixels continue to rise, this limit has been unable to meet the quality of the upload demand for exquisite pictures, Flickr then in December 2006 to adjust the upper limit to 100MB, while eliminating the upload limit for paid users ( 2GB per month). Since 2008, Flickr has launched a video upload function. At the height of Flickr, it was seen as the most professional image site. The world's leading photographers are willing to upload their work to Flickr, empowering the photo studio and business users via Flickr. And photography enthusiasts will share their most favorite works to Flickr, and other enthusiasts to discuss. According to comscore, Flickr had more than 44 million individual visitors per month in the first quarter of 2008, when analysts said Flickr was valued at least 4 billion dollars. Flickr, together with Yahoo Finance, is considered to be Yahoo's best asset and one of the most successful acquisitions. Mobile Internet has a strong impact but the rise of mobile internet and social networking sites has changed everything. Since Apple launched the iphone in 2007, smartphones have become increasingly popular around the world, and photo-taking functions have also been rising. From the original 2 million pixel to the current mainstream of 8 million pixel or even more than 40 million (Nokia's latest smartphone 818), the smartphone has been gradually approaching the quality of the card digital camera, a portable camera. In the mobile phone photo function promotion, the smart phone on a variety of photo processing applications also bring users a personalized choice, Instagram, camera+ and other applications of the filter function is the best representative. Ordinary users no longer need the same as in the past, with a digital camera after taking photos through the desktop PS software processing, now touch the phone screen can do whatever they want to do the desired effect. Instagram application launched 18 months, the number of registered users has exceeded 35 million, and the Android version of the application launched only a week to get 5 million users. Given that Android has 300 million users worldwide, Instagram's future growth is more frightening, with a conservative estimate that at least 60 million of its users will reach the end of the year. Picture, in the Android Market has not been fully developed under the premise of the current daily photo upload Instagram has reached 5 million. Facebook, on the other hand, rose rapidly and became the world's largest social networking site in 2009. Sharing life with friends is the core idea of Facebook, and the picture is undoubtedly the most important sharing experience. With Flickr, PicasaAnd so on the picture upload the website The charge mode is different, the Facebook provides the user to provide the free unlimited picture to upload the service, encourages the user to upload own life photograph to the website, communicates with the friend. For ordinary netizens, perhaps their photos are not artistic and aesthetic, but it is a true portrayal of the specific life. Relatives, pets, parties, food, these insipid photos behind the social networking site is the core cornerstone of the rise, they are eager to their own photos of relatives and friends of the comments. Facebook currently active users to break through 800 million people, the number of images uploaded 250 million a day, last year, the total amount of pictures uploaded has reached 70 billion, the market is expected to now this figure has reached about 120 billion. By contrast, the 8-year-old Flickr (official data for the beginning of the year) has 51 million users, an independent user of 81 million people, less than 10 billion photos, an annual increase of 1 billion photos, just equivalent to Facebook's 4-day growth rate. But the trend is more dire than the status quo, with recent figures showing that the number of independent user visits to Flickr last December fell by 20% to 18.08 million (compete.com data). The wrong idea of positioning Facebook and Instagram may not be the best picture-sharing community, and the quality and artistry of mobile phone photos cannot be compared with professional SLR cameras, but the huge potential of mobile camera and portable sharing is unmatched by high-end Flickr. In the face of great opportunities and changes, Yahoo is clinging to traditional internet thinking, which has a direct impact on Flickr's operating culture, and does not adapt to the need for timely adjustment. As early as August 2009, the iphone has replaced Canon digital SLR as the most popular camera for Flickr users, if the phone counts as a camera. Official figures show that the iphone 4 and iphone 4S are ranked in the top two of Flickr's most common cameras, followed by Canon 5D2 and Nikon D90. But Flickr and Yahoo have been blind to the huge demand for mobile phone photos. Flickr launched its official Flickr client at the end of 2009, and still has only a simple photo-uploading function for more than two years, and after the Instagram, Flickr clients still don't have any filter and post-processing capabilities, Nor did it effectively integrate social functions into iphone clients. Looking at Flickr at Apple's App Store, you can see more unofficial apps that better integrate Flickr's image community. Flickr mobile clients are significantly different from the Instagram user experience in early filming and image processing as well as in late-stage photo-making. Even if Yahoo is in decline, the ability to develop will never be lost to the two founders of Instagram. The disregard for the new demand for mobile internet is Yahoo's step in FLIckr to the roots of the recession. And Flickr itself has lost the power of innovation, the Web page has been unchanged for many years, the new Tim features few, very little initiative based on user needs to make changes, the home page shows that the picture is not close to the user's social needs. In the social marketplace, Flickr users have been turning to more socially available, free picture services such as Facebook. Matthew Rothenberg, the Flickr head, appeared to have Rotenberg the cause of Flickr's decline early last year. He said he was not worried about Facebook, and we tried to provide the best user experience we could, to make sure our users were satisfied and that more users would be using Flickr. Rotenberg said. Speaking of the rapidly rising Instagram, Rotenberg said that Instagram made it interesting and convenient to take pictures of the phone, as if it were a toy camera, but the user would eventually upload the image to Flickr. We don't need to focus on the apps that occupy every smartphone, because there are many different apps that can upload Flickr. The ultimate goal of Flickr, he says, is to get users to pick up the simple happy experience of sharing photos before the digital age. Yahoo's devouring black hole soldier bear One, will bear a nest, in recent years Yahoo seems to be a ruthless black hole, buy high-quality assets into the Yahoo family will fall into recession, 2006 spent 20 million dollars to buy the social bookmarking service delicious in the hands of Yahoo. Only less than 1 million users were left in the second half of last year and sold to YouTube founder Chen. Chen has said to Sina technology, trading prices themselves are embarrassed to disclose. Flickr is better than delicious, but it is equally regrettable. In June 2008, Flickr founder Buttfield and his wife announced that they would leave Yahoo and restart their video game business. Explaining the reason for his departure, he said that Yahoo did not provide the resources needed for Flickr's development, and that the company's severe bureaucracy led to slow decision-making. He regretted selling Flickr to Yahoo, and we missed out on a lot of opportunities, and if Flickr was financing and keeping its own, it wouldn't be the case. Google's takeover of YouTube seems to be a clear difference. After Google's 1.65 billion dollar takeover of YouTube in 2006, YouTube continued to operate as an independent unit at its former headquarters in San Mateo, where Google provided only strategic planning and resource support. "Employees can feel YouTube is one of Google's most important assets and enjoy the same perks as Google's headquarters staff, but also retain the gumption and incentive to operate as an independent department," said one YouTube employee to Sina Technology. and Flickr and other good assets merged into Yahoo, it seems to be in the mire of Yahoo. HighThe level does not pay attention, the employee loses the enterprise, the business decision is slow, cannot respond to the market change in time, lacks the resources support, is forced to put on the profit yoke. And Yahoo's years of sluggish performance and constant negative news have also hit Flickr employees ' enthusiasm, and excellent employees are moving to other companies. In this case, the coolest Flickr has become as lifeless as the parent Yahoo. Early last year, the industry was rumoured to be selling Flickr, while Yahoo Chief product Officer Black Elvin (Blake Irving) and Flickr chief architect Carl Henderson (Cal Henderson) Each denied the news, highlighting Flickr's profitability. It is clear that Yahoo executives rarely mention Flickr in public, nor do they publicly use Flickr personally to support it. Flickr has been saddled with heavy profit pressures as it continues to invest in the future as Google fills YouTube's losses for years. Yahoo's financial crisis has made it impossible for the company to provide more support for Flickr, and Flickr must be self-financing to not be abandoned by Yahoo. The premature burden of earning pressure is a major cause of MySpace's loss to Facebook on social networking sites, as did the same tragedy on Flickr. Yahoo has been trying to push Flickr to make a profit. Flickr sets a picture upload limit for ordinary users, and it costs 25 dollars a year to continue using it. In addition, Flickr also earns revenue through advertising on the Web site and by signing with photo agencies such as Getty. Compared to the tens of millions of of revenue earned each year, Flickr loses the opportunity to develop social networking sites, handing markets and users to Facebook or Instagram. Selling is the best release undeniable, Flickr is still the most professional photo site for photography enthusiasts, the artistic and overall quality of the picture is significantly higher than Facebook or Instagram, many pictures have reached the magazine level. But with the dual impact of mobile internet and social networking sites, Flickr's image sharing experience on the Web page is not as good as Facebook, and the market has been ceded to Instagram on the mobile side, and the landslide is helpless. After Facebook announced a takeover of Instagram, Twitter posted a very broad post saying: "With Facebook's 1 billion dollars, the Instagram guys are finally buying an SLR, and you can send a map to Flickr later, Instagram left Facebook's brain-crippled women to upload their big breasts. Although the extreme, but it can reflect the superior mentality of Flickr users. Unfortunately the Internet market is always a mediocre public, the trend of smartphones replacing professional cameras as the main source of pictures has beencannot be replaced, Facebook's acquisition of Instagram is also a fancy for the strong potential of the latter in the Mobile picture field. According to the April issue of National Geographic, the US had 37% of photos taken from camera phones last year, compared with 50% by 2015. Stifel, Nicolaus & Company analyst Jordan Rohan (Jordan Rohan) believes that social networking has become the core of the Internet, which is the main reason why Facebook became a upstart in Silicon Valley, Yahoo and Flickr are not able to push their services to meet the needs of the times. After Facebook acquired Instagram, it realized the overall dominance of the web-end to mobile-end photo-delivery. Another force to be reckoned with is Pinterest. In March this year, the Pinterest web site visited 104 million times, second only to Twitter's 182 million rankings, and Facebook was ahead of 70多亿次 's visit. The two-year Web site allows users to pin images of other pages to Pinterest sites for sharing and socializing. Similar to the disappointment of a loyal user at the time of Kodak's bankruptcy, Flickr has gradually become a small community of photographic enthusiasts. Highbrow, but struggling to seek profits to survive. Perhaps the best relief for Flickr is to be sold by Yahoo, looking for a new owner with the determination and resources to support its continued development while moving to the mobile internet. Google has integrated Picasa and social product Google +, do they need Flickr? After Instagram was bought, a Twitter user said sadly: "I want Facebook to take Instagram seriously and not kill Flickr like Yahoo." The image community crown Flickr has been declining in Yahoo's black hole, as it has in the old days of MySpace and Friendster.