Flickr related change - check
User revolt with protest groups - check
A blog post from Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk, supporting the protest - check
Sometimes, I feel really sorry for Flickr. They can't seem to make *any* change without drawing the ire of some really vocal users. Here are some incidents from the top off my head
- Flickr getting acquired by Yahoo
- Flickr moving to using Yahoo's login system
- Flickr potentially getting acquired by Microsoft
Now, I love Flickr. I think Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake have created something wonderful. I've gifted Pro accounts to friends and I have some valuable photos up there. But I think there's a line between 'being vocal fans' and 'harming the site's progress'. It's almost as if a lot of people have a frozen mental image of Flickr as it was when they first joined it and want to preserve that site forever, at the cost of the site growing.
"But shouldn't Flickr stick to what it does best? Photos?"
No.
Let me illustrate with a short history lesson from Microsoft's past. Microsoft was originally a languages and tools company - BillG wrote the first BASIC interpreter. If it had stuck to just doing one thing well - languages, it would have never built Windows and Office. Similarly, a decade ago, Microsoft was primarily known as a consumer company and didn't have a credible presence on the backend. SQL Server, Exchange, IIS and the Windows Server products changed all that. At each point in time, if Microsoft had stuck to what users thought it did best, it wouldn't have grown.
In my view, Flickr users are doing Flickr a disservice if they want to shoehorn into an online photo site. I would rather see Flickr evolve beyond photos into an friendly online forum where people post creations, regardless of their nature. Flickr's management seems to understand this well - the 90-second limit on the videos is a master-stroke. It stops people turning Flickr into another Youtube and forces them to some extent to post original content.
The Thomas Hawk Affair
Thomas Hawk's involvement in each of these protests makes me a bit uncomfortable since I'm a fan of his photography and enjoy reading his blog. At the end of the day, he is the CEO of a company that competes with Flickr. For him to lead every Flickr user protest and claim that there is no conflict of interest is a bit...stretched. A friend compared this to Tom Anderson (hypothetically) protesting Facebook's beacon implementation. Even though Thomas' arguments are probably being made on good faith, the fact remains that he stands to gain from Flickr users leaving to join his service.
