The more I’ve used G+, the less I’ve been interested in Flickr. Some of it is the interaction – it’s so much smoother in G+, it’s almost painful to use Flickr. A lot of it is just their lack of attention to detail.
Interaction is probably the largest bit. It’s easy to follow other photo producers. But leave a comment, and it’s nearly impossible to track replies to your comments. It’s fine for building a following, or a list of followers. It’s a failure for building interpersonal ties. That’s unforgiveable in the age of social media, I think.
But it’s solveable. I suppose there are third-party apps that could help, or other workarounds. Flickr could (god forbid) do some actual development of their own site. Shoot, even Facebook rolled out a bunch of features recently. If they could shift quickly, surely Flickr could?
But if Flickr were to try to adapt, I fear their lack of attention to detail would kill them. It’s a hard thing to define – why are Google’s, 500px, and others’ sites so much easier to use? Why do bugs still exist in Flickr’s interface?
The experience on other sites isn’t perfect. But Flickr – shoot, I can’t click on images in the web app. My Android phone won’t position the lightbox-enabled photo properly. That’s a pretty important piece, don’t you think?
