This week has been amazing for photo sharing sites. Just for a recap:
– Instagram disabled support for Twitter cards.
– In return Twitter launched its own photo filters on iOS and Android app, though they don’t seem that natural to me but I know a lot of people will use then.
– In a surprise turn of events, Flickr launched iOS and android apps with filters and boi is that app any awesome.
Many have argued that it’s not the photo filters that makes Instagram awesome. And I agree.
It’s about the community. Everyday I look forward to a time of the day where I open my Instagram app and go through awesome pics from my timeline. I have an Instagram only time.
Which brings me to this point: Instagram should fear Flickr.
Flickr has an awesome community and a loyal one. They have stuck with the photo sharing site even though yahoo refused to pay any attention to it. They have a strong community. And now with the ease to upload pics and apply filters via their new app, the community is as happy has ever. I have already noticed some action among my friends using the app.
Few things to note:
– For Flickr to succeed, it needs to play nice with Twitter, Facebook and other social networking apps. It can’t act like Instagram here. It can’t afford to act like Instagram. It should leverage its social sharing feature.
– Flickr has an advantage of “pro” users who already pay for using the service. Hence Flickr doesn’t need to advertise to generate revenue. Instagram might soon serve ads to generate revenue and we have no clue whether the ads will be served from within the app or just on the web.
– Flickr sees tons of images uploaded on the website are taken from the iPhone. Now with an easy way to upload those photos from the the iPhone directly, maybe we will see an increase in volume.
The odds are in favor of Flickr here. Hope Yahoo is able to keep the momentum going.
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