It has been a long time since I have posted a rant. Sure, there have been many things that have crawled under my skin recently, but nothing that even begins to equal what Flickr has done to its site. They have taken a rather nice “museum wall” feel and converted it into a garish graffiti-splattered nightclub wall that detracts from the images there. The thousands who clung to Flickr because it kept a moderate and clean standard for photo presentation were smacked in the face this morning!

The fact that, as a developer, I can write all sorts of software and use all kinds of tricks doesn’t mean that I have to trot out all my skills at once. This is the feel one gets from the new website, a heavyweight behemoth that is more a front for technological ability than as a resting-place for showcased photos. One wonders if the folks at Flickr/Yahoo even convened focus groups and if they did, who were invited? Ugh! I am still shuddering at the thought of the site.

Dearest Flickr: What were you thinking? Please understand the clientele that uses you over all the umpteen other sharing sites like Photobucket, Picasa, and Shutterfly. Most of your Pro users have chosen Flickr because they want to share their photos in a clean environment, comment and read comments easily, interact with their contacts, and do everything simply even while on the run. Many of us did not particularly like the heavyweight “new Uploadr” but we appreciated the fact that when we needed lightweight, we could use the simpler, earlier design. I believe that you are seeing a massive backlash against the junk you unleashed today. While most of us, for years past, have never even considered looking for the names of other photo sharing sites – today, our search pages are cranked up as we look for something better….

Ok, that is out of my system now…well, not really. Hey, here is an idea! The photo sharing site that creates a reasonable (former) Flickr-like feel and can create an importer tool that will connect to Flickr and suck down photos, comments, sets, and so on and cross post them will have a solid chance to get tens or hundreds of thousands of customers in short order.