You know those people that are still using Windows XP and AOL dialup? I'm going to be one of those people one day. The new version of New Gmail is still confusing, I got a new phone yesterday and the keyboard is so wacky I've given up on commas, and now we've got a sorely-needed refresh of Flickr that, at least to me, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's still going to do well.
I hate dealing with redesigned user interfaces because it seems like just when you get things working the way you want, it all changes. Technology is never, ever perfect out of the box, and as such it takes awhile to tweak a system and workflow to make it actually useful. And while Yahoo has been harangued for years for letting Flickr's stagnation kill off its social aspects, it remained—at least in my eyes—the best possible place to archive and host an unlimited number of photos for $25 bucks a year.
Sure, other sites are far prettier for sharing individuals photos and portfolios, and others have better monetization opportunities. But for simply dumping everything from your hard drives to access anywhere at anytime, there's nothing better than a Flickr Pro account. A quick perusal of my own bloated, crap-filled account will prove my point. But now we've got new Flickr, and users—very likely the same ones who've been complaining about Flickr needing updating, because only serial complainers write on complaint forums—are howling. Me? I think the changes are smart on Yahoo's part, but it'll take me awhile to come around to a lot of them. Here's why.
1. The design is so retromodern it hurts
There's been a lot of talk in UI and web design lately about transitioning to flat design, signaled by skeuomorph trend setter Apple's mention that it's going to ditch the shadows and pretend notepads. Microsoft, of all companies, jumped on the trend early with Windows 8 and all its offshoots, which I have to say are clean, easy to use designs.
Flickr's new user homepage is obviously jumping on the bandwagon, and it's unfortunate that they decided to create a retina-burning homage to Windows 95's high-contrast, black-and-neon skin. (Remember how much that made you feel like a hacker from the movies, by the way?) But Flickr's been hearing for years that it needs to focus more on being a social network, and now interactions take up a whopping 80 percent of the screen. I think it's removing all emphasis from the photos themselves, but hey, someone faved my photo four months ago!
2. A terabyte is a lot of space!
I was intrigued by Zachary Seward's argument that offering a free terabyte of storage in new free Flickr accounts is better than advertising unlimited storage, because, in his eyes, a terabyte sounds a lot cooler and big than unlimited. But what, by definition, could be bigger than "unlimited"? Nothing. Don't get me wrong, Flickr offering a free terabyte of storage with unlimited monthly bandwidth is absolutely game changing. This, more than anything else, is going to make Flickr take off again, especially now that it's been hacked.
But new Flickr doesn't have anything that compares to old Pro accounts, which were $25 a year for unlimited everything. While old accounts will be grandfathered in for now and Flickr says Pro accounts will never be transitioned to Ad Free ($50 a year) or Doublr (two terabytes of storage, $500) accounts, it doesn't rule out Pro accounts being axed eventually. Again, a free terabyte with Flickr's archival tools is mind-melting. If you take photos, even casually, you should be putting them up on Flickr, like, today. But there's still no better deal for someone with a lot of pictures to back up than the old Pro account.
3. It's still a bit rough
One of the features that's really going to do well with new Flickr is its renewed emphasis on scrolling streams. People on this here internet love scrolling through hours of photos at a time, enjoying the pretty arrangements of pixels as their lives slide past in a haze of monotony. By at least giving a nod to our Pinteresty, feed-driven world, Flickr's scrolling pages make photos more fun to navigate—and favorite/Klout/socialize/whatever—which is a huge step towards regaining its vibrancy.
But the feeds go on forever (in the case of my home feed, I scrolled through my entire notification history), which means accessing the site's footer and other non-scrolling functions an exercise in sneak-attack scrolling. Also, the choices for your new cover image—which is in such a ridiculously stretched format to begin with—are limited to your most recent 50 or 100 uploaded pictures, which means you'll have to reupload an old picture to the top of your queue if you want to use it.
There are other weird little things, like how I can't figure out why my name displays twice on my profile, and when I search for things now, I tend to get a lot more content from single sources, rather than a broad mix of photographers. They aren't dealbreakers, but for such a vaunted redesign, it still needs some polish.
4. Portraits are worthless
But god damn, Flickr's new photo feeds are a huge step up. The old days involved mindless clicking through slow-loading page after page, but now it's easy to zip through tons of photos (and hopefully activate them on other social networks, right?). More than the terabyte of space that the average user will never fill up, the feeds go a long way towards making the site more useable and surfable than it's ever been.
There's just one problem: the way it's designed means wide, narrow landscape-format shots get way more feed attention that portrait or square photos. Remember back in the old Facebook days when you could make a profile photo as long as you wanted? Flickr's basically going to become that, where cropped photos as wide as the page get way more visual attention than vertical-aspect ones. This is all part of larger web trend towards landscape format photos, which get more monitor and blog column real estate than portrait formats. But for a site with a serious base of photographers, shrinking portraits is a bummer.
5. The changes are skin deep
Flickr's hit a home run with its free plan, and its new design reflects an emphasis on easy content digestion that I, at the very least, think will help it rope in more social, casual users. At this point, that's the demographic Flickr needs to go after to try to grow in an Instagram world.
But below the surface, the site hasn't changed much. Groups are still annoying to navigate, and its message board format remains the same: a dated, weird to read layout that doesn't do much to inspire discussion. Flickr still has a long way to go to up its social abilities, and it'll likely never have the same ability for clean, simple interactions like Instagram does.
That's fine, as they're totally different sites, and I'm very glad that Flickr's best features—mainly its ability to process and archive large amounts of photos quickly—remain the same, and its emphasis on high-resolution photo and video is a step up. And, yes, its long-awaited update is visually appealing.
But if becoming more social, as many message board pundits have shouted about for years, was the goal, it's put forth no more than a token effort. For me, that doesn't matter, as I never cared about Flickr as a social tool anyway. All it means is that now I've got yet another new interface to figure out. Harrumph.