The Pervasive Data Center

I don't get it.

We have all manner of Web 2.0 properties to cater to just about every sort of online need. I'm not going to name any specific site--any such would be either completely obscure or wildly controversial--but you know what I mean.

However, bookmarking seems to have remained a backwater. There are apparently a lot of sites that are connected with bookmarking in some way. (See, for example, the bookmarking category on this list.) However, the best one can say is that no newcomer has gained any real traction and the sort-of-known--at least within the geek crowd--have done remarkably little over the past few years. In fact, I'm struck that essentially nothing has changed since this 2004 James Governor post. 3+ years is an eternity in Web 2.0.

A del.icio.us 2.0 is in preview; perhaps that will make this discussion moot. The oddly-named del.icio.us certainly appears to be the best-known and have the most critical mass of the social book mark sites. It's just that it hasn't changed in ages. (It's a Yahoo property, story sound familiar?)

From my perspective, the social aspect of these sites is almost secondary. Yes, there are a few friends whose bookmarks I keep an eye on. And, when tagging, seeing what the "crowd" has used as tagging terms can help you stay consistent. But I don't view the storage of bookmarks as primarily a social or sharing activity.

I mostly use del.icio.us to store bookmarks for my own use and to generate blog posts such as this one. Today, that means dealing with homemade scripts and a strictly limited number of characters in the comments or notes about a link. Nor does del.icio.us provide any real organizational tools to easily consolidate or change tags.

In short, bookmarking is such an obvious "cloud" application; a bookmark isn't much use without an Internet connection. (Permanently saving the content of pages is another topic that I view as largely independent of this one.) Yet it's an application space that has been poorly served by "Web 2.0" to date.

I apparently ruffled some feathers among Flickerites (of which I'm one by the way), when I suggested last week that maybe it wouldn't be so terrible were someone else, even Microsoft, to take a shot at upgrading a service given that Yahoo has shown so little inclination to do so.

Now, I'm by no means convinced that Microsoft is the right company for this particular job. At the same time, I can't help but feel that Flickr has largely stagnated--even if that stagnation feels safe and comfortable to a lot of current users.

There's no doubt that Flickr has some good things going for it:

1. It's a "best seller" in a world where network effects are important. The reasons why it got here aren't especially important. What is important is that it's become the obvious go-to photo-sharing site for much of the world.
2. And, as the mail I've received confirms, it's not just a large community but an often passionate one. A lot of people like not so much Flickr itself, but the network of people who use Flickr to hang out with each other.
3. Flickr has a decent application program interface (API) that allows developers to extend the site in a variety of ways. For example, companies like Zazzle, QOOP, and MOO now offer to print photographs on Flickr using those APIs. Indeed, there's more variety from these third parties using Flickr than is available on many of the sites like Hewlett-Packard's Snapfish, whose main raison d'etre is printing.
4. The free membership option is fairly limited but it lets you try out everything on the site. And the price of the $25 per year "pro" membership is hard to beat when you consider that it doesn't come with either upload or storage limits.
5. Finally, it has some nice extras. CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland recently gave Flickr the best grades for its ability to "geotag" photos with location information. It also has hierarchical sets--that is, it lets you put sets within larger collections--a nice organizational aid as the number of photos you have online grows.

If it sounds like I'm generally positive on Flickr, that's because I am. But it does have some non-trivial shortcomings--especially for users who want greater control over the use of their photos.

1. Today, there are limited mechanisms (essentially one hard-to-find global setting) to control which resolutions of photos the general public, your friends, and your contacts can view and thereby download. This is a serious issue for photographers who are happy to put photos up on Flickr but want to control access to higher resolution versions.
2. No archiving of RAW/DNG originals. This is related to the item above. I see Flickr as serving an off-site archiving function in addition to a share-my-photos one. PhotoShelter is one site that provides this ability. It would even seem like a good incremental revenue opportunity for Flickr.
3. No integrated security watermarking. This continues on the protect-photo-use theme. There are workarounds using APIs external to Flickr but this is a common feature on sites that cater more explicitly to pros.
4. A largely "Web 1.0" look and feel. This is a general observation that Flickr hasn't changed much over the past few years. New settings get buried deep in tabs within tabs. And there's precious little of the sort of interactivity that characterizes many newer sites. (In other words, you largely have to click through to see anything rather than getting a preview when you mouseover a location, for example.)
5. You can't export most of your data. This is part of a much broader Web 2.0 problem that I won't deal with at length here. Suffice it to say that, although photos can be exported through APIs, nothing else (comments, descriptions that aren't part of the photo itself, contacts) can. It's a complicated issue. What data belongs to you? What does information like contacts mean outside of a Flickr context? Suffice it to say that Flickr may not have done less than others to resolve some of these issues but it hasn't done more.

I like Flickr. I do. But it could be much more than it is. Yes, the wrong kind of change could ruin it. But it also can't continue on in essentially a stasis field for the long term.

There are probably too many electrons already being spilt today on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo. Rather than delving into the $45 billion aspects of the deal, I'm going to specifically discuss Flickr, Yahoo's popular photo sharing service.

Flickr hasn't been a big part of the general online buzzing about this proposed deal. In part, this is doubtless because it's a small part of Yahoo's financials. It's probably also because most people have at best a vague awareness that Flickr is even a part of Yahoo. Yahoo bought Flickr and has largely left it alone.

However, as Josh Gilbertson notes over on Wired, many Flickr users are "freaking out"--as indeed they also did when Yahoo acquired the company originally.

Josh goes on to write:

One the reasons for concern is that Microsoft's Web properties, while they have their share of adherents, are not exactly leading the pack in terms of UI design, functionality and ease of use, which form the cornerstones of Flickr's popularity.

Another interesting aspect of Microsoft's proposed deal is that Microsoft does not typically go after consumer services like Flickr, which creates a lot of uncertainty for Flickr's future should Yahoo shareholders agree to the acquisition offer.

If Microsoft does buy Yahoo, I suspect that the situation for Flickr will be different from their original acquisition by Yahoo. Under Yahoo, Flickr was largely left to go its own way. As photographer Dan Heller noted in a lengthy post about Flickr and Yahoo just a couple of days ago:

In any event, the conversation went pretty simply: Flickr is really regarded as a completely autonomous tech group with no orders or objectives to do anything other than be a fun place for people to come and socialize about their photos. They have no financial responsibilities back to the mother ship, and Stewart is free to do whatever he wants, with no long-term objectives. When I asked whether there (were) any plans to ever get into licensing or other forms of monetizing its content, he said that Stewart has thought about it, but they are enjoying what they're doing too much and such a move has dubious financial returns in a market already dominated by other very successful companies.

So what I think the various Flickerites are so upset about is that Microsoft might not leave them alone as Yahoo has done.

I think they're right. The question is whether that's such a bad thing.

Contra Josh Gilbertson above, I'm not inclined to give Flickr all that much credit for "UI design, functionality, and ease of use." For example, as CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland notes:

For a Web 2.0 powerhouse, Flickr feels awfully Web 1.0. At least that was my conclusion after spending a few hours in the chat rooms of Photophlow, a start-up that grafts a highly interactive experience on top of Yahoo's photo-sharing Web site.

Flickr has been equally plodding at integrating any number of commonplace features to selectively control access to high-resolution versions of photographs or to institute security watermarks in any form. The shortcomings (and strengths) of Flickr are matters for another post I've been meaning to write. But, suffice it to say, one shouldn't confuse the fact that Flickr is popular in large part because it built up a big community for largely historical reasons with the fact that Flickr is a platform that's objectively great.

(Much the same could be said in spades for del.icio.us--Yahoo's social bookmarking service.)

None of this is to say that Microsoft won't mess things up if they acquire Yahoo and Flickr. But Flickr needs work and Yahoo hasn't helped much either.