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Flickr redesigned: less white space, more pictures
[March 10, 2012]

Flickr redesigned: less white space, more pictures


NEW YORK, Mar 11, 2012 (dpa - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- For years, Flickr has been the place to go online for photo enthusiasts. But lately, it has been facing increasing competition from new photo services like Twitpic and Instagram, as well as from social networking groups like Facebook. In response, Flickr has come out with a new look.



Empty white space has disappeared and the photos have become more prominent. Networking with other services has been boosted and it is now easier to use basic services, like uploading pictures, Flickr's head of product, Markus Spiering, told dpa in an interview.

"Over the course of the year, we're going to redesign the whole website," Spiering said. Those changes will start in the very near future with the contacts page, where users see pictures of their family, friends and acquaintances. "The white areas between the pictures will shrink to the minimum," he said. Instead, visitors will be faced with an automatically generated wall of pictures.


The way pictures are uploaded is also due for an overhaul. One major change is that users will be able to sort and label their picture even as, in the background, they are being uploaded. "This way you can use the wait time productively. When you're done, the pictures will be published with just a click." The navigation menu, currently heavily text-based, will also be lightened up with the use of pictures. And there will be an effort to intensify networking with other services owned by parent company Yahoo. That will make it easier, for example, to send Flickr photos with Yahoo Mail.

"Flickr is the spot for people who are primarily interested in pictures," said Spiering. That sets it apart from services like Instagram or Twitpic or Facebook, all of which also allow photos to be exchanged. "On social networks, photos pop up and then disappear pretty quickly." Nonetheless, the other services remain competitors for the 8-year-old photo platform. "Flickr is still growing despite Facebook and TwitPic," according to Spiering, a German who has lived in the US since 2007 and became Flickr's head of product last year.

Asked whether Yahoo will remain loyal to Flickr despite its financial problems, Spiering answered: "Yes, you can see that in the way we're getting money and using it to rework our site." Flickr counts 74 million users worldwide. That compares to Facebook's 845 million users, a figure which could top 1 billion sometime this year. But Spiering sees this as an opportunity: "We've worked a lot on our networking in the last year." And there's no problem posting Flickr photos on Facebook, the short messaging service Twitter or the blog service Tumblr.

But the full Flickr experience does not come for free. Setting up is free of charge, but if you want the ability to upload unlimited photos and videos, you'll have to pay an annual subscription of 24.95 dollars.

"People are ready to pay for the service," says Spiering. The attraction is that Flickr lets them store their pictures in the best resolution. "We never touch the original files." Flickr's core target group remains dedicated hobby photographers. "We have very loyal users who get out to see one another in person. I was just at a meeting in New York with 100 people." ___ (c)2012 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Distributed by MCT Information Services

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