Flickr has taken a lot of heat this past week, and I will be less polite than Michael, my co-blogger. He asks if "Flickr Messed Up?" Michael attributes this to flickr trying to compete with Pinterest, here. Michael may well be correct. But, I have another view or two, having followed this for the past week. That said, we may both be correct in some measure First, some background. Users who woke up to discover the "new and improved" site wondered if it had been beta tested. Apparently it had, in a manner of speaking, starting two weeks previously. Users had been chosen at random to participate in a "bucket test", and as far as I can tell, agreed. Wow, they apparently did not know what they were in for, and were seriously unhappy. Virtually every complaint I've read from those who woke up to the "new and improved" site was mentioned by those involved in the "bucket test". You can read all comments here and here. C...

Sorry for the language (now deleted on reflection ;)) but Flickr's response to Pinterest displacing it as the number one photo website was to change the site and as far as I am concerned it is a failure. Flickr did not have to make radical changes to the presentation of their site. It was very efficient the way it was. Now it is more difficult to navigate and more importantly in runs more slowly because the thumbnails are much larger. It runs too slowly and feels cramped. It took me about 10 minutes of fiddling around to work out how to delete an image. I wanted to change the header but had to upload an image to my photostream and use that and then delete the image from my photostream. It worked but...what a palaver. Perhaps there is an easier way but it wasn't obvious. Then when I right click on an image the menu comes up and disappears. This must be a coding problem. My computer is top of the range and everything is up to date. OK. Flickr, please don't panic and...

Pinterest is a modern image based phenomenon that is founded upon copyright violations while Flickr is proper and decent and far better. Therefore Google should place Flickr above Pinterest. This is yet to happen but it will eventually as people come to learn that Pinterest is deeply flawed. If I am being brutally honest, I feel that Google has failed in its search facility in respect of Pinterest as Google is indirectly supporting copyright violations while failing to properly support a website that is more respectful of intellectual property rights: Flickr. Pinterest allows people to upload any picture - literally anything from any website irrespective of whether it is copyright protected or a creative commons image allowing unlimited publication or whether it is in the public domain. The problem is people don't understand the difference and Pinterest knows that. Flickr is far more controlled and employs extensive protection for images while at the same time allow...