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Comment by rhizome | Hacker News Reader

Flickr had a major interface refresh a couple of years ago, and I'm also pretty sure Flickr has lots and lots of paying customers. So, it may have already "panned out," in a "don't mess with success" sense, depending on what that means in the context of Tumblr.

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Flickr updated their site a few months ago along with the release with their new iPhone app. It still doesn't feel like a modern site and it doesn't work as well as it should.

Supposedly there is a new Flickr being shown off tomorrow and hopefully Yahoo rebuilt the site from the ground up.

Yeah, the overall UX has needed updating for quite some time, but I also imagine their paying customers (photo nuts) are some of the pickier users out there. I wouldn't be surprised if the best course for Flickr is to be as conservative with changes as possible.

Even if it's the best course, it might still wreck on the coral reef cruft of dead accounts and abandoned groups. Flickr has been in decline for a while. I doubt incremental changes could bring it back.

dead accounts and abandoned groups don't pay for their accounts. those who do pay are the picky users.

It needs an overhaul, but it does what I need, which is share a few hundred images, broken up into sets. I've tried a couple other sites and apps, and haven't switched yet.

It does what everybody needs at this point but people have drifted towards services like Instagram because it is so well thought out and easy to use.

In a lot of ways most people are looking for what Flickr offers but refuse to use it. They want privacy, a place to back up their full-resolution smartphone photos and for a very cheap price.

Depending how much you trust Google's privacy settings, doesn't Google+ fit that bill? I don't think it's what photographers really want, but it sounds like a solid alternative.

Do professional photographers use Instagram? That's Flickr's bread and butter.

What the heck does Flickr actually need? Social garbage? No thanks. Just let me put my fucking photos somewhere. I'm a paying customer for like 6 years, it does exactly what I want. The only feature Flickr needs to work on is making uploads from my editing app easy. Everything else can go take a flying fuck off a short pier.

If there aren't enough paying customers then yes, it does need to add new features to attract new users.

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