Darn! I was sure flickr had more potential than Orkut and represents a step forward for social networking services. It's pretty slick and full-featured and there's more to do with pix exchange and live chat, but it's idling near zero right now. The bulletin boards aren't active, for one. There's a small group of regulars online, but that's about it.
Another sign of inactivity is that most of the same pix from two weeks ago are still at the top of the most popular pix list. This is a problem for a service that is named for its pix exchange capability and the pix aren't even very good yet.
I was hoping for a surge of interest, but no. I'm wondering what happened. Is live chat more threatening? Yes. Does it take more to get used to it? Probably. Does nobody know what to do with the pix exchange capability? Seems so. Is chat more of a 25 and under phenomenon that doesn't match up with the maybe slightly older age group that's exploring social networking services? Or do people who want live chat already have themselves set up with those facilities and not see the need to go somewhere online to chat?
Maybe it's just that the Orkut surge was so recent and people aren't ready to start all over again with Flickr. And certainly, the energy from Flickr itself, other than a promising start, is weak at best. The most recent post on Flickr's news page was on Feb 13th when the service went beta. I'll bet some backend work is being done, but the stuff you see on the surface appears to be the same. Energy absent.
One of the interesting problems Flickr may have is that their core users are players of The Game Neverending and my guess is that these gamers would rather be playing GNE than chatting on flickr. I would rather be playing GNE than chatting on Flickr but it's not *out* yet.
There's a strong place for Flickr, though. If you want to work with others, collaborate, socialize and chat with a focus on real world topics rather than fantasy, you need a non-fantasy networking service of some kind. So now how do you take the state-of-the-art tools of real-time gaming and enliven a social networking environment? How do you add more fun and flare and enable people to more easily get to know each other, throw ideas around, share experience, collaborate and create?
I, at least, don't know how to do that on Flickr. What all can you do with photos and little pix? You could exchange pix of rock, sports and movie stars I suppose. You could show people what your town looks like. You could show people what you are seeing right now while you are traveling or somewhere where something interesting is happening. You can always whip out your family and pet photos in a *getting to know you* conversation. You could keep your favorite book and album cover images in your shoebox and illustrate your conversations with them. That might be fun.
One reason I might not have a very good *second* impression of Flickr is that, given the meager population so far, I'm mostly interacting with strangers without context because the only place where you can find people online right now is at Flickr Central and to a lesser extent Flickr Ideas unless you've set-up a *meeting* in advance.
It gets interesting when you *meet* someone you know and like for the first time like I did when I *met* Dina Mehta online. One thing Flickr is in need of is more people so that you anticipate having these happy serendipitous encounters more often.
So, for now, Flickr is flatlining. If you see signs that Flickr is firing up, please let me know. I would love to be there when that happens.