If Yahoo! wants Flickr to remain relevant in an increasingly interconnected world, it’s essential that it it work with third-party developers to enable easy sharing of Flickr-hosted content on Twitter. Post-haste!
An open letter to Carol Bartz, Yahoo! CEO; Roy Bostock, Yahoo! Board Chairman; Jerry Yang, Yahoo! Co-Founder:
It’s not easy to share a photo posted on Flickr when using popular Twitter applications like TweetDeck (desktop) or Twitter (iPhone or Android) because Flickr is not listed as a “service” that these applications will use to upload my images. I am asking Yahoo! to work with third-party developers to enable easy sharing of Flickr-hosted content on Twitter.
Flickr is the most photographer-friendly photo-sharing website. It allows photographers to easily customize rights using Creative Commons licenses, and it prohibits commercial use of photographs without express approval of a Flickr member. (see Who Really Owns Your Photos in Social Media? and its companion table, http://j.mp/photo-sharing-tos)
No micro-photo-sharing site (those that easily support sharing mobile photos) provides the Creative Commons licensing options that I have on Flickr. But because these sites — like TwitPic, yFrog, Instagram and MobyPicture — integrate seamlessly with Twitter third-party applications, they — not Flickr — are where new photographers are setting up accounts and sharing images.
Mobile is the next stage of growth for the web, both for viewing and creating media. Flickr integration with Twitter would make both Flickr and Yahoo! relevant in the mobile space. It’s where I want to easily share the photos I take on my iPhone — but right now, you don’t make it easy for me. So, like many others, I reluctantly default to another service.
It’s not too late for Flickr to be relevant in mobile sharing, if you act today.
Kathy E Gill, Lynnwood WA
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Note: I tried my darndest to use Change.org to create this. Well, I created it there (ie, I composed it there) but every time I tried to publish it, the site logged me out then demanded that I create a new account. I thought the problem was Safari, so I tried Chrome. No joy with either one.
