I don’t usually read Gizmodo, because, well, it sucks. But this article is very good: How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet.
“That is the reason we bought Flickr—not the community. We didn’t give a shit about that. The theory behind buying Flickr was not to increase social connections, it was to monetize the image index. It was totally not about social communities or social networking. It was certainly nothing to do with the users.”
That right there is the telling quote. I still use Flickr as a CDN for all my photos, but I’ve considered moving them all in-house (something I’m, frankly, dreading) just in case they decide to pull the plug one day.
Update: Equally interesting is the response in this comment thread on Metafilter. As a community who identifies strongly with the old-school internet, the pro/con mixture seems split roughly down the middle.
I read this on the way into work today and the article was excellent. It’s always sad to see such creative products and their respective teams swallowed up and abused. Google is equally guilty of doing this although I’d like to think they have gotten better over time.
The verb “monetize” just gives me the heebie-jeebies in any context (and this from a future MBA!). It just smacks of exactly that…creative vampirism.
What @Renie said.