Looking For Renewed Focus, Flickr Crops Out Picnik & Axes A Handful Of Features

This year some big changes are coming to Flickr, the popular Yahoo! owned photo-sharing site.  Flickr has been somewhat forgotten in the social ecosystem lately as Google+, Pinterest and Instagram have drawn the most attention.   The current Flickr user tends to be skilled or professional photographers who take pride in photos instead of the casual majority who shoot on a smartphone.

In a post by Markus Spiering,  Head of Product at Flickr,  the upcoming changes were explained and he stated:

…we are starting 2012 with a renewed sense of focus. This means discontinuing certain features that are not core to our product or that haven’t resonated with you. Since the upcoming new experiences will either require, or work significantly better, with modern browsers, we will also discontinue supporting some of the older browsers that only a very small percentage of people are using with Flickr.

Some of the changes that will be rolled out this year include:

• Moving Away From Picnik 
  The use of Picnik, the editing software that allows users to edit Flickr photos within the site, will be discontinued in 2012.  While Flickr will be moving away from Picnik, they will not be moving away from editing all-together, rather looking for a new solution.  Flickr had a partnership with picnik and had used as the default editor since 2007.

• Discontinuation Of Photo Session
  The real-time group sharing element, Photo Session, will be discontinued as of March 20th due to a low adoption rate.  Some of the functionality will however be replicated into other sections of the site including mobile pages and tablet pages.

• Removal of Flickr Clock
  Flickr clock was a format of displaying current content from around the world in a visually appealing format.  It will however be terminated within a few days.

• Discontinued Support For Win7 Slate Tablets
  Flickr will continue to create apps and support Windows Phones, but the Touch PC version will not be supported after March 20th.

• IE 7 And Firefox 3.6 Support
  Due to the low level of usage, Flickr will push users on these outdated browsers to update and will no longer develop to work on these versions.  Those still using these outdated browsers may still view the site, but will not be considered in future development.

These changes should help the Flickr team focus on new tasks and initiatives .  Expect to see new changes, features and functionality rolling out soon  to your Flickr account!

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.