April 10th, 2008
Fickr user revolt; Why I deleted my twitter account
The social web weekly: a quick-fire roundup of some of the news, announcements and conversations that have occurred throughout the week…
Flickr video feature spurs online revolt. Not all that surprising to see a mini user revolt after Flickr finally added video uploads. A segment of the user base is unhappy for fear that the photosharing site will lose focus and “turn into another YouTube”. A Flickr group has been set up called “NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!!” and has, at the time of posting, nearly 8,500 members. Additionally, there’s a petition that calls for the video feature to be removed. And, as is usual in these matters, long time Flickr user and CEO of competitor site Zooomr, Thomas Hawk, has chimed in: “With the huge user base that Flickr represents, the opportunity to promote video to this group from a dollars/cents standpoint probably means more to Yahoo! than how a small but vocal group of hardcore Flickr photographers feel about the service.” In many respects I agree with Hawk, adding video is a smart business move for Flickr, and the protesters are a “small but vocal group”. However, I think the restrictions that Flickr have added to video uploads - 90 seconds in length and available to Pro (paying) users only - will prove enough to mitigate the protesters’ fears.
Why I deleted my twitter account. I didn’t close my twitter account but cartoonist, marketer and author Hugh MacLeod has done. He says that he finds it “too easy”, and in a brilliant cartoon depicts how uncreative it is compared to longer form blogging and lots of other things he could be spending his time on. Of course, for the same reason that MacLeod says he’s leaving the service, Twitter has taken off. Neil McIntosh (head of editorial development at Guardian Unlimited) hit the nail on the head in a post titled Twiter may have crossed the chasm, where he described the service as “cheap” in terms of effort required from the user. Combined with the ‘instant gratification’ you get whenever you log-in to Twitter (i.e. updated content), the barriers to entry are much lower compared with many other forms of online publishing.
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
