“This Is The Story Of A Wonderful Idea”

"Nothing else could touch it." (Image by Taro Taylor.)

From a great and epic post by Matt Honan at Gizmodo, which looks at how Yahoo made a wise buy, purchasing an amazing thing, Flickr, and fucked it up beyond belief:

“This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

Do you remember Flickr’s tag line? It reads ‘almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.’ It was an epic humble brag, a momentously tongue in cheek understatement.

Because until three years ago, of course Flickr was the best photo sharing service in the world. Nothing else could touch it. If you cared about digital photography, or wanted to share photos with friends, you were on Flickr.

Yet today, that tagline simply sounds like delusional posturing.” (Thanks Browser.)

 

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