Yesterday I was contacted by a Flickr member asking me if I knew about the redesign that was being done on Flickr. Although I’d assumed that more redesigning was coming to Flickr after earlier releases this year, I wasn’t aware of what specific changes were being implemented or considered. I’ve seen screenshots of some of the new redesign but haven’t had a chance to seriously examine it yet.
Apparently a beta group is currently testing changes to Flickr’s Global Navigation, Explore section and most significantly Groups. Rollouts of the new design have begun and some users are now seeing a different layout on Flickr.
I’ve long believed that Groups represents Flickr/Yahoo’s most significant chance for winning at social. Although it doesn’t sounds like the new Groups layout is set in stone yet, some of the comments made by beta testers would seem to suggest that more emphasis is being placed on Group photos and less emphasis on Group threads. Here are some of the comments in the thread
“That would be a complete disaster and kill off what remains of the active discussion groups on Flickr. Good luck getting new members to ever click over to the threads.
The Groups List page redesign is also, quite frankly, atrocious. Much harder to find groups, not to mention the graphics are messed up.
I will personally lead the revolt if the new group page design sticks. It will KILL any attempts to integrate new users into group discussions.”
AND
“Oh lordy, that’s terrible. The group rules page and intro is completely hidden and while the emphasis on photos is kind of nice, it completely destroys any importance of the description and the discussion.
Not liking that at all. It makes groups look about as social as a set is now. Completely wrong direction and neuters the group other than a photo collection.”
AND
“Let me rephrase that. If you go ahead, and make the groups look like what I just saw, I will mothball every group I have, log out and never log back in. This is not out of some idea that I’d be contributing to an effort to twist Flickr’s arm into doing anything, but because navigation will have broken down so badly, that the site will no longer be worth my time.”
These initial comments regarding Groups are disappointing. It sounds like Groups may be headed in the wrong direction. I’ve long been critical of Yahoo executives who can’t/won’t join Flickr publicly including current Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (Mayer posts her photos on competitor Instagram instead of on her own company’s photo sharing site Flickr). Previous CEOs Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz likewise did not have public Flickr accounts.
Part of my criticism of Yahoo execs not using Flickr is that without dogfooding it, without really digging into it, I don’t believe that they can begin to understand the promise that Groups represent for social on Yahoo. Based on early comments on the Group redesign page I’m also beginning to worry that even Flickr staffers don’t truly understand the power of social that Groups represent.
Whether or not this new Group redesign will be rolled out to other users or not remains to be seen. I’m concerned though that time/engineering/design talent wasted making Groups *less* social might just be another blunder after a long line of previous blunders made by Flickr in terms of the guesswork on what users may or may not want.
Last year Flickr rolled out a wonky photo/chat feature, for example, that was quickly killed earlier this year. Time wasted going in the wrong direction hurts Flickr and hurts their chance at social.
Photo sharing is a super competitive space and becoming more and more important. Great care should be taken to make photo sharing as social as it can possibly be. Every single step towards redesign should be asking the question, will this make Flickr more social or less social?
Although I’m not part of this beta or test group, I’m usually not one to keep my opinions to myself, so I’ve also written a companion post to this one entitled “Ways to Redesign Flickr Groups to Make Them More Social, Addictive and Powerful.”
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection