At Flickr, Fending Off Rumors and Facebook

• January 31st, 2011
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  flickr

Flickr doesn’t need to — and shouldn’t — compete with Facebook’s photo features. Flickr should stick to being the best community for people that want to share photographs rather than snapshots.

“The Internet is starting to rotate around the axis of Facebook — not everything, but everything social,” Mr. Rohan said. “Yahoo and Flickr don’t really have the gravitational pull that would make Flickr the axis that they once imagined.”

Matthew Rothenberg, who heads Flickr, said he did not worry about Facebook and its growing user base, but rather about the quality of Flickr’s service. The rest, he said, will take care of itself.

“To me it’s not a numbers game,” Mr. Rothenberg said. “I think we’re trying to build the best experience that we can and make sure our users are engaged and happy — and more and more of them will sign up.”