New Year's Cleaning at Flickr

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 16 Jan 2012

The team behind popular image hosting site Flickr announced that it is starting 2012 with a “renewed sense of focus” and a bit of New Year’s cleaning. What that means is that features that didn’t go well with the public and features that are not core to Flickr, will be discontinued.

Photo Session, the feature that provided a real-time way to share photos with other people without the need to install any apps, will be discontinued for the simple reason that it has not seen the user adoption Flickr was hoping for. Photo Session will be turned off by March 20th and the technology behind it will be used in other parts of Flickr. March 20th also marks the date when support for Flickr for Windows 7 Slate PCs will be discontinued. The Flickr team will focus on the Windows Phone app instead.

Flickr will also move away from Picnik, the photo-editing site acquired by Google in March 2010, and the now outdated FlickrAuth authentication system. The editing capabilities of Picnik will be replaced by something new. “We are working on making the editing experience even better on the site,” said the Flickr team. Developers who still use FlickrAuth are asked to move to oAuth by July 31st. The Flickr API fully supports oAuth.

There are still a few users who visit Flickr with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Firefox 3.6. These users will be presented with a message that encourages them to switch to a newer version of IE or Firefox. The Flickr team explained that IE7 and Firefox 3.6 who ignore the update message will be able to use the site, but they may not be able to use the new features and experiences that will be rolled out this 2012.

“This year is going to be big at Flickr! In the coming weeks and months you will see significant updates to Flickr’s user experience, new features and offerings across devices. Our goal is to build a gorgeous, intuitive, and truly beautiful experience for you, your friends and your photos,” said Head of Product at Flickr, Markus Spiering.



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