Month: April 2012

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The Square Crop is My Favorite Crop and More Thoughts on Photo Layout and Design

The Square Crop is My Favorite Crop and More Thoughts on Photo Layout and Design

I know you’re not supposed to have a favorite crop, but the square crop is my favorite.

I’m not sure if anybody’s noticed or not, but I think in the past few days Facebook has added a few little redesign elements into our timeline views. Most notably it seems like the “your contacts” that they show you are better positioned. More and more these days I’ve noticed that from a design standpoint facebook seems to be favoring the square crop. I love this.

Look how square all of the photos look on my Timeline screenshot above. I get a big bold photo (square). I get thumbnails of 8 of my friends (I have no idea how Facebook chooses who to show here do you? — but again square). I get avatars of 58 friends I’ve added recently (again square). Square, square, square. Of course Facebook also just bought the most square photo site of all Instagram.

I’m not a designer, but personally I think this page looks GREAT. I can’t believe how far Facebook has come. I remember when I used to bitch at Facebook all of the time because they gave us these microscopic thumbnail sized photos on our pages and that was it — but now we get these gorgeous oversized square photos on our timeline page. We also have a tool to “feature” a photo on Facebook now (just hover over a photo on your timeline and push the star button).

Facebook also now has the absolute best full screen photo view in the business. (click on a photo, click on options when it comes up big, click on enter full screen). From here you can just use your arrow keys to go back and forth through someone’s full screen photos.

Now next Facebook needs to increase the size of the photos in the regular feed. They are still way too small there.

One thing for sure with photos online is that bigger is better. I love that on Google+ the photos keep getting bigger too. The recent redesign there showed us a big bump up in landscape sized photos in our stream. It also came with the introduction of the black bars that people don’t seem to like. I like them for some reason, but I’m weird.

There is one very simple way G+ could improve the photo though and that is to make square photos even BIGGER. If you let a square photo on G+ fill the entire envelope on a post, you’d make the square photo the largest photo of all on G+. This would look great. Look at my Flickr stream here. Notice how the square photos are bigger than the other photos. Smart, smart, smart flickr. Look how much better the square photo looks than the other ones simply because it’s bigger.

Again, bigger is better (just ask Jeff Wall or Richard Serra).

The other thing that I like, besides the square, are photo mosaics. This is my favorite page of my photography that exists on any site, anywhere on the internet. So many photos and with infinite scroll. You know what else is cool? The hover over fave. Hover over any photo on this page and click on that little +1 button (hey thanks for the +1 by the way!) 😉

Flickr’s new justified view is another example of this. Look how cool my favorites on flickr look as a photo mosaic. Flickr also uses this view for the photos from your contacts. Flickr pretty much ripped off Google+’s page design here but that’s ok because Google then ripped off their hover over fave/+1. I love it when photo sharing sites rip each other off and take the best elements of design. Flickr does need to remove the photographer name from their mosaic views though. That looks ugly. They should only show the name if someone hovers over the photo. It looks too much like a watermark the way they are doing it now and we all know how ugly photo watermarks and signatures look on photos. Also Flickr still needs to give us more infinite infinite scroll. Six pages of photos is not enough. Maybe if they bumped it up to 25 pages that might work.

I’d love to see sites do more and more mosaics like this. That’s what I want to see in the future of online photo display — more mosaics and more squares. What about you?

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BAMM! Flickr Now Allows Photo Sizes up to 50MB

BAMM! Flickr Now Allows Photo Sizes up to 50MB

Good news for Flickr users today. Along with the announcement of a new and improved uploader they’ve also announced that they are increasing the size limits on photos. Pro account users can now upload photos up to 50MB (previously 20MB limit) in size and free accounts can now upload photos up to 30MB (previously 15MB limit).

This is a welcome announcement as today’s larger megapixel DSLRs are increasingly producing original JPG image files larger than 20MB. Previously if you tried to upload these photos to Flickr the uploader would reject them and the bulk uploader would accept them but resize them down to super small photo sizes.

Flickr’s new uploader is a marked improvement over the previous uploader and feels much more like their more professional bulk uploader that they previously offered as an add on. Users simply drag and drop multiple photos into an app like interface where they can rearrange photos into the order that they want to upload them.

(Pro tip: make sure the last 5 photos and especially the last single photo you upload are your strongest in any given batch).

Flickr actually begins processing and uploading the photos in the background before you even press upload but you have until you are ready to upload to commit the photos to your account. This is one speed enhancement improvement. Overall Flickr says that uploads of large files with the new uploader will now be up to 60% faster for users overseas and up to 30% faster for users in the US.

I’ve been beta testing the new uploader for the past few months and can confirm that photos do seem to upload much faster.

Other photo sharing sites had previously increased size limits and it was important for Flickr to keep up with today’s move. SmugMug announced in March that they were increasing file sizes to 50MB and photo sharing site 500px now offers 60MB file sizes.

Google’s Picasa service still limits photographs to 20MB. I can’t find anywhere where either Google+ or Facebook explicitily state a MB file size limit, however, in the past I’ve noticed that photos on Google+ fail to upload if they are over 20MB. Both Facebook and G+ resize your photos to smaller versions than the original sizes.

This is the second major enhancement that the Flickr site has completed this year. Earlier this year Flickr served up a redesign in their “Photos from your contacts” page that now shows these photos in a larger justified page format that allows bigger photo views and the ability to hover over a photo and fave the photo directly from this page.

This is another positive move forward by Flickr Chief Markus Spiering and his team coming off of Spiering’s promise of a “renewed sense of purpose” that he blogged about on the Flickr blog in January. Flickr has also established a new photowalking meetup site and has held major East Coast photowalks earlier this year in New York and Philadelphia and one this past Saturday in San Francisco.

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Facebook Has Hit the Motherlode

Well, maybe they already hit it a while back, but I think they’ve ramped it up to a whole new level now. Over the past week I’ve noticed Robert Scoble (who as usual is ahead of the curve) on the vast majority of my advertisements on Facebook. Why? Because Robert Scoble has gone on a rampage the last week liking what feels like thousands of new things on Facebook. Robert’s liked things before of course, but not at the pace that he has been doing recently.

The trade off is simple. If Robert will unload all of his personal and commercial likes on Facebook, Facebook will show a link to his Facebook page to thousands of people on the site (thus generating more facebook traffic for Robert). Robert is enouraged to be as detailed as possible and tell Facebook every single company, band, app, TV show, movie etc. that he likes. You can find your like suggestions here.

Robert is voluntarily giving up tons and tons of data about himself in exchange for links back to his page. This is a gold mine from an advertisers perspective. We’ve already seen how closely you can tailor an advertising campaign on Facebook. We already know how much higher the click through rates are with personal endorsements from your friends on products.

But the future of the advertising world on Facebook will be when Oreo cookies wants to launch a new mint version of the cookie and wants to target advertise it not only to people who make over $50,000/year, but *especially* to those that also already like Oreo cookie the brand. No wonder why Facebook ad prices are skyrocketing. Thousands of companies now know not only all of Robert’s demographic information necessary to sell him things, but *exactly* what he already likes. This will be useful for existing brands or competitors that want to compete for your attention.

Rather than have to figure us all out based on nuance and vague criteria we are increasingly handing all of this data directly over to Facebook. This may always have been the case and maybe it’s just I’ve been noticing it more with Scoble liking so many more things over the past week all of a sudden, but it seems like the momentum towards people spending vast amounts of time liking things on Facebook has just started really.

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Flickr Could Be a Good Company for Google to Buy

On Friday I started a poll — similar to one I’d done several months back asking a simple question. Where is the best place to share photos? I was frankly surprised to see how well Flickr did, garnering the first place result with 41% of the poll. 2nd place went to Google+ with 36% of the poll. A distant third place went to 500px.

Given their size, both Facebook and Instagram seemed really poorly represented in the poll, garnering 6% and 3% respectively.

I posted the poll to my G+ stream, to my Flickr stream, to Twitter and to my Facebook account. I have lots of followers on all of these sites. The poll is not at all scientific of course and there are a million reasons why it could be horribly flawed, but it got me thinking more about flickr.

A few months after Google+ had launched I penned a dramatic post entitled “Flickr is Dead.” My feeling on Flickr at that time was that it was a sinking ship — a former photo sharing heavyweight who simply refused to innovate no matter what. The site felt poorly managed with an anti-user ethos. It felt like it had been left to it’s own devices by a dying parent company that was simply unaware or didn’t care.

Against an increasingly competitive backdrop of new and old photo sharing options (Google+, Instagram, 500px, SmugMug) it felt like users were jumping ship. Unique users were/are down as measured by compete.com at Flickr. But lately it’s starting to feel a bit like Flickr might be ramping up a bit.

In February Flickr rolled out a refresh to their photos from your contacts page — one of the first significant refreshes the site has had in years. The page still feels a touch clunky (infinite scrolling doesn’t feel quite as infinite as things like Cool Iris — or does any remember Flickrleech from years ago?) but it’s a huge improvement over the old page that was there. You can now see reasonable sized images in an attractive mosaic where they are easy to fave. Flickr should consider taking away the “more photos” paging button for paid Pro accounts who don’t abuse it — that would be a nice distinction to get people to upgrade to Pro. They’ve also rolled out their new page design to users’ favorite photos section as well.

Flickr also seems to be stepping up a bit in the community management area. They’ve set up a very nice new photo meetup board with meetup.com. They held a few successful photowalks on the East Coast and have a big San Francisco photowalk coming up on this Saturday (I’m attending this one myself).

In January Flickr Chief Markus Spiering promised us a renewed Flickr. So far I like what I’m seeing. I think more work still needs to be done (flickr needs circles/buckets, more robust blocking tools, notifications, an improved mobile experience that includes a group thread reader, and lots more) but they seem to be headed in the right direction. I’ve also noticed what feels like a pick up in activity on Flickr. I’ve noticed that the views on my own photos there recently seem to have picked up a bit.

Flickr seems to be doing better with fewer employees as well. At the end of 2010 flickr had 56 staffers. Today, after a couple of rounds of layoffs, Flickr has 41. They lost at least three people in Yahoo’s big restructure last week and they laid off a number of people in their customer service dept earlier this year. Nolan Caudill, a former Flickr staffer, blasted Yahoo after the January layoffs, but more and more I’m of the opinion that those layoffs were a good thing for Flickr, not a bad thing. In many regards Flickr’s customer service folks were some of the most disliked people by actual users. Getting rid of some of the staffers that were making things bad for users could have actually been smart management.

Which brings me to my next point.

Google should buy Flickr.

Now is the time to get this done. Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram and I actually think that Flickr has far more potential than Instagram. Google’s got a ton of cash. Yahoo is dying. Facebook is Google’s biggest competitor now and Yahoo is officially at patent war with Facebook. As odd as it would be for these two former search foes to come together for a deal, Flickr makes all the sense in the world for Google who could throw some amazing engineering talent and legitimacy to the site.

More than anything else at Google, Google is betting big on Google+ — and for good reason. Google+ provides Google very valuable data that can be used for advertising. Yesterday I was talking with my friend Robert Scoble about the money Facebook paid for Instagram. Robert said that he thought Facebook bought Instagram for so much because they want the data that’s in the photos.

Think about all the data that is in our photos: who you are photographed with in a photo (maybe an algorithm should show you more of these people’s posts), when it was taken, where it was taken, what concerts you go to, what restaurants you eat at, etc.

What about the photos that you favorite or comment on or like? Isn’t this even more data and more signal that you provide? Do I favorite lots of photos of ice cream? Maybe I like ice cream. Do I favorite lots of photos of fashion? Maybe I care about fashion. Do I fave lots of photos of Nascar, or bicycles or surfing, or… you get the idea. By analyzing what is in the photos that we take and post and what we like and favorite, we provide an amazing amount of information about who we are as human beings. What we like. What we might buy if it were advertised towards us.

So what would Google get with Flickr? For starters they would get the largest highly organized library of images in the world with an impecable pedigree and social DNA. Other sites like Facebook may have more photos, but nobody has a library as organized as Flickr’s. For years people have tagged and organized their photos in all kinds of ways. This data around the photos is very valuable for Flickr. It tells us what is inside of a photo without having to resort to image recognition software.

Google would also get alot of potential high profile accounts. President Obama is on Flickr. The Royal Family is on flickr. The Library of Congress is on Flickr. Lots of big institutions, libraries, art museums, etc.

They would also get Flickr’s excellent photo organizational capabilities. This is one area where Flickr shines compared to anyone else. I have almost 1,700 sets on Flickr now. Why do I use Flickr for my sets instead of Google+ or Facebook or other sites? Easy, I can use Jeremy Brooks excellent program SuprSetr to organize my sets by keywords. Imagine if your Flickr stream could just autopost to your Google+ stream in full big size just like Google+. How cool would that be?

Facebook buying Instagram is upping the ante in the photo sharing game. Facebook paid a billion for Instragram. Google is sitting on over $44 billion in cash. The entire company Yahoo is only valued at $17 billion. Of that, most of the value is related to the positions that they own in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.

If Instagram is worth a billion, Flickr is worth more. By selling Flickr to Google, this would allow Yahoo to unlock some value for shareholders with an asset that likely contributes very little to Yahoo’s bottom line.

You can follow me on Flickr here.

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Come Hang Out With Us Tonight at 8PM Pacific Time for Photo Talk Plus!!!

Double Good Luck

What a GREAT show tonight. We’re interviewing +Star Rush and talking about the new Google+ layout, the Facebook Instagram deal and much, much more. We’re also giving away a year of Pro on SmugMug to one person in the chat room during the broadcast. Come hangout tonight at 8PM Pacific Time on the Vidcast Network here!

Along with my cohost +Lotus Carroll, we have a great lineup of panelists including +Andrea Acailawen +Sam Breach +Daniel Milnor +Keith Barrett and +Petra Cross

Thanks to our sponsors +Blurb Books and +SmugMug!

Check them out at http://blurb.com and http://smugmug.com!!!