Flickr to Grant Commercial API Key to Competitors

eobanb writes "The Yahoo-owned photo sharing site Flickr has come under fire recently for the perceived 'lock-in' that their API creates. Flickr's terms of service state clearly that all photos uploaded to Flickr by users are owned by their respective users, yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting. Surprisingly, Flickr developer Stewart Butterfield posted in the thread on Flickr: "I actually had a change of heart and was convinced by Eric's position that we definitely should approve requests from direct competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access." This means that users will soon be able to freely move data between different photo-sharing sites, like Zooomr (which has already implemented the Flickr API), Google PicasaWeb, 23hq, or Tabblo."

Comments

Re:Personal Web Hosting

[DoorFrame]

Writing your own scripts is not terribly convenient for most people.

Re:Can't export? Since when?

[imbaczek]

That's not exactly an option if you have hundreds of pictures uploaded and want to migrate.

It's a good idea for flickr anyway

[bobob]

As well as all the usual 'everything should be open arguments' there's a really simple reason why Flickr is right to implement this for their own reasons. It gives them great metrics on where their users are going. If Zoomr uses its api key to request a certain Flickr user's photos, and then that user becomes less active on Flickr, Flickr knows where the user has gone. This way it can see good data on its competitors and take any action necessary by producing features which specifically target one particular competitor.

Re:Can't export? Since when?

[Lewisham]

We're talking about *commercial* APIs guys: a mass transfer of hundreds/thousands of megabytes of data a day to a competitor's site. The personal API keys are fine for doing little cool things on user's desktops, but do not allow such intensive work specifically so someone can poach your customers.

I understand Stewart's reluctance, but I think people on his team have got it right, Flickr has to step up and say "We are the best, and we are going to prove it." Locking customers into your site is the sort of pro-corporate anti-user image that Flickr avoided, and won them such goodwill.

Personally, I think Flickr is still the best. It's clean, it does things well. Zooomr is OK, but it's a complete carbon copy, with some pointless added bits.

Re:Can't export? Since when?

[CastrTroy]

I don't know why it surprises everyone when they use free services and aren't allowed to do something you want. Like when you use a free email service, and all of a sudden they start charging for POP access. Or with free web hosting, they decide to take away features, or just cut you off because your using too much bandwidth, or the company goes bust. If you want web hosting, you'd be better off paying for it. For under $10 a month, you can get 20 GB of space, 1000 GB of transfer, and lots of nice features like blogs, email, photo albums, databases, and your free to access all the stuff you're hosting by FTP, SSH, or whatever else your host provides. If the free stuff isn't good enough, then cough up some money for some good hosting. It isn't expensive, and will save you a lot of grief.