A lot of rumors lately about Flickr monetizing photos by allowing users to sell them (and grabbing a piece of the payment, a la traditional microstock companies). Here's why it won't work.
Quality. Sure, there are great photos on Flickr. Stop browsing by "interestingness". Start browsing random people's entire portfolios. Most photos are of poor quality, either technically, compositionally, or something else. There certainly is a small demand for poor quality photographs, but the majority of stock purchasers (ie, designers) demand quality, and they don't have the time nor inclination to browse through a bunch of coal to find the one diamond.
Quantity. Again, there's just too much to sort through that's irrelevant.
Tags. I personally don't like the "controlled vocabulary" that iStockphoto.com uses, but Flickr's users tag their photos poorly. Some photos are just tagged "unclebob", other photos of a lake are tagged "industrial". This mis-tagging and inconsistency makes it hard for designers to find the photos they want.
Friday, May 04, 2007
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