Which online photo sharing service do you prefer and why?
I’ve had a Fotki premium account for several years now and I’m very happy with it. I like that I can personalise it with different themes & colours, and comfortably organise my photos into easy-access folders and albums.
But then Flickr came along and, as far as I can tell, it’s become the Facebook of the photo sharing community. Meaning that to me it’s just ugly and confusing and extremely popular for reasons that escape me. Or maybe I’m missing something? I did try uploading a couple of albums to Flickr awhile ago and was then told that only the first 200 photos would be shown (wtf?).
Both Fotki and Flickr offer free accounts with a 100 MB space limit and advertising, as well as premium accounts with unlimited space and other features. Given these similarities, why is Flickr so popular? I mean, Fotki is waaay classier.
~ my fotki ~
~ my flickr ~
casa azahar 
Ugly and confusing and extremely popular for reasons that escape me? Az, you just described Twitter, too! 🙂
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Ugly? I defy you to say my azahar and SevillaTapas pages are ugly.
Confusing? Everything is all on one page. You just scroll down the page and read posts. What could be easier?
Popular for reasons that escape you? It’s all about networking. I’ve met people in Seville (there is a monthly Twitter meet here) and also quite a few good business contacts. Plus I find the people I follow there interesting, otherwise I wouldn’t be following them. And nobody pokes me, or sends me zoo animals or wants me to join their stupid f*cking mafia family. Works for me.
So, do you use Fotki or Flickr or something else?
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I think he means Flickr.
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I don’t use Flotki or Flickr. As for Twitter, I didn’t mean your personal pages, which I’ve never visited. I just find the whole thing to be a confusing mass, a jumble, and I couldn’t be bothered.
I won’t mention it again.
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I prefer Fotki.
I have had a Fotki account for 6 years, now. I have used it mostly for storage but also for linking to my photos for my blog and for other sites. I like the ability to upload large numbers of photos quickly and easily.
I have been considering downloading all my images to my little notebook storage unit and would do that if I could ever figure out how to use FTP. No one seems to be able to explain to me how to do that.
Flickr is blah and you don’t have much (any) choice in how you want to set up your albums and pages. Flickr has more in the way of sharing within groups and users and the ability to post your images to topical and shared “threads” (I can’t recall that they are called) but, personally, I prefer Fotki for what I use if for.
I use Flickr but I wouldn’t pay for it. I pay for Fotki because I like it for what I use it for.
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FTP is easy. We’ll get on Skype one day and I’ll give you a lesson.
A response from a Twitter friend today…
I have to disagree about the interface. But perhaps the integrated tools he mentions were what you were talking about, Mudhooks, having to do with sharing, tags and all that. Like you, I’m not really into that. What I want is an attractive online photo album.
When I follow someone’s link to a photo on their Flickr page I am never tempted to have a look around at other things there. Mostly because I’ve tried before and find the set-up doesn’t make any sense to me. And what the hell is a photostream?
I’d be quite willing to give Flickr another try if someone could convince me it’s worth the effort.
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Here is one aspect of Fotki I really like. If I click on an image, I go to the next image. I don;t have to go to the photo album to the right and have only the previous and next photo to click on. I can either have a batch of thumbnails available from the thumbnail tab or the main album page, or I can click on the image for the next image OR I can click on the tab next to the image and select next or previous. I don’t have to go all the way over to the album sitting a couple of inches away and click on the next image and then, when I reach the last photo, click on a link to start all over again. When I reach the end of the album, Fotki automatically takes me back to the thumbnail page.
I also like the way that Fotki works. I can pick my background colours (in my case black so that I don’t have a glaring white background to my images.
I should say, too, that there are two levels of membership with Fotki. A basic free, limited account; and a premium account with unlimited space. I have over 41,000 (308.04 GB) photos on my account. Most of those are hi-res, large-sized images. I can store the original image on the site. I can see my stats, how many visitors have been in and how many images they have viewed. I can “lock” albums so that only I can access them. I can set passwords so that only friends who have the password can view them. I can set certain albums so that friends can access the originals (as in my band photos so that the bands can access them.
Fotki just added a watermark system which is great, although I have a bone to pick with them because even I can’t access the “right-click” selection for the images and have to download the full version rather than a smaller version.
The other thing is that they are actually accessible. If you have a problem, they get back to you. If there is someone harassing you, they will take care of it. People can and will have their accounts suspended for abusing their privileges.
I have also made some quite good friends on Fotki.
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I use Flickr and I have a pro account which means I have unlimited space etc. I never ever heart of Fotki until you mentioned it a few months ago, and by then I was already well established on Flickr. And no, I am not moving AGAIN! 😉
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Oh G’wan, you know you really want to … 😛
So okay, just had a look at your Flickr page. And I’m guessing the photostream is just random photos, or photos shown in the order you’ve uploaded them? Given that this is the first page people see when they go to someone’s Flickr page it’s not very coherent or inviting.
And it looks like “sets” are the same as albums on Fotki. And “galleries” are the same as folders? Okay, so far so good. But when you go into a Flickr set the thumbnails are really small and aren’t labelled. Nor does it show if any comments have been left under a photo. You can see the difference here on my Casa Batlló Fotki album.
It must be the group sharing thing that makes it so popular.
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Ditto.
I took a look at your Fokti page…it’s interesting, and I’m sure it’s more usable, but I am where I am.
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Well, I was just teasing WC. The point of this post was to try and find out WHY Flickr is so popular, not try and get people to stop using it. Like I said, maybe I’m just missing something, but when someone links to a photo on Flickr I’ll go have a look but I’m never inclined to have a look around at other albums (or sets) because I can’t get a clear sense of how it’s organised.
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The Flickr photostream is all uploaded pictures, with the most recent uploads first.
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I went to both your sites and I found the fotki page to be more accessible. However, as far as using them, I have no clue as to which is better. I’m not looking for something else I have to pay for though.
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I think the Fotki GUI is really dated looking on the surface and that’s all I know about it besides the fact that it drives me crazy when I click on a picture and the next one shows up … different strokes and all that. But I like Picasa better than Flickr OR Fotki. Google really has my number in the user interface department.
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I agree that the Fotki GUI looks a bit old-fashioned, but I still like how it functions.
Interesting that you’ve mentioned Picasa because I’ve been meaning to try it out again. I think what put me off a couple of years ago was their privacy policy, but perhaps I misunderstood it. Will have another look at it.
On Fotki I have it set so that people can’t copy my photos (though I suppose they could take a screen shot if they really wanted to). I’m also not listed on the Fotki homepage search thingy. I don’t actually want to share my photos with the whole world, but it’s nice having them somewhere to show friends. Also, I just read that copying them onto CDs only lasts for a couple of years – yikes!
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Never used Fotki, but I’ve had a Flickr account for about 5 years now and I still love it although I use it less now that I post photos to my blog.
In fact, the thing I use most on Flickr is the search function – to do picture research for our books as it can be a reliable, fast and relatively cheap source of good photos of all sorts of subjects (especially natural history and quirky architectural pieces) which aren’t available on the main photo agencies like Corbis and Getty.
I guess is partly what you’re used to, and partly a personal preference thing, on the interface question. I find Flickr simpler and cleaner-looking than Fotki, which I prefer.
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When I visited behind the Great Firewall this summer I had to set up a gmail account to be ablr to have email contacts, and to post to my travel blog. That alos included picasa, which I have used to post some travel photos, and photos of the Lair Cats.
Photos for linking to etc I usually store at an online community I’ve been part of for a number of years. I’ve locked my albums since I mostly use the content for linking purposes.
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I’ve a Fotki account for 4 years (premium). I’ve been asking for their APIs to create a Macintosh uploader for two years. No response. The JavaUploader Sucks. I’m at the front page as “Top Men in Spain” (not that I really wanted to be there), so I have a lot of pictures. But the fact that the UI is so awful at times and their tools are old, I’m looking for an alternative.
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Hi Martin and welcome.
Well, if you find a good alternative that isn’t Flickr, please let me know.
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I like the way SmugSmug works (www.smugsmug.com) but I’m not sure yet, I’ll have to try the service a little bit more.
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Just had a peek at SmugMug and it looks interesting. But what a stupid name! I don’t think I could use it just because of that. 🙂
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I have used Fotki for 3 years now and I LOVE IT!! I tried Flickr for a few months but kept getting frustrated– and no, it wasn’t b/c I was experiencing problems with Flickr. Flickr’s a good program. The uploading was easy, the albums are user friendly…
The reason I liked Fotki better was because it could be organized in the same way my photos are organized on my laptop. i LOVE using lots of folders and main folders.
I think Flickr has more appeal is because it does seem to have a likeness to Facebook (with the ease of person-to-person connections as well as its links to many other popular programs)
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Hi Pyra, and welcome.
I agree with you about organising the albums on Fotki. I find it difficult to get a good overall sense of a person’s Flickr albums, and that photostream thing is not how I want to present photos on my main page (most recently uploaded). And although the themes are limited on Fotki at least there are theme options. I really don’t like using sites that don’t allow you to personalise your pages.
The likeness between Flickr and Facebook is just another reason to dislike Flickr. 😉
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I have to disagree with a lot of comments here.
Flickr allow FTP by using an extension in Filezilla.
Flickr can have a nice viewing experience as you can export your “photostream” to your website, and with a lightweight JS gallery, you can browse the same way, even a better way, that Fotki.
Flickr have by his API a loooot of plugin too. So I can upload directly from Lightroom for example. Or from my Android ( but it s true I could use FTP from my Android too).
I tried to find how to display EXIF informations on Fotki. I still did not find it. With Flickr you just click on “more informations”.
But I understand the point of view of some people here.
I’m concerned about my privacy too, and I know Flickr is not the best one in this field.
But instead of Fotki, I’m thinking more of Photobucket or a self designed gallery on my dedicated server.
If you have other tips, let me know, i find your blog interesting still =)
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Oopsi, I wanted to say an extension in Firefox, not Filezilla
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