Flickr announced a redesign of their search page a couple of days back. From first looks the new design seems to present Flickr as the social site that it actually is than just a repository of snaps. It also was high time they did something there considering how it has begun to fall in the social media landscape.
The changes we’ve introduced make it easier to browse through the billions of photos and videos on Flickr, and to connect to the communities that help make sense of all those photos – says the Flickr blog in their announcement post.
The interesting point though is this:
On the right side of the page we try to provide a new perspective on your search. Based upon how our members are tagging their photos and participating in the Flickrverse, you’ll see links to the groups, photographers, tag clusters and places that are most closely related what you’re looking for. We hope these will occasionally provide a little extra inspiration for your search.
For a lot of users Flickr is perhaps just a place to find photos and upload your photographs. This without actively using the groups and location functions that Flickr provides (which make the whole site a lot better really). It creates the right sort of engagement with the users and helping them explore more options than just find the right photographs. In the process Flickr can hope that members begin to contribute to the site more, find these add-on advantages useful and therefore recommend and use it more.
It was interesting to note that Flickr is also partly advertising itself in the search page, explaining how easy it is to use the site and upload pictures.
- On one hand it shows a more pro-active approach to increase activity on the site which I haven’t really seen till now.
- On the other it also shows that the redesign might be linked with a more aggressive monetization plan as well.
Is it a fallout of a recession hit market which has dropped revenues for the photo sharing behemoth or is it Yahoo’s aligning and defining the goals for the site better following the big clean up that has been taking place till now, one wonders.
