I’ve decided to open an account on Ipernity, which is a photo sharing site similar to Flickr. I’ve decided to do this because quite frankly I feel that Yahoo/Flickr have lost the plot. I say this with rather a heavy heart because I’ve long loved Flickr, but the justified only views really are irritating and the fact that they are removing choice to view streams in different sizes all over the site, including the new groups system, is beyond baffling.
The worst thing about the new groups is that initially, you could view group pools in small, medium, large, justified etc. They inherited your last setting from the old group system, but Flickr deemed this a bug and rectified it so that justified is the only view. Flickr have also now decided they are working on counting photo views based on a viewers intent ….. I’m not making this up!
Now I’d joined Ipernity a few weeks ago, uploaded a few screenshots but I was a tad wary as to whether they really approved of Second Life type images. This week I contacted their support and after showing them a couple of example snapshots they said that sort of content is fine, as long as it’s not inappropriate, I take that to mean no boobies, which is fine for me as I don’t snapshot them!
Anyway Ipernity isn’t Flickr, it doesn’t have as many users as Flickr, but it does have a nice simple to use interface. If you want the full kit and caboodle you’ll have to pay and this means joining the club, UK rates are:
- 3 months -£5.49
- 12 months – £19.99
- 24 months -£34.99
Now this is slightly more expensive than Flickr pro, but it’s a lot less than the new Flickr Ad Free option. One point to note is that embed codes aren’t available for free members, so for bloggers, it’s a bit of a pain but club members get embed codes apparently.
Free members also don’t get the sort of storage space that Flickr free now offers, they are also restricted to 200mb of uploads a month and will soon be restricted to the old Flickr limit of only showing your last 200 photos in a stream.
Flickr therefore certainly has advantages, but for me Ipernity has some big advantages over Flickr, the simple user interface, the fact that I can easily view photo streams in small, medium or large sizes, this is a really important issue and it’s the one where I feel Flickr have completely lost the plot. I think part of my dislike of the new Flickr is based upon my Second Life experience where I have first hand knowledge of how lots of large images can bring scenes to a crawl, Ipernity offer choice here, Flickr are going out of their way to remove choice.
However Flickr does have advantages, big advantages and their huge amount of data storage and free users getting embed codes are big plus points for Second Life users and bloggers.
I’m not suggesting that people abandon Flickr and join Ipernity, as I said, there are pro’s and cons for both services but I feel Iperntiy is most definitely worth a look and I’m more than willing to give them a chance, especially after contacting them and receiving such friendly service with regards to my query, the bottom line here though is that although Flickr want to restrict choice, as users, we do have choice and Ipernity allows me another choice in the photo/image sharing market.
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