Sometimes, it’s good when two of your major competitors are fighting and getting lots of negative publicity. That can create an opportunity for your business in the market, and that’s what’s happening now between Twitter and Instagram/Facebook and these PhotoWars. Meanwhile, Yahoo‘s photo sharing service, Flickr, is taking advantage of the chaos and quietly working to improve their service and attract more users from Instagram.
Flickr has released another update to their mobile app today that addresses a few issues, as well as brings further improvements and enhancements to the app, making it poised to seriously compete with Instagram and similar services. According to the update:
We’re releasing several new enhancements based on your feedback, including:
- Better visibility of photo upload status
- It’s now easier than ever to share your Flickr photos on Facebook
- Get instant notifications when your Facebook friends join Flickr
- Easily find your Twitter contacts on Flickr
- New notifications when someone comments on a photo you’ve also commented on
- Fixed issues with Google sign-in
- Plus other bug fixes
A couple of points here are really interesting.
First, Flickr users who want to post images to Facebook or Twitter can do so, and the images show up. Instagram users who post images to Twitter now just get a link to that image as a result of an update from Instagram. And Flickr is taking steps to make this process easier and easier.
Second, for now at least, you can see your Twitter connections from within Flickr and connect with them – a feature Twitter cut off from Instagram earlier this year.
The bottom line is that for now, at least, Flickr is working on making itself a viable alternative to Instagram. Whether that continues to be true remains to be seen, as we have certainly not seen the last of these changes and udpates from all the players. Will Twitter continue to “play nice” with Flickr? When will the inevitable Google version of a photo sharing app be released, and will these other apps be able to post to Google+?
If you’re interested in keeping up with these changes and finding out how to use all these tools to help promote your business, subscribe to our updates to the right, and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
In the meantime, Flickr is definitely improving as an app. If you haven’t been using Flickr for iPhone too much, these tips from Flickr may prove useful. If you have any questions about Flickr’s app or comments on these developments, please post them below.