On the heels of Tumblr’s determination to integrate with ActivityPub — the social protocol powering the open supply Twitter alternative Mastodon and others — it seems that photo-sharing website Flickr is now contemplating doing the identical. Flickr CEO Don MacAskill right now started to actively ballot customers about whether or not or not they’d prefer to see Flickr assist the protocol, too. If it moved ahead with this plan, Flickr could be the most recent bigger firm to decide to becoming a member of the “fediverse” — the interconnected group of impartial servers throughout the globe operating free, open supply software program that permits their customers to speak and join with each other.
The idea presents a problem to modern-day social networks managed by companies — or billionaires like Elon Musk.
ActivityPub is a key part to the fediverse, powering not solely Mastodon, whose popularity has grown in the wake of Musk’s Twitter acquisition, but additionally different different social platforms, together with the Instagram-like Pixelfed, video streaming service PeerTube, and others. If Flickr had been so as to add assist for ActivityPub, it might not perform solely as a photo-sharing website, however would develop into part of a bigger net of social networks the place customers may discover, observe and have interaction with each other throughout platforms with out having to create separate accounts for every service.
MacAskill had already been weighing Flickr’s course with regard to the fediverse earlier than right now. Final week, following the Tumblr announcement, the Flickr CEO had tweeted that his firm had been internally discussing ActivityPub assist, too.
“It could be proper up our alley,” MacAskill mentioned on the time.
However in a later tweet, he cautioned that taking this path would imply having to deprioritize different initiatives on Flickr’s roadmap — together with these clients mentioned they needed. That’s why it is sensible that the exec would attempt to gauge shopper demand for the protocol’s adoption earlier than truly making a dedication.
MacAskill right now noted that there “seems to be quite a lot of curiosity” in seeing Flickr transfer ahead with ActivityPub, however he needed to first gauge the kind of curiosity extra particularly.
To date, the outcomes of a poll he revealed on Twitter appear to be promising. As of the time of writing, solely 8.9% of respondents have mentioned no to the thought of ActivityPub integration; 38.2% mentioned sure, however provided that it was free. In the meantime, two different teams indicated that ActivityPub assist may develop into one thing that inspired them to pay for Flickr, as 37.4% mentioned sure and that they already pay for Flickr, whereas 15.4% mentioned sure and that they could pay for Flickr if the protocol was supported.
MacAskill ran the identical ballot on Mastodon, the place the curiosity for making the assist part of a free product is to date operating even increased, at 47%; in the meantime, 26% mentioned sure and so they even already pay for Flickr and 22% would think about doing so if ActivityPub was added.
Although an older website, Flickr right now claims it’s utilized by greater than 60 million individuals per thirty days, according to its Jobs listings web page. That may deliver a big variety of new individuals to the fediverse, if the corporate chooses so as to add assist for ActivityPub.
Flickr, in fact, may use a characteristic that inspired extra buyer engagement and adoption. As soon as a distinguished firm within the Net 2.0 period, Flickr ultimately misplaced out to different social photo-sharing platforms, like Fb and Instagram, in addition to to extra utilitarian photo-hosting providers, like Google Photographs and iCloud.
In April 2018, Flickr sold to SmugMug and shortly the corporate lowered the bounds without spending a dime utilization, started threatening to delete the pictures of nonpaying customers, and urged users to help it find more paying subscribers to maintain it afloat. Earlier this 12 months, Flickr also began paywalling the ability to add NSFW pictures to its website.
In newer days, MacAskill has claimed Flickr is “wholesome and rising once more,” and famous it has established a nonprofit to protect its photographs within the occasion that the corporate once more falls on onerous instances. Flickr didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon its ActivityPub plans, however a consultant later famous MacAskill is a “wildly customer-centric chief and technologist with an extended observe report of efficiently figuring out significant improvements,” and, “That is probably a kind of improvements, which is why he’s exploring it publicly,” they mentioned.
Up to date, 11/28/22, 5:19 p.m. with flickr feedback.
