Every now and then someone will bring up Flickr’s size in conversation. When that happens I usually find that people generally think Flickr is much larger than it really is. The brand recognition that Flickr has with its own user-base is impressive. If you are a Flickr user (like me) you are generally a fan of Flickr and, as such, may think that everyone must use Flickr.
This simply isn’t the case. It isn’t that Flickr isn’t very big and has an incredibly impressive amount of photographs, videos, and users – it is just that it isn’t nearly as big as the top-tier photo sharing Web sites.
According to TechCrunch’s recent article “Who Has The Most Photos Of Them All? Hint: It Is Not Facebook” here are the current standings.
- ImageShack: 20 billion
- Facebook: 15 billion
- PhotoBucket: 7.2 billion
- Flickr 3.4 billion
- Multiply: 3 billion
- Picasa “billions†(?)
It appears we really don’t know where Picasa sits on this list but them aside you can see that Flickr is the fourth largest photo sharing Web site. Again, this is really impressive. But look at the gap! PhotoBucket is double the size, Facebook double the size of PhotoBucket, and ImageShack is leading the pack at nearly 7 times the size of Flickr.
Yes, Flickr is pretty big. Yes, Flickr is (in this writer’s opinion) the best way to share photos online at at the moment. But no, they aren’t the biggest – by a mile.
This was a real surprise to me. I’ve been on Flickr since late 2005 and have never really spent much time at any of the other available sites.
The real attraction to Flickr is definitely the community nature of the site. It’s not just a photo repository like ImageShack.
Today was the first time I’ve ever looked at image shack and I doubt I’ll ever return. Perhaps that’s a little unfair, the two sites are really completely different.
It may be unfair to compare the sites, you’re right. I didn’t mean to compare them either, really, I more wanted to show that I have run into the situation many times where people think Flickr is #1.