>They need to hammer in to users that putting photos from your $4,000 camera rig on Facebook is just silly.

The people putting photos into facebook don't have $4000 camera rigs. They have $500-1000 camera rigs, and the photos that they're taking are [often] taken using the pop-up flash, the kit lens, and automatic mode.

For them, putting photos into facebook is a completely reasonable thing to do, and their photos wouldn't gain anything by being stored on flickr.

Sounds like you guys agree:

IF you are a professional THEN flickr is the place for you. However, IF you are an amateur THEN Facebook is just fine.

We all agree that if you're taking a picture with a $4000 camera you lose something by throwing that up on Facebook.

I think this is it. Flickr content is much more searchable via tags, Facebook not so much. The focus in Flickr is subject matter and actual photography, with Facebook it's more about people and experiences within networks. Many Facebook photos are uninteresting to people other than the friends of the originator.

Publishers regularly search Flickr for photos to license and use. I'm a point-and-click shooter, but out of the blue I received two messages asking to publish one of my photos (which I had tagged descriptively). I was paid, and I learned how to complete invoices and W-9s, and had the joy of seeing my photo published with credit in a food magazine no one reads (Whole Foods sold it briefly). Yahoo could better highlight Flickr's ability to connect publishers with casual photo-takers, by facilitating thorough tagging of photo contents and improving the search ability. Flickr's definitely a much larger and open body of content than Facebook for this purpose.

There's (at least) one more level of granularity between professional and amateur though -- prosumer. Camera gear <$4000 && >$1000; a serious hobbiest if you will. I think the GP was saying that Flickr should market harder to that vertical, which makes sense to me because it's so much larger than the pros.

I consider myself a semi-serious hobbiest, my rig fits into the conditions above, and I still pay for my Pro account. I post a link to the album on Facebook, though.

> The people putting photos into facebook don't have $4000 camera rigs. They have $500-1000 camera rigs

If you're lucky. Mostly it's pictures off an iPhone or equivalent.

An iPhone is, among other things, a $500-1000 camera rig.

Yes, an iPhone is in that price range and is a camera among other things. However it's different from a $500 camera in a lot of ways - people buy them for lots of other purposes (texts, facebook, apps, angry birds, even voice) and pay for them on instalments via the contract. Many people come to taking pictures without having ever thought they were buying a camera, let alone putting down $500+ on one. People who would hate how technical a DSLR is love how simple and fun instagram is.

The camera in a smartphone is comparable to a $200 mid-range compact ( http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-COOLPIX-Digital-Camera-Optical/d... ) but not to $600 low-end DSLR ( http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Digital-18-55mm-75-300mm-Telepho... ) In fact the compact will have better zoom, flash, more megapixels... It will win on most metrics except ability to upload instantly.

Except those photographers are more likely to put their photos on Smugmug. Yahoo may have let too much air out of the Flikr balloon for it to be able to float.

Very true. There's little reason they couldn't aggressively attack that space though.