vs.
People often compare Flickr to Picasaweb. While both allow people to upload photos to share with other people, it's really an apple and orange comparison.
Flickr:
A company that Yahoo acquired. Flickr is a very popular social platform for amateur photographers to upload their art work. The free account has a 100MB/month limit and they downsize your original pictures. Photography enthusiasts critique each other's photo styles and techniques, and can favorite, add to groups, etc. Flickr retains almost all of the original EXIF information so that amateur photographers can look at a picture's f-stop, shutter speed, ISO, and other settings and critique and learn from each other. Not surprisingly, many uploads are of high quality art work. Many people decide to buy the PRO version of Flickr because it's that good.
On Flickr, I expect to get comments from random photographers like "Why are you using 640 ISO during broad day light, and why is the depth of field so shallow that you're missing critical backdrop details? Oh I love the 24-70mm f/2.8, that is such a sweet lens, sharp in all aperture."
Picasaweb:
A Google built property. This is a popular dumping ground for people who want to share tons of family photos. It's very easy to use: 1) download a Picasa PC/Mac client 2) drag/drop photos into Picasa 3) then photos get uploaded to Picasaweb. Not surprisingly, many uploads are of boring and mundane looking family photos. This is a wonderful site for people to dump private stuff too. There is a 1GB/account limit, and you can buy more storage. It lacks some of the EXIF information and lacks that social feel, but then again, the target audience of Picasaweb is really your grandpa and grandma who don't give a damn what Facebook and Twitter are about anyways.
On Picasaweb, I expect to get comments like:
"LOL!"
"This sucks"
"WTF?"
"Which one is better, Canon or Nikon?"
So as you can see, apple and orange. When I need feedback from my fellow photographer enthusiasts, I upload to Flickr. I expect to get very useful and very technical advice on Flickr. On Picasaweb, I upload private family pictures, usually in the 1600 width resolution since that is the resolution that looks pretty good on 90% of the monitors today. Anything bigger is useless, and a waste of space. What I don't do these days is emailing or uploading the original pictures-- the funny thing is I still get people mailing me megabytes of original pictures. That is soooo very 1990s.
