Pixiq

Google+ may or may not be the facebook killer everyone is talking about. Right now, that's okay. I'm more concerned about photography and photographers than I am over what my cousin is doing over the 4th of July weekend.

Flickr used to be my main hangout. That was before Twitter. That was before Facebook. But I would still occasionally head over to Flickr to do some photo-centric networking. It may be too early to state but I may be heading to Flickr even less now because of Google+ and I imagine that many photographers will find their habits going in the same direction.

The problem with Flickr is that it's been stagnant for too long. Facebook has more photographs uploaded to it and has a wider audience than Flickr. Didn't matter much really. You still got a better experience for photography at Flickr.

We then finally got a good competitor to Flickr with 500px. It's beautifully done with a community of photographers that hasn't been diluted by massive photo-dumping of "vacation snapshots". 500px is becoming the serious photographers playground. I think 500px will continue to gain more and more serious photographers.

Enter Google+

I was fortunate enough to get a very early invite and I've been on the social network for the past couple of days creating circles of friends, acquaintances, and photographers, sharing photography and art links, and joining in tons of conversations about photography, art, and just about anything else that caught my fancy.

For those who still don't have access I apologize. I wish you were in there with me. In fact, when you do get access I'd love for you to add me to one of your circles. It's a good time and it's easy and it's pretty great so far.

So how's the photography community at Google+? It's great and it's thriving. It'll continue to do so with some really great photographers sharing great photography content and having engaging conversations on photography. You've got most of the big names like Trey Ratcliff, Jim Goldstein, Thomas Hawk, Don MacAskill, and way more than I can link out to.

Better still is how beautifully and smoothly Google has implemented photo sharing on Google+. Viewing the photographs is more slick and provides a better presentation than Flickr thanks to their Lightbox feature. It just looks great and is easy to navigate.

Comments, of course, are there and the updates to new comments get pushed right to you so you can see who's commenting on your photos and when they do it. This creates a better back and forth between photographers. This is conversation.

With the release of the Google+ project Google's Picasa now becomes relevant again. Because Picasa is tied to Google+ they had to give Google+ users a 1 GB limited storage that's practically unlimited. Confused? If you upload images that fall in the limit range they don't count towards your limit. Here's the full FAQ to wrap your head around.

If you're an Android phone user there's an "instant photo upload" feature that you can turn on. This isn't instant share. This is upload. It's like a holding place in Picasa (tied to Google+) that let's you easily share any of your mobile phone photographs super easily. iPhone users will have to wait a bit for the iOS app that let's you do this. I have it on good authority that it'll be sooner than later. This is a killer feature. Flickr never really got mobile right. Google seems to understand that.

One of the more social features to the photographs is tagging. Most Facebook photographers know how it works and how useful it can be for marketing and networking. Plus tagging is a great way to keep up with friends, family, and acquaintances through photography. The Flickr community never really got into tagging the way that facebook users did.

It's not just about uploading images and commenting on photos. It's about having deeper conversations about photography. In fact, it was a comment by a photographer in my "photography circle" that prompted this post.

What Cassius said had been rolling through my subconscience ever since I started playing around Google+. 

Is Google+ gonna kill Flickr?

Of course I'm a fan of asking my social circles for their thoughts. I posed the typical "What do you like best about Google+?" to my photography circle. The conversation is still building but here's what we've got so far:

Alex Williams - Circle simplicity & the lightbox

Trevor Carpenter - Lightbox! And the hopes that all this extra attention will force the Picasa peeps to redesign their product, just like almost every other major Google property did this week.

Mawaz Khan Mirza - the fact that you can share your photographs with more style and go through notifications without opening each one separately :) google+ is far simpler than facebook :)

André Griepenburg - Better control on privacy, clear UI and of course the picture box is nice.

So that's where we're at so far with this very young and very powerful social network. I don't think Zuckerberg should be scared just yet. Should Flickr be scared? I certainly think so. What do you think?