Shaun R. Haber

I finally purchased a Flick Pro account last night. This comes after some consideration whether to switch to Flickr or stay with TextAmerica.

I’ve been a member of TextAmerica since Sept 2003, when I purchased a Nokia 3650 camera phone. I used it mainly as a moblog, a place to store my camera phone images uploaded (via email or mms) soon after I take them. It was fun for a while, but soon my photo posting rate started to slow down…

In Dec 2004 I got a digital camera, a Canon Powershot SD200, which I used on my travel to Europe. I wanted to set up an online album, and I chose PHPGallery. I picked this mainly because I had access to my own server (this one, courtesy of Ethan) and I didn’t want to pay the hefty fee to upgrade my TextAmerica account.

Last year saw the rise of social software, particularly Flickr and Delicious. Flickr seemed to be ahead of the game in online photo galleries, whereas TextAmerica seemed to be playing catch up. PHPGallery always felt clunky and slow to me, and lacked the community environment that surrounds both Flickr and TA.

Flickr has the best user interface of them all, including smart use (placement) of AJAX for admin functionality. TextAmerica’s control panel is still somewhat buggy and definitely more convoluted. Flickr just feels nicer.

There are some factors, however, the sway to TextAmerica’s advantage. TextAmerica supports video, including 3gp, mov, mpg, etc. Flickr has no video support. There is also the loyalty factor. I was introduced to TextAmerica by Ethan (who, btw, has also switched to Flickr a while ago), and in turn I introduced TextAmerica to my friends when they also bought camera phones.

I had never purchased a pro TextAmerica because I always viewed it as a (camera phone)moblog. I used PHPGallery for my albums. For a while, I had always made a clear distinction between these two uses in my mind.

However, since my camera phone is really shitty (compared to new phones today), I would take more pics with my digital camera and less with my phone. My iPhoto library keeps growing, and I’ve been lacking to get new photos online for confusion of where to upload them. I would never have a large enough cluster of photos to constitute an ‘album’ for PHPGallery, and i felt weird uploading to TA since I was so used to posting real time from my phone.

Flickr feels like the most comfortable place and change of scenery. Not to mention, the $24.99 annual upgrade fee is much friendlier looking than TextAmerica’s hefty $69.99 annual upgrade fee.

Over time, I will post more photos from the past as I continue to upload new photos soon after I take them. You can view a rundown of pro account features for Flickr.