Facebook Friday: Will Photo Upgrade Be A Flickr Kicker?

Just a day or so after I wrote about the online arms race between Facebook and Google, Facebook announced more upgrades, this time to their photo-sharing feature. But before I get to the affect this will have, here's the low-down on this high-res photo upgrade:

• The biggest difference will be a larger photo size, increasing it from the current 720 pixels to 2048 pixels (184% increase)
• This larger display size means support for high-resolution photos, which is good considering how prevalent high-res cameras are nowadays.
• Facebook will use a lightbox display for photos, meaning you won't have to jump from page to page to view each photo.
• As expected, internal upgrades should allow for faster upload times.

So that's the technical side of the upgrade, but what about its impact?

Clearly, this puts Facebook in direct competition with Flickr. Until now, Flickr carved out a niche for itself as a photo enthusiasts/professionals' network with high-res capabilities, while Facebook was the place to share snapshots and family photos.

It's same dynamic we see between YouTube and Vimeo, where YouTube (like Facebook) is the much more popular site with lower quality videos and Vimeo (like Flickr) is less trafficked but specializes in higher quality videos.

And even when YouTube started supporting HD videos, we didn't see Vimeo fall off the map. That's because the professionals who had helped position Vimeo as design-oriented saw no need to switch websites because Vimeo is as much about the site's demographic as its HD capabilities.

This is why Flickr shouldn't be too concerned with Facebook's upgrades. Photography enthusiasts and professionals will continue to use Flickr because that's the niche it's carved out, and it goes beyond the high-resolution features. That's why these upgrades are nice, but not enough to muscle out Flickr.

Remember, no amount of organic products can turn a Wal-Mart into a Whole Foods.