Along came flickr

Why this maybe the best consumer oriented web application of the year ? They nailed many things right  and became first social software where I took just couple of days to go from trial to a paid member. If you have a family spread all over the place the way I do (and the way they hate other photo sharing tools) then this is a one gift you want to give to your family.

Where they scored -

Interface matters, community user interface is hard to design and you have to be damn lucky to get it right
Playing to people's desire, they get the human factor right.
Magical mix of thin client and rich client features
Technology is playing second fiddle and shows up in few places as a pleasant surprise (EXIF support is cool)

Great job Steve and team. Thanks to this tool I now see my family spending more quality time on the internet and that too with the family.

As with any good software, you get the rush of ideas about what more you can do with it. I am sure Steve and his team must be getting lot of suggestions but here is my short list -

- more fine-grained access control, as the notion of family is very broad. I dont want few pictures to be seen by the kids of the family but adults can see. Its not just the Hawaii vacation we are talking but the important product visuals, blueprints and so and so forth.

- ability to see who has viewed and how many times. Current feature gives number of views but doesnt tell the view count per contact

- Templates for photo-essay, photo-journalism, kids projects, family gift shopping brainstorming
 
Check what folks are doing with this:

Cyprian Loman writes of Flickr as an educational tool. Imagine students working together to upload, catalog and discuss images associated with a project. Flickr allows teachers to easily share publicly or privately images that can be used to connect to classroom learning and interaction.

This and other applications will prove web2.0 to be a more interesting time.