‘Honey, They Stole My Flickr!’ Social Network Typologies, Online Trust and Dissent, and the Monetisation of Immaterial Labour

Abstract

In May 2013, Flickr – one of the first great social media platforms and a pioneer in the use of the digital image as ‘social glue’ – launched a new platform design, unannounced, to its 80 million-plus user community. The changes brought Flickr more into line with newer mobile-focused Web 2.0 competitors, and were arguably inevitable if Flickr's owner, Yahoo, was to persist with the platform. However, the changes elicited a storm of protest from existing Flickr users. The author followed the progress of this ‘revolt’ for a month on Flickr's own user forums, and uses the insights gained to ask questions about current theorising of Web 2.0 platform typologies, their corporate governance and business models, and the apparent quietism of their massive immaterial labour ‘workforces’. The article concludes by asking whether we need to think beyond current Web 2.0 governance models that seem so welded to dichotomies of public and private ownership.