If you have photos to upload to the Internet, what's the best place to head to: Facebook or Flickr? You can look at the question in two ways.
If you simply want to go with the choice that's popular with the greatest number of people, Facebook is so loved that it gets a third of a billion photos each day. Snapchat gets about half as many (Snapchat doesn't actually delete photos once they are viewed -- it only removes them from view). Instagram is much more modest -- it only gets 50 million photos each day.
Next to these numbers, Flickr is but a speck -- it gets a little more than 1 million photos a day. If you want your pictures to be on the most popular site on the Internet, Facebook is where you need to be. It has a billion users and can take your photos farther than any other site. There is another way to look at the question of which the best destination for your images is.
A look at Flickr
For years, Flickr was a neglected photo sharing service. It even missed out on the mobile and social media revolutions. In the past year, though, Yahoo has decided to upgrade Flickr. The design of the website is now fresh and current. Browsing photos on it is easy, and it now has great apps for iOS and Android. But these changes only mean that Flickr isn't hopelessly outdated. There's one more change that Yahoo has brought to Flickr that makes it a true trendsetter.
Flickr gives you a terabyte of free space for your photos
Ten years ago, when Google first announced that its new Gmail service would come with a gigabyte of free storage, it seemed like an impossible number. This is the kind of place Flickr occupies today. It offers more than 1,000 GB of photo storage space to anyone who signs up for a free account. At the resolution that the iPhone 5s takes photos, you could store nearly half a million images in your Flickr account. If you love photography, Flickr is the place to be today.
Here's why Flickr is better than Facebook when it comes to photos
The resolution: With hundreds of millions of photos uploaded each day, Facebook can't afford to show them all at full resolution. On Facebook, your photos are heavily compressed to 20% of their actual file size. There's a great deal of loss of detail. On Flickr, on the other hand, once you upload your photos in original form, they remain that way.
The interface: In its new, redesigned form, Flickr has a spectacular interface to help you look at all your photos. Facebook has nothing of the kind. With all your friends on Facebook, any photo you upload is certainly instantly seen by everyone you care about. This only happens for as long as the photo is at the top of your Timeline. Once it goes down and disappears, no one's ever going to find it again. Facebook has practically no tools to help you manage and curate photos that are too old to show on the Timeline.
The videos: Flickr lets you store Full HD videos up to three minutes long each. While Facebook lets you upload longer videos, it limits the resolution to simple 720p HD.
The community: Facebook undeniably has the single largest online community. The community, though, is mostly only good to share photos on. Flickr, on the other hand, has a thriving community of dedicated photographers. Whatever kind of photography you may be interested in, there's a community on Flickr for it. For photographers, Flickr is the best destination possible today.
The tools: To begin, Flickr offers a simple, drag-and-drop photo uploading interface. Once your photos are uploaded, you get to geotag them manually and to also edit them with a set of photo editing tools. Facebook lacks all of these features.
The privacy: Facebook's biggest strength is its ability to help you share your photos far and wide. Its popularity is also its weakness. You run the huge risk of having your photos show up for people you don't want seeing them. Whether you're applying for a job or are in one already, your boss may want to take a look at your Facebook account. When all your photos are on Facebook, you run a real risk of having some kind of inappropriate photo show up. Your employer will never demand to see your Flickr account.
There's another important reason why switching your photo uploads to Flickr is a much better idea than going directly with Facebook: Flickr offers you ways to easily share your photos on Facebook. You lose nothing by adopting a Flickr-first policy.
Facebook is certainly not perfect
Facebook wants to be the place that everyone goes to for everything they do digitally. As with any other catch-all solution, Facebook requires compromises. It can be a sad thing to take a great picture with a great, modern, smartphone camera, and to waste all that resolution on Facebook's compression. Going to Facebook through Flickr is a wonderful win-win proposition. You get to keep your resolution, you get to share your photos on Facebook and you also get better privacy.