Andrew Orlowski over at El Reg penned an article his week where he claimed Flickr was getting far more publicity than it’s due. He cites a Hitwise survery that suggest Photobucket is the biggest of photo sharing sites, while Flickr lies in 6th place. He suggests that Flickr, being a Web 2.0 darling, receives far more publicity than it’s bigger competitor.
Web 2.0 arguments seem weird in this instance, do even half the people using Flickr know what web 2.0 is, nevermind that Flickr uses it’s technologies? And do Photobucket users realise their site doesn’t have snazzy AJAX, but still works anyway …?
Survey aside, I had a quick look to see make other comparisons.
Google trends puts Photobucket ahead, but not by a huge margin. While Alexa gives Flickr a traffic rank of 50, with Photobucket getting 76.
The survery itself appears skewed. There are other arguments in the comments after the survey suggesting that Photobucket isn’t really the same as Flickr, one being a place to store and display photos for Myspace users, and the other being a photo community in it’s own right.