This can be answered by the question "Is Flickr profitable by itself?" If so, someone will certainly buy it. If not, who knows.
My guess, someone will buy it and it'll languish for a year or two as the product strategy is developed and migration of technology occurs, then the new vision by new owners will be executed.
Yahoo has done a pretty good job with the languishing part all on its own. Though, snark aside, I think part of the issue is that it's not entirely clear what a next-generation photo site with a pro/prosumer slant looks like that's different from today. (And, of course, whatever changes you make are going to be hated by some percentage as was the case when flickr went through a redesign a few years back.)
Hard to say. There isn't a lot of direct competition. Smugmug probably comes closest (and I see their current pricing structure again makes it reasonable for non-professionals which it wasn't for a time). It really depends on how many people pay for a premium ("pro") flickr account which Yahoo seems to have been fairly ambivalent about collecting over the past few years.
Personally, I'd find it something of a bummer if flickr were to go away or seriously decay. I could switch but it would be a definite pain. (I also find flickr a great source of CC photos.)
I've been running my own site for displaying images; for backup, I have a dedicated server + synthing.
It's the archives I'd really, really miss, from people who more or less stopped taking photos.
If Flickr was to offer what Smugmug and 500px does for pros ( like direct upload from Lightroom, eyecandy portfolios, etc. ) instead of focusing on an app that uploads every picture it finds by default, I believe they'd see a return of the many and probable could become profitable. But this would need immediate and massive changes, which I don't think will happen at all.
>It's the archives I'd really, really miss, from people who more or less stopped taking photos.
That's fair. The greatest loss if flickr were to go away at some point would be that a lot of content would be permanently removed from the Web. And flickr's scale is such that I can't really imagine something like the archive team being able to copy flickr content and archive it in a useful searchable way. I may be wrong though.
Given that there are functioning businesses in the flickr vein, I'm reasonably hopeful it will continue on though. Even if that's wishful thinking on my part.
I was really excited when Flikr relaunched and offered a TB of space... but the upload feature ALWAYS failed for me. I could never upload lots of images (I have many thousands) -- so I finally gave up.
Then "Origami" was supposed to launch and solve that - but they shut down before they could even go live!
You can upload directly from Lightroom using something like jfriedl's plug-in. Works great.
I agree that galleries of some sort would be a great addition. I put a lot of photos up on flickr so they're available to myself and others. But I'd like the ability to showcase a more curated collection.
If you look at the landscape of "flickr-like" companies, it looks as if you can make a business out of it (Smugmug, 500px) but it's probably not a huge opportunity business given how many such efforts have been shuttered or allowed to largely languish over the past 15 years or so.
The reality is that most people are just fine with uploading their camera phone pics to Facebook and be done with it. The number who are willing to spend $25-50 per year for a premium site is probably a pretty small percentage--and would be even smaller if you up that to $100+.
Part of this may be related to the lack of direct monetization opportunities from Flickr. If you take the example of Instagram, the enormous number of users they have have created, "Instagram celebrities" out of thin air, with people securing modeling contracts or product endorsement deals simply by being popular on the network. I'm sure some photographers are getting business opportunities by posting their work as well, although that has a lot to do with how good they are at getting themselves exposure.
What the world really needs is another platform for vapid promotion :-)
Flickr/Yahoo! have taken some steps related to allowing users to monetize their photos over the years. There's been an agreement with Getty and they've done some other things as well. At its heart, though, flickr started out with very much a community orientation and, while they haven't necessarily done the best job of it, they've maintained more of a community than a commercial flavor.
Aside from the young, female, and attractive though, it's pretty hard to commercialize a flickr presence in any significant way. Even microstock sites which are explicitly about selling aren't a great source of income for most.
The rest had been obsolete for a while anyway.