Google shutting down Picnik(blog.picnik.com)
blog.picnik.com
Google shutting down Picnik
http://blog.picnik.com/2012/01/official-announcement-picnik-is-closing/
11 comments
Not only do they have a devoted fan base, but nearly all of the comments are by women. There's got to be some interesting data there in how they ended up attracting that audience.
My wife uses it. She uses it because there is a button for it in picasa. Mainly to tweak photos for her blog and add text into them.
Girls freaking LOVE picnik. I can't tell you how many times I've seen albums of crappy filters with text that says crap like "Live...Love..Laugh" in sparkly letters that came from picnik.
If you can make a service easy enough that a typical college aged girl can get into it, you're doing something right.
If you can make a service easy enough that a typical college aged girl can get into it, you're doing something right.
A week ago Flickr announced that they’d be moving away from Picnik: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/13/start-the-new-year-fres...
Wow! Amazing! So what's the real alternative to online image editing for the mass? Of course there are Pixlr, Sumopaint, Aviary, Photoshop Express, but each targets a somewhat different audience than Picnik. I know the fact that Picnik is Flash-based is inconsistent with Google's strategy, and that with Flash going nowhere, Picnik is unlikely to help Google anywhere. But still... there are tons of moms and pops who use Picnik.
Question: Is there room for a new Picnik?
Edit: hmm, the Google+ version of Picnik (scaled down) is still Flash-based. So this is most likely part of the "Drive Traffic to Google+ At All Cost!" strategy.
Question: Is there room for a new Picnik?
Edit: hmm, the Google+ version of Picnik (scaled down) is still Flash-based. So this is most likely part of the "Drive Traffic to Google+ At All Cost!" strategy.
Analytics still uses flash, as well as most of their charting tools. I believe the attachment uploader in gmail... they've also baked flash into chrome ( http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/bringing-improved-support-f... ). Unlike iOS and Windows8 Metro apps, Android supports flash.
If anti-flash is the strategy for them, I'd question the execution.
If anti-flash is the strategy for them, I'd question the execution.
I'm not sure, but there's a Chinese thing called "mei-tu-xiu-xiu" (~ beautiful picture refiner?).
Key thing to note is that Picnik functionality is moving to Google+.
The problem with Google+ is any large photo gets re-sized to 2048 x 2048. I did research and tested it. I haven't tried them, but some alternatives being mentioned are fotoflexer.com and advanced.aviary.com.
Part of the overall strategy to turn Picasa (and the rest of Google) into a Facebook clone by killing all the features except sharing, and only making sharing work with Google accountholders.
Bummer -- this was a great service. Seems like Google has been shutting down a lot of things recently. There was a passage in the Steve Jobs biography where he was telling Larry Page that google should focus on fewer products and not spread themselves so thin -- seems like since Larry took over from Eric Schmidt, that's what he's been doing (slowly but surely).
i can't help but think that this was done by google to hurt flickr/yahoo, since flickr integrated picnik as their web-based photo editing tool. i used it quite a bit to do easy changes like cropping photos.
maybe yahoo should have bought them before google did.
maybe yahoo should have bought them before google did.
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Don't forget Facebook. A lot of users would've used Picnik to edit and share their photos on Facebook. If it's all about Google+, then hurting FB is a bonus.
Sad day. Picnik wasn't the best photo editing tool, but it was certainly handy to use away from home when you need to edit something quickly and painlessly.
Too bad. It was very helpful for editing pics in Flickr.
Oh man that's annoying. I loved Picnik, and recommended it to all my clients as great way for resizing photos.
Does anyone know an alternative?
Does anyone know an alternative?
For this particular simple task, I recommend Pixlr. It was no where as polished as Picnik, but it is fast to load.
Of all Google's shutdowns, this was the only one that make me scream out loud. I am gutted.
Picnik was a minimum viable photoshop. The resizing options were so useful and it was really simple.
This is just sad.
I am speaking as a selfish user though.
Are there other good options out there?
Picnik was a minimum viable photoshop. The resizing options were so useful and it was really simple.
This is just sad.
I am speaking as a selfish user though.
Are there other good options out there?
Aviary recently pivoted to become an embedded photo editing service for web + phone apps. I wonder if this is an opportunity for them.