PUBLIC MARKS from sbrothier with tags flickr & mobile

At Flickr our users really care about image quality.  They also care a lot about how responsive our apps are.  Addressing both of these concerns simultaneously is challenging;  higher quality images have larger file sizes and are slower to transfer.   Slow transfers are especially noticeable on mobile devices.   Flickr had historically aimed for high quality at the expense of larger files, but in late 2014 we implemented a method to both maintain image quality and decrease the byte-size of the images we serve to users.   As image appearance is very important to our users,  we performed an extensive user test before rolling this change out.   Here’s how we did it.

iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr, but Flickr (Flickr) hasn’t really returned the love to iPhone users…until now. Because, you know, having your website optimized for the iPhone is one thing, and having a full fledged, native application for the platform is another.