I imagine they're working on scaling and bad content filtering mechanisms in the back end, and integrating deanonymizaton from 3rd parties, and a secure API for authorities as required by law. All of these wonderful features offer nothing for the customer but probably help them make money from what is otherwise freeloading traffic.
Anyone else who's trying to create a flikr clone should take these requirements into consideration when designing your architecture and calculating your TCO. Map reduce fleets needed for these kind of analyses after the fact is not cheap and you want to have that stuff hitting the ground so you can start working on new features right away. When flikr was made 5 years ago, these kind of features weren't really a consideration for someone with an old user-as-the-customer-model in mind. Stewart Butterfield a co-founder resigned in 2008, stating that he was an old tin man in a new age.
Anyone else who's trying to create a flikr clone should take these requirements into consideration when designing your architecture and calculating your TCO. Map reduce fleets needed for these kind of analyses after the fact is not cheap and you want to have that stuff hitting the ground so you can start working on new features right away. When flikr was made 5 years ago, these kind of features weren't really a consideration for someone with an old user-as-the-customer-model in mind. Stewart Butterfield a co-founder resigned in 2008, stating that he was an old tin man in a new age.