Flickr or Shutterfly?? (is this a dumb question?)

Thing 9 states that Flickr is known as the best photo sharing and viewing site available, and I can see from the magical tour that this statement might very well be true. It's cool that you can share, group, and tag your photos so easily. And the idea of placing them in categories with other people's photos is new to me. It seems easy to search, easy to view, and I'm sure it's easy to download. But...

But...and perhaps this will seem antiquated now, but I've had an account with Shutterfly for years. I know, I know, it's not as sweet as Flickr, and it's an older site...probably geared more toward people who want to make Christmas cards and invitations than to people who want to show off their photogra phy skills. But in the last year, Shutterfly has become easier, and faster, and has offered more choices. Sure, it gets a little time consuming to add captions and more information, but I generally don't feel the need to do that stuff anyway. I actually used my Shutterfly account to create a photobook for my in-laws as a Christmas gift, and there were several templates, backgrounds, fonts, set-ups, etc. to choose from. It was a pretty easy process, and the gift was a big hit. Plus, Shutterfly often has deals on printing photos and I find it to be nice and cheap. Since I have not uploaded any photos to Flickr, I don't really know how much it would cost to print photos, or how easy it is to make photo books. If I was feeling dissatisfied with Shutterfly, I would certainly consider Flickr. I would also consider Picasa though, which some of my friends use.

There are so many ways to publish photos these days, whether it's through Facebook, a personal web site, or a photo sharing site; it seems that the possibilities are endless. I honestly did not realize that Flickr is simply another photo sharing site - albeit the best one - I thought maybe there was more to it that I definitely would not want to miss out on. Instead I find Flickr to be a helpful suggestion to keep in mind for future projects...but by the time I'm ready to use it, will something else be even bigger and better and more user-friendly? Something tells me that just might be the case....