I'm here because Flickr annoyed me - I'm not going to dwell on that, though. I've signed up for two years, so now I'm committed thought it would be more positive to sum up my opinions on Ipernity after a week of use.

First off, the interface is much cleaner than the new Flickr one. I think some of the navigation is less intuitive, but perhaps that's just because I'm so used to Flickr. It's clearly influenced by the old Flickr interface but there are some subtle differences. It does seem to take more clicks to get to places. I'd like slightly quicker access to the "activity" page, or maybe a summary of its content on the home page, perhaps, but when you get there it's very good. The ability to reply to comments right there within the activity page is great.

I was a little uneasy, at first, about the fact that it's clearly visible who has looked at pictures, so people could easily see when I'd been on their photos. However, this featue has quickly grown on me - I love seeing who has been in my photos, and when I go and look at their streams, they've all got great stuff. Perhaps some of them will see I've been looking, and come visit my stream too. Referral stats, like Flickr's, would be a nice future enhancement for club members. I'm guessing there aren't too many referral accesses at the moment though, since Ipernity doesn't have the presence that Flickr does.

Iin general, the quality of photography I'm seeing here is better than the Flickr average - don't get me wrong, there are some stunning photographers on Flickr but the average on Flickr is not that high - it seems better here (so far, at least). I do find the dolls in "explore" quite creepy, but the standard of photography there is high, and as more Flickr folks come over and start interacting we can already see explore changing.

One thing I'm finding hard is that hardly any of my contacts have followed me over - or at least if they have, I haven't found them yet. On the positive side, I seem to be making new contacts quite quickly, and a couple of my old friends were here already from the last big Flickr migration, so I'm not feeling lonely just yet! In fact I think I've been getting around the same number of views/comments/faves as I would have expected on Flickr, which is surprising given that I have hundreds of contacts there and there are so many more people in general.

Embedding pictures in comments: I never liked it when people did this on my pictures on Flickr. Thankfully no-one has yet done it to me here. I'd love an option to prevent it on my own pictures. In groups, it's quite useful - and the basis for many group activities on Flickr. It's restricted to club members only here, which I'm split on - I understand the guys have to make money, and I don't think it's expensive, but it does limit those kinds of groups, which can generate a lot of community spirit.

About that community spirit: it's good here, at the moment - perhaps because so many of us have come over at once, there's a shared sense of loss and excitement. I hope this survives, and I hope that our mass influx doesn't kill the site for existing users!

Of course, we also have the ability to write articles here, which is a nice feature - I might make more use of that in future for some of my film technique posts.

It's a wrench, leaving behind 600,000 views and seven-and-a-half years of activity. I haven't closed my Flickr account and I don't know if I will, but I'm fully signed up here and this is where my new pictures will go for the foreseeable future. My old pics - well, I'll migrate them over in small numbers, as I feel like it. I'm not going to do a big transfer of everything, there's a lot of rubbish, time for a spring clean...