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Flickr overhauls its contact management tool

Flickr's contact manager gets a little more serious with powerful sorting options. Users with a lot of contacts will find the changes very useful.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn

Flickr rolled out a big update to its inter-network content manager on Thursday afternoon. It now lets you sort by contact type, total number of photos, when you added them as a contact, and when their last upload was. This last option might be one of the most useful, since it can tell you who signed up for the service then abandoned it completely, making it easy to clear out some space.

The one thing that hasn't changed is the option to see more than a few contacts per page. The current cap is just 15 to a page, which might be fine for some folks, but Flickr power users with a lot of friends might find it limiting to have to guestimate what page they're on, or use the search function to track down a name. Oddly enough I had tweeted about loathing this just hours before the change. Update: One of Flickr's product managers Matthew Rothenberg pinged me back via Twitter to let me know the full contact list on a page feature is coming.

Also still missing is a way to mass edit contact relationships, or see which of your contacts does not reciprocate the contact love. Flickr currently has a cap at 3,000 of these per user, which means those coming close to that limit could use the tool to do some spring cleaning.

Related: Report: Yahoo layoffs hit Flickr


Flickr's updated contact manager now lets you sort through your contacts a number of ways, including the last time they uploaded a shot. CNET Networks