Thomas Hawke in his An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc. says about Flickr that:

It’s the largest well organized library of images in the world. Not only that, it has a very strong social networking component. In fact, Flickr may represent (if managed correctly) your single biggest opportunity to launch a much larger and more lucrative social network (and stock photography agency as well). Have you spent any time in any Flickr groups? They are addicting. People live in them. They play games in them. All kinds of activity goes on in them every day. And if you took the time to really explore the social side of Flickr, you’d learn this, and figure out a way to grow it.

Flickr is seen by the public as an image hosting website without much innovation. Hawke's argument is that social networking component of Flickr is by far the most valuable aspect of the site.

He suggests that Flickr could become the largest stock photography agency in the world; Yahoo could seriously get into the self publishing business for business cards, holiday cards, photobooks, albums, etc. Flickr could open physical galleries and automate more of the “community management” at the site; host an online photography/videography school for users to brush up on their photographic skills; give users the ability to sell their photos – not just as stock imagery, but as art; software that runs through your entire stream and flags images being used elsewhere on the web commercially without payment.