Photos are memory/emotion recall indexes. Dear Flickr please implement "mute" to regain social relevance. See examples of "mute" previously noted: http://ttk.me/t49F4. Why it matters, problem statement: you end up following too many people on Flickr (social conventions, inevitable) and then your flickr.com/photos/friends/ becomes too noisy with photos you don't care about - you grow weary and miss the photos you do care about, and then give up. Coping mechanism: it's too emotionally wrenching to drop connections and instead people either: switch to sharing via *new* networks that work because they quickly let you start small/focused, adding only those you care to see currently (rather than years ago), e.g. Instagram, Path. OR people instead share more photos on a service that does support mute: Facebook. Solution: "mute" works because it's the simplest of user tuned filters that increases the signal to noise ratio of what users see from their friends, thus they see more of what they want to see and interact more, commenting, favoriting, tagging, and adding notes. All of which is the whole point of using a social photo sharing site in the first place - the people to people interactions. #needspost