Having been around conversations with some of the old Flickr people, I have to disagree. It's definitely sinking, and has been slowly gutted over the past few years. This is only the most recent piece of news:
http://nolancaudill.com/2012/01/30/the-front-line/
All of the core Flickr people have left, and some (like Aaron Straup Cope) are starting to build their own: http://straup.github.com/parallel-flickr/ http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2011/10/14/pixelspace/#para...