Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery), Shutterfly and Webshots are not dead. There are different reasons people share photos, just as there are different reasons people share text. That we even call such sites "photo sharing" shows how primitive our understanding is. Imagine if we called news.yc "just another text sharing site".
"All the good tools are taken" is the statement I disagree with most in this article.
Technologically, news.yc is just another text sharing site. It's only the people and the way they interact that separate it from Reddit, Digg, Fark, etc. So if you want to make a new "text sharing website" and have it be successful, you better have something better than the technology to differentiate yourself from your competition.
If the community you want to attract can do things more the way they want with your technology, you've solved an important part of the problem. For example, reddit's "Recommended" section is an attempt at that.
I totally agree with you that it's idiotic to say that all the tools have been created. I think that all the obvious tools have been created and the challenge is now to find the new ones that we've always wanted but weren't previously able to build.
I-and I suspect everyone else reading YC News-can probably think of dozens of tools that I'd love to see (and if you're a reader you've probably thought about this too and are thinking of starting a company to build this tool).
When I said: "Today, all the good tools already been taken."
I meant for obvious to be included as part of good. Of course there are literally more tools to be made, but there are probably easier ways to create value than finding the one perfect tool that no one's thought of yet.
"All the good tools are taken" is the statement I disagree with most in this article.