To me, Flickr is the better Photo.net. Photo.net has been around since 1993 and apparently is still running, but it never was a site where you could just collect your own work and share them the way you wanted. It would be interesting to read about how Flickr succeeded against an older, established competitor.

photo.net is the water cooler. flickr is the portfolio. They're different. I never talked to anyone on flickr. I'm still friends with people from photo.net