Flickr acquired by professional photo hosting service SmugMug

[Arthur]

It will be interesting to see what improvements SmugMug makes to Flickr.

 

We are thrilled to announce that SmugMug has acquired Flickr. We couldn’t be more excited to unite two brands that share the same mission, passions, and values. Photographers have always found ways to share their passion, work, and inspiration with each other. Together we are home to the creators, the shutter pressers, the doers and makers. We’re home to you.

 

Want to know what’s up and stay in the know? http://smu.gs/2GTZ6Dz

 

Have questions and want answers? http://smu.gs/2HwAcac

 

 

www.theverge.com/2018/4/20/17264226/flickr-acquired-by-smugmug

 

Flickr has been bought by professional photo hosting service SmugMug for an undisclosed price, according to a report from USA Today. The fate of Flickr has been up in the air as part of the ongoing decline of Yahoo, which was bought by Verizon last year $4.5 billion dollars and combined with AOL into Oath.

 

Yahoo itself had bought Flickr back in 2005 for $35 million, but never really seemed to know what to do with the service up until the end, even as it tried various redesigns and new services to revive Flickr, it never succeeded in mounting a comeback against more modern alternatives like Instagram.

 

SmugMug isn’t doing away with that legacy; the company intends to keep Flickr as a standalone community and give it more resources and attention than Oath did. But technology-wise, this acquisition might be a tall order for SmugMug, which isn’t nearly as big as the photo service it now owns.

[Arthur]

Flickr will end 1TB of free storage and limit free users to 1,000 photos

 

Flickr was purchased in April by professional photo hosting service SmugMug, and today, the first major changes under the new ownership have been announced. There’s a serious downgrade for free users, who are now limited to 1,000 pictures on the photo sharing site, instead of the free 1TB of storage that was previously offered.

 

As Flickr explains in its press release announcing the change, “Unfortunately, ‘free’ services are seldom actually free for users. Users pay with their data or with their time. We would rather the arrangement be transparent.” It makes a certain amount of sense — servers aren’t free, after all — but for free users with more than 1,000 photos, it’s not ideal news.

 

Free users with more than 1,000 photos or videos will have until 8th January 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download their surplus content. After 8th January, free users with over 1,000 pictures or videos won’t be able to upload any more. And on 5th February 2019, free accounts that are still over the limit will have their content actively deleted until they’re back under 1,000 (starting with the oldest content first).

 

Flickr is also adding numerous changes and enhancements to the $49.99-per-year Flickr Pro service over the course of the next few months. Paid customers will be given unlimited storage for photos and videos at full resolution, no ads, additional data on how their photos are performing, “premier” customer service, videos up to 10 minutes long (instead of three minutes), and partner discounts from Adobe, Smugmug, Peak Design, and more.

 

To sweeten the deal for any free holdouts, Flickr is also offering a 30 percent discount off of the first year of Flickr Pro through 30th November, which may help ease the sting of losing that free storage space.

 

In what may be the nicest quality-of-life change, starting in January, all users — paid and free — won’t have to use Yahoo to log in to Flickr anymore.

[supportman]

Thats good news, Flikr had turned into a photo storage place rather than a photo discovery and sharing site. They finally get it after the Yahoo mess.

[MatthewL]

Nearly died there reading that. I have some 8000 images on my FlickR and use it quite a bit, luckily I am a paid up member, didn't fancy transferring everything else where.

[mavhc]

160886 photos on flickr, oh well, at least there's google photos.

[gshaw]

Knew that was coming as soon as they were taken over, glad I never used it as a backup location now. Again shows the dark side of the cloud, your data becomes almost transient to some of these providers, who think nothing of deleting it as soon as it becomes an inconvenience to them

[mavhc]

They give you time to dl it, don't see the problem, run your own server if you want

[gshaw]

They give you time to dl it, don't see the problem, run your own server if you want

 

Changing the terms of the deal for existing customers and then deleting their data is poor form, regardless of whether you get notice about it or not. Seems standard form by consumer cloud providers to treat their customers with contempt. Microsoft tried to do the same with OneDrive cutting free storage for long-term users - in the end they relented after the backlash but it shows how little regard and value is placed on consumer data.

[LeMarchand]

Changing the terms of the deal for existing customers and then deleting their data is poor form, regardless of whether you get notice about it or not. Seems standard form by consumer cloud providers to treat their customers with contempt. Microsoft tried to do the same with OneDrive cutting free storage for long-term users - in the end they relented after the backlash but it shows how little regard and value is placed on consumer data.

 

Yep, and people wonder why I'm sceptical about "the cloud" .

[supportman]

You guys expect a lot from a free service! I could understand the complaints if you were paying but Flickr has explained the changes in their blog post really nicely.

[LeMarchand]

You guys expect a lot from a free service! I could understand the complaints if you were paying but Flickr has explained the changes in their blog post really nicely.

 

I don't use Flickr, but I'm expecting to see a lot more of this sort of thing as now that cloud services are much more widely used there's no need to try to tempt people with free offers.

 

Step 1: Offer a free service.

Step 2: Start to charge once it's popular.

Step 3: Start jacking up the price.

Step 4: Bonuses all round for the board.

[gshaw]

Yep, and people wonder why I'm sceptical about "the cloud" .

 

They'd never dare to it to businesses but in the consumer game trusting any one provider is really risky imo. Multiple copies on multiple providers and an olde-worlde local HDD backup seems to be the only way to have faith your data won't be sent away with the fairies at some point.

[supportman]

I don't use Flickr, but I'm expecting to see a lot more of this sort of thing as now that cloud services are much more widely used there's no need to try to tempt people with free offers.

 

Step 1: Offer a free service.

Step 2: Start to charge once it's popular.

Step 3: Start jacking up the price.

Step 4: Bonuses all round for the board.

If you have a read of the blog, this is absolutely not the case in terms of the FLICKR service.

 

Its explained very well in the article, the change is a result of Yahoo selling the business to a new owner and them going back to what made FLICKR great in the first place, its community. They even admit in the blog that yahoo's direction was totally wrong to become a storage site rather than a community/sharing site.

 

Basically this has nothing to do with cloud companies taking advantage of users, its about taking the site back to its roots. Its a fantastic new direction in my opinion. Yahoo were a shocking company, good riddance to them.

Edited November 6, 2018 by supportman

[gshaw]

If you have a read of the blog, this is absolutely not the case in terms of the FLICKR service.

 

Its explained very well in the article, the change is a result of Yahoo selling the business to a new owner and them going back to what made FLICKR great in the first place, its community. They even admit in the blog that yahoo's direction was totally wrong to become a storage site rather than a community/sharing site.

 

Basically this has nothing to do with cloud companies taking advantage of users, its about taking the site back to its roots. Its a fantastic new direction in my opinion. Yahoo were a shocking company, good riddance to them.

 

Regardless of who bought what, when and why it comes down to this...

 

• user signs up to a service under particular terms e.g. 1TB storage
  
• user stores data they value in the service, under the impression it's safe
  
• company gets bought out \ decides to cash grab
  
• company retrospectively changes the original terms
  
• company deletes data
  

If they'd grandfathered the 1TB users and just stopped offering the service to new sign-ups that's fine, however going in and deleting people's data definitely isn't. It's similar to what Photobucket did, destroying years of content on forums (although admittedly Photobucket were worse as they didn't offer a grace period).

 

Either way Flickr goes on my blacklist of sites I'll actively avoid and advise others to do the same from here on.

[Arthur]

Flickr says it won’t delete Creative Commons photos

 

Flickr will spare both the Flickr Commons and Creative Commons photos from deletion, the now SmugMug-owned company announced today. However, its new storage limitations on free accounts may impact its use as a home for photos with a Creative Commons license in the future.

 

When the company unveiled its big revamp last week, one of the immediate concerns among users was what the changes meant for the Creative Commons photos hosted on Flickr.

 

Under its new management, Flickr decided to stop offering free users a terabyte of storage, and instead will begin charging users who want to host more than 1,000 photos on its site. Users with more than 1,000 photos either had to choose to upgrade to a Pro account to retain those photos on the site or see them deleted.

 

Ryan Merkley, CEO at Creative Commons, expressed some concern last week over what this meant for the millions of CC images hosted on Flickr.

 

Would they be gone, too?

 

Flickr today says the answer is “no.”

 

It vows not to delete either its own Flickr Commons archive or any photos uploaded with a Creative Commons license before 1 November 2018.

 

going in and deleting people's data definitely isn't.

Yeah. They could have done what Google does with Drive if you stop paying and you have more than 15GB of data: simply prevent further uploads (effectively making your Google Drive read-only).

[mavhc]

Regardless of who bought what, when and why it comes down to this...

 

• user signs up to a service under particular terms e.g. 1TB storage
  
• user stores data they value in the service, under the impression it's safe
  
• company gets bought out \ decides to cash grab
  
• company retrospectively changes the original terms
  
• company deletes data
  

If they'd grandfathered the 1TB users and just stopped offering the service to new sign-ups that's fine, however going in and deleting people's data definitely isn't. It's similar to what Photobucket did, destroying years of content on forums (although admittedly Photobucket were worse as they didn't offer a grace period).

 

Either way Flickr goes on my blacklist of sites I'll actively avoid and advise others to do the same from here on.

 

You missed out * company gives users months to download data before it's deleted

[gshaw]

You missed out * company gives users months to download data before it's deleted

 

Amount of time is irrelevant, deleting users' existing data isn't an acceptable way to run a cloud service. As Arthur mentions above Google took a much more sensible stance when making their changes for example.

[mavhc]

They're not customers though, they're freeloaders

[gshaw]

They're not customers though, they're freeloaders

 

Still a customer whether you pay for the service or not

[LeMarchand]

Just had the email from Flickr. Not really looked at it as I can't remember ever signing up. Must check!

[Achandler]

Companies change their terms of use, the people using it for free are essentially costing them money so they must have figured out losing some of them is worth it overall.