by renchap on 11/1/18, 2:18 PM with 216 comments
by Skye on 11/1/18, 5:03 PM
I don't know what my dad will do, he's been using Flickr for quite a few years now, he used to pay for pro, but then stopped doing so after Yahoo bought Flickr and started breaking the UI. He has over 1000 photos, but I am not sure if the pro features are worth the price for him. Fortunately he has local backups of every photo, but it does feel like his photos have been held to ransom. He probably would be willing to pay some money (but less than the current pro) just for the extra storage (and none of the extra features), from what I understand.
To conclude this wall of text, I understand why they're doing it, and hopefully it will make Flickr sustainable, but I feel the way it was done will cause problems when it happens (if it only stopped an account from uploading if it had too many photos, that would help a lot to avoid link rot), and might also cause problems in the future (while morbid to think about, if a pro user dies, they won't be able to pay and a bunch of their images will just get deleted, which could be bad for their families)...
EDIT: fix a few spelling errors and tyops
UPDATE: my dad's response to this is that he will pay for pro to keep his images online. In general, he doesn't feel like Pro is intended for him because it has features he doesn't really care about, he only cares about the storage and community stuff, not the statistics and software stuff.
by renchap on 11/1/18, 2:39 PM
I created Talegraph [1] as a platform to tell stories with your pictures, and it has been hard for us to explain to users why paying for the product is the only way to ensure your pictures will stay online and private. Paying for what you use & privacy is not something normal people are used to, but this is the only sustainable way imo.
by superflyguy on 11/1/18, 3:06 PM
Much as I try and avoid using Google, I stick with them for the free email and unlimited photo storage.
by robotbikes on 11/1/18, 2:26 PM
by muststopmyths on 11/1/18, 3:46 PM
On the other hand, my limited interactions with Smugmug have been stellar. I really like those guys and wish them luck.
The joy of Flickr was exploring the random pictures from ordinary people. I could care less about the heavily Photoshopped "prosumer" stuff that seems to be more popular on the platform. I liked seeing natural skill at composition instead of digital post-processing.
Unfortunately, it looks like SmugMug wants Flickr to be more like SmugMug, so I don't see myself buying back into pro.
Flickr to me was mostly about sharing my photos with friends and family before facebook killed that use case. I don't use facebook much any more, but no one else in my circle uses Flickr either.
Deleting photos over the limit is a bit annoying though. I seem to remember in the past they just made them temporarily inaccessible if you let Pro lapse for a bit (while travelling or whatever).
Time to whip up something that will compare what I have uploaded on flickr (4000+ photos over 12 years) to what's on my local backups so I can download what I have to and forget about the rest.
by mherdeg on 11/1/18, 2:51 PM
It did seem like the 1TB limit was too good to last when it was announced 5 years ago.
Still, it's a relatively inexpensive extra archive for my photos (400GB) that supplements other backups. The archive is sorta searchable and kinda good for sharing with family and friends.
I haven't really used their social or community features (the Explore experience, the magic donkey, and the pandas are all alien to me -- https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/361974994 , http://code.flickr.net/2009/03/03/panda-tuesday-the-history-... ).
by blueadept111 on 11/1/18, 9:22 PM
by shittyadmin on 11/1/18, 2:28 PM
Well, that's one way to make the only remaining feature of your product sound like a bad thing...
by kerneltime on 11/1/18, 4:07 PM
Summary, use flickr/smugmug to host and share pics that are curated (get rid of unwanted pics when uploading there). Use iCloud (paid), Google(free) and client side encrypted amazon drive to backup all pics (yes 3 backups and I do not trust amazon's free picture tier not sure what they will do with it, already bitten by them changing plans). Yes, I know Google gets what it wants ability to process my pics.. sigh.
I want to have an honest relation with my service providers, I pay them for a service they give me and I am their customer. Not going to reiterate what has been said numerous times about not being a customer if the service is free..
Flickr is giving up on "growth at all costs and monetize later" model to "we have a good quality focused service but you have to pay..". I would rather pay. The only problem I am now paying for both flickr and smugmug..
by yesimahuman on 11/1/18, 2:34 PM
by andyjohnson0 on 11/1/18, 3:03 PM
I don't have a problem with their decision, and I'll certainly upgrade to pro in the next few weeks. But I also don't use Flickr for "community interaction and exploration of shared interests" - I just want to be able to create albums and put photos in them. So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't entirely convince me.
But this isn't unexpected, and I think the purchase by SmugMug was a good thing. I just hope they can stop randomly losing my photos after this...
(Edit: s/convince/entirely convince/)
by 2sk21 on 11/1/18, 2:47 PM
by owenversteeg on 11/1/18, 7:52 PM
The rapid phase-out period unnerves me, personally. If I hadn't seen it, and bam, all but 1000 of my tens of thousands of photos were deleted, I don't know what I'd do. Yes, I know, have backups - but moving and organizing tens of thousands of photos takes time and energy. I've also got miscellaneous friends and family that I now have to tell about this change, to download their photos and keep them somewhere else.
I just wish there was a cheaper option for those of us who want to keep our photos on Flickr. $50/year is pretty high; you can get a 1TB hard drive for $38 on Amazon. If there was some kind of intermediate tier I'd really appreciate it.
I know that you want to increase community engagement, and I think that's a noble goal, but consider this: you've got a great photo tool, and some people want to use it for their own personal photos without engaging in the community. In my experience, the uploadr works faster and better than Google Photos or other apps I've tried, and I prefer the interface to other apps. Why not just charge what it costs to run? According to Backblaze [0] disk space now costs them about 2 cents/gigabyte. So about $20 for a terabyte. Now I realize there are costs associated of course - bandwidth etc, maintenance, whatnot - but I'm sure you could profitably offer a limited plan for less than what the current Pro plan costs.
In any case, good luck with Flickr, I'm rooting for you guys.
by tzfld on 11/2/18, 9:10 AM
I somewhat expected this decision, because 1TB free storage sounds to good to be true from the very beginning. I know, I will loose all my edited photos, geotags, edited descriptions and all my additions on flickr. I've uploaded publicly thousands with them of points of interest and with free to use licence, but seems that there is nothing to do. All the photos will remain buried in a forgotten hdd, somewhere in the bottom of a case.
by tokyodude on 11/1/18, 6:35 PM
But, .... it seems like they're jumping the gun here. I went to go resign up for Pro but you still have to do it through your Yahoo account!!!
I don't want yahoo even associated with my flickr account but I could find no way to disassociate the yahoo account.
Shouldn't they fix that before rolling out this change?
(or maybe I missed how)
by sfilargi on 11/1/18, 6:34 PM
But other than that I am 100% on-board with this strategy. Get done with the "free" accounts already.
Haven't bother to go through the T&C but I hope they have clause that say they are not allowed to use your data for data-mining/advertising.
by httpsterio on 11/1/18, 3:46 PM
Then again, from a business standpoint I welcome the decision. I'd rather have a free place to host a 1000 photos than no Flickr at all. I welcome their stance alleged stance of treating users as priority rather than as just advertisement data generators.
I say alleged because I don't know how well these promises of users first are applied in practice but I'm hopeful.
At least they are upfront about it so kudos to Flickr for that.
by ocschwar on 11/1/18, 10:20 PM
Now whe I go to Flickr I see a lot more photo plagiarism by throwaway accounts, to say nothing of dank memes.
If Flickr offers better integration of their photo storage with blogging platforms and the like, it would be very well worth the Pro account. And by concentrating on helping peopel who gather photos for public presentation, they'd be offering a service that isn't quite like the shutterbug demographic they want, but is still on the same tenor.
by chewz on 11/2/18, 7:11 AM
I had sympathy for Flickr as community like 8-10 years ago but haven't been using actively Flickr for couple of years - as it became slowly unusable. I had to write my own scripts to import all my photos as their tools stooped being developed 10 years ago. [1]
At the moment Flickr webpage is quite unusable (if you block aggressive tracking from Yahoo and other 3-rd parties on DNS level), Flickr app is unusable for privacy reasons - installation on Android requires access to identity, contacts and microphone) and logging to Flickr requires giving some weird permissions to Oath (whoever it is).
So with all the sympathy for the new owners of Flickr I think it is a bit premature to ask loyal users for ransom before putting it's house in order and showing what the new Flickr would be. It is just asking me to pay for the development in unknown direction.
I got the message and I will not be using their services in the future as they cannot be considered by me as serious and trusted.
by k_sze on 11/1/18, 2:42 PM
by kornork on 11/1/18, 5:12 PM
by patorjk on 11/1/18, 2:51 PM
by holychiz on 11/1/18, 4:39 PM
by theplaz on 11/1/18, 3:24 PM
When I upload photos, Flickr looks at the taken date of the photo and sorts them that way. When I upload videos from the computer (using the upload tool), Flickr does NOT look at the metadata to set the taken date. Instead, then taken date is set to the current date meaning the videos are out of order of the photos.
by vldr on 11/2/18, 7:42 AM
And if they happen to not pay attention to announcements like these they might find their photo's irreverably gone in a few months.
Moves like this, so soon after the acquisition, with 0 lenience for existing users makes me not trust Flickr/SmugSmug anymore. What will be the next step when they will randomly delete your photo's?
by a012 on 11/1/18, 3:24 PM
by meesterdude on 11/1/18, 3:38 PM
but i think this was horrible messaging. I would have much rather appreciated a more straightforward approach, instead of trying to get me to be excited for being limited to 1,000 images and video. I think it shows flickr still has a ways to go in building trust - because being disingenuous in messaging doesn't build it.
by saaaaaam on 11/1/18, 11:52 PM
by Markoff on 11/1/18, 9:49 PM
flickr app it's absolutely horrible, impossible to organize or share photos which i would like to do, but it's pretty much impossible so i just used it as backup, so good luck with your business if you think you will turn those free users into paid with this strategy and i will keep my public photos there for people to see, just going to delete account (10yo+) and finally get rid of yahoo account (at last one benefit from this mess), because apparently photographer enough if i am not willing to pay for sharing few photos andyou think 1000 photos it's enough for years
and if someone is into real photography they are already long time on 500px, so once again who needs paid flickr? might as well shut it down instead of this slow death and blackmailing users who dunno any better how to transfer photos and set their own cloud
by pjsg on 11/2/18, 1:52 AM
I'll probably end up paying for a couple of months of Pro before deleting everything (as it'll take some time to migrate onto another service).
What frustrates me is that this is the second service that I use that changed it's T&Cs on me this year which needed a lot of work to redo my websites (the other was Google Maps which went from free to $2k/month).
Flickr needs to make money, but I'll bet the fallout will be bad as this change affects a bunch of users who have no idea that it is coming. Presumably the 3% of free people with more than 1k photos are causing significant costs and Flickr wants to dump them.
by AaronNewcomer on 11/1/18, 6:23 PM
As a paid SmugMug user, is there is discount for signing up for a paid flickr account? I saw that there is a discount to become a SmugMug user listed on Flickr Pro Perks.
by enimodas on 11/1/18, 9:47 PM
by dreamling on 11/1/18, 6:32 PM
Having more than 1000 pix means I'm now a pro member again, which I let lapse when storage went to 1 ter. Though, my ~38,000 pics only take up 5% of that terabyte. Some of those 2004 pictures are really tiny. Photography may not be as much of a focus for me now, but those early days were really engaging, here's hoping SM brings some of the magic back.
Having lots of pictures, and albums has made sorting, managing them much harder with the Organize browser tool. I'm interested how Smugmug will be improving the experience of managing photos and albums.
Will Organize be getting some of the new direction focus?
by dotBen on 11/1/18, 2:46 PM
I mostly agree with the direction they want to take, I just don't want to be part of the journey and so want to get my photos out.
by patrickg_zill on 11/1/18, 2:35 PM
by maxxxxx on 11/1/18, 3:33 PM
Also: this is is not the only criteria, but do any of them allow a custom domain?
by munificent on 11/1/18, 5:04 PM
I've been a Flickr Pro user for ages. Flickr was one of the things that got me into photography and improved my skills. I learned how to take better pictures by looking at other photos and seeing what kind of feedback mine got.
Then Yahoo aquired it and Flickr just fizzled out. I kept taking pictures but it wasn't the same without a community to share them with. It really made me sad.
I truly hope Flickr can return to the fantastic site it used to be and everything about this announcement reads like they have their head on straight.
by inetknght on 11/1/18, 4:00 PM
If one thing were to make me want to consider Flickr's services, this statement alone would be it.
by ripsawridge on 11/3/18, 4:36 AM
by josefresco on 11/1/18, 3:19 PM
Does anyone have data on how Google Photos generates revenue? Is it just a mechanism to upsell Google Drive storage quotas? Or are they also mining the photo meta data?
by matt_the_bass on 11/5/18, 9:02 PM
by wrs on 11/1/18, 3:05 PM
However, I lost the thread of the argument at the penultimate paragraph. If the “vast majority” of current free users will still qualify, why will this change the community in a significant way?
by ryanmccullagh on 11/1/18, 4:04 PM
by jgh on 11/1/18, 10:04 PM
by nakedrobot2 on 11/1/18, 2:38 PM
by gchokov on 11/1/18, 4:47 PM
by proneb1rd on 11/1/18, 10:43 PM
by gdhbcc on 11/1/18, 2:29 PM
by transpy on 11/1/18, 2:33 PM
by notananthem on 11/1/18, 3:57 PM
by Double_a_92 on 11/1/18, 2:37 PM