Flickr to be acquired by Smugmug

5rtytry56 · 23-04-2018 11:41am #1

Vote. Personally I don't like the deal, having going Flickr in September 2012. I may close down my Flickr profile.
Mids feel free to move thread to another forum if need be

awec · 23-04-2018 11:49am

Never heard of smugmug til I got the email.

DaireQuinlan · 23-04-2018 12:19pm

Neutral.

I've been on flickr since 2006. Yahoo never really knew what to do with it, and Verizon would likely have driven the entire thing into the ground, so SmugMug buying it out is probably a good thing. So long as I get to keep my grandfathered in pro account with my unlimited space I'm happy, though that, I suspect, might be the first thing to go. I'd say they're likely to start restricting the free accounts as well.

thebaz · 23-04-2018 12:37pm

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

I've been on flickr since 2006. Yahoo never really knew what to do with it, and Verizon would likely have driven the entire thing into the ground, so SmugMug buying it out is probably a good thing. So long as I get to keep my grandfathered in pro account with my unlimited space I'm happy, though that, I suspect, might be the first thing to go. I'd say they're likely to start restricting the free accounts as well.

think i started using flickr at the same time as boards way back in 2005 - Flickr seamed to have gone a bit stale lately , your probably right and they will restrict unlimited space with Pay accounts - - think they will be merging images to Smug Mug so hopefully images will continue to saved as they are , and they wont try and reduce size of images or something in the merge , to save space , there is a lot of images (and videos) on flickr !!!

uck51js9zml2yt · 23-04-2018 1:34pm

Unhappy.

according to the faqs, they are being kept separate but the t&c's will be from smugmug

Bacchus · 23-04-2018 3:08pm

Unhappy.

I'm a SmugMug customer of about 3 years now and I think they're a fantastic service, and great value. I've never used Flickr so I've no idea how this will impact that service or how Flickr will improve SmugMug, so I'm neutral on this one. One thing I have gleaned though from what I've read is that SmugMug are a more suitable parent company for Flickr, as in they know the business and photography is there market, whereas Yahoo is... what is Yahoo anymore?

homerun_homer · 23-04-2018 4:17pm

Unhappy.

I've never heard of them and I've not a clue what they do. I watched a video off of flickr and it didn't explain anything, just showed people taking pictures. Anyone able to enlighten me?:pac:

awec · 23-04-2018 4:27pm

homerun_homer wrote: »

I've never heard of them and I've not a clue what they do. I watched a video off of flickr and it didn't explain anything, just showed people taking pictures. Anyone able to enlighten me?:pac:

Seems to be some sort of photo management site that lets you build a portfolio website but also does printing.

5rtytry56 · 23-04-2018 4:27pm

homerun_homer wrote: »

I've never heard of them and I've not a clue what they do. I watched a video off of flickr and it didn't explain anything, just showed people taking pictures. Anyone able to enlighten me?:pac:

"I'm glad you asked me that question"
I used Google Picasa and even installed the app on my windows 10 pc . Then Google killed Picasa. But in 2012
as an insurance policy I joined Flickr.

So yes, I will be crawling back with the tail between my legs to Google Photos. Google, All is forgiven. :P

uck51js9zml2yt · 23-04-2018 8:36pm

Unhappy.

90 posts on this forum over the years on smugmug

https://www.boards.ie/search/submit/?query=smugmug&forum=27

LimeFruitGum · 09-05-2018 8:38pm

Unhappy.

I couldn’t find much useful or practical information in Flickr about the merger. I sent Flickr some follow up questions, but not a peep off them so far.
Hard to say how it will go. I had never heard of Smugmug either. My Flickr is a private photo archive, I don’t want to be forced into making them public, sharing and liking. I have Instagram for the fancy show-off social stuff.

Bacchus · 10-05-2018 11:27am

Unhappy.

My guess would be that SmugMug won't rock the Flickr boat. What would be the point in paying all that money to acquire Flickr's services and (probably more importantly) community of photographers, to then piss every off by changing the T&Cs. I reckon SmugMug will be looking to tap into the Flickr community to drive more business into SmugMug and maybe expand the services SmugMug can offer.

thebaz · 01-11-2018 7:46pm

so , unlimited storage is gone today - 1,000 photos limit -

Pro is 49 dollars annually , on offer for November - i will probaly go with it - what do others think ? - unlimited storage for free was nevergoing to stay forever - as per Pix.ie story.

Alanstrainor · 01-11-2018 8:43pm

thebaz wrote: »

so , unlimited storage is gone today - 1,000 photos limit -

Pro is 49 dollars annually , on offer for November - i will probaly go with it - what do others think ? - unlimited storage for free was nevergoing to stay forever - as per Pix.ie story.

1TB storage with Amazon is 59 dollars a year. I'd rather go with amazon for security, I doubt amazon will go bust in the next while but this other crowd might.

DaireQuinlan · 01-11-2018 9:02pm

Neutral.

thebaz wrote: »

so , unlimited storage is gone today - 1,000 photos limit -

Pro is 49 dollars annually , on offer for November - i will probaly go with it - what do others think ? - unlimited storage for free was nevergoing to stay forever - as per Pix.ie story.

well, unlimited storage is still there for Pro users, the 1TB limit is gone for free accounts though, replaced with that 1000 photo limit. I'm not surprised to be honest, Flickr under Meyers was very obviously a numbers game, Smugmug look as though they're pivoting, hoping for quality & community over quantity. A 100% price hike is a bit much though, and the new pro 'incentives' aren't up to much.

-edit- yeah just checking, they've positioned themselves on the same price bracket as 500PX which is probably what people would think of as the logical replacement for flickr.

mrpdap · 01-11-2018 10:02pm

Evening Folks,
I’ve a flickr account since 2014 but haven’t received any notification from flickr.
When were you informed?
Thanks

thebaz · 01-11-2018 10:04pm

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

well, unlimited storage is still there for Pro users, the 1TB limit is gone for free accounts though, replaced with that 1000 photo limit. I'm not surprised to be honest, Flickr under Meyers was very obviously a numbers game, Smugmug look as though they're pivoting, hoping for quality & community over quantity. A 100% price hike is a bit much though, and the new pro 'incentives' aren't up to much.

-edit- yeah just checking, they've positioned themselves on the same price bracket as 500PX which is probably what people would think of as the logical replacement for flickr.

since the end of pix.ie i use 500px awesome , as well as free version of flickr - will probably upgrade, been with flickr so long , do not think one is better than the other , both have good points (and bad

Irish Guitarist · 02-11-2018 3:10am

There's no way I can justify paying the kind of money they're asking. I'm the furthest thing from a professional photographer that you can get. I think I've occasionally taken some pretty decent photos but they're few and far between and they're not going to stand up to critical analysis.

I don't make any money from photography and barely anyone looks at what I've uploaded to Flickr. I didn't think of it as somewhere to just store my photos though but there's no way anyone is going to convince me something that was free yesterday is now suddenly €40 plus is a great bargain.

The way the staff member is responding to people asking questions isn't doing them any favours. Terrible decision made worse by terrible PR.

https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157702923034264/

Anyone know of a similar site? It doesn't have to be exactly like Flickr. Reduced file size wouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't even mind paying something, just not what Flick are asking. I'd like to download everything I have on Flickr and put them somewhere else.

Bacchus · 02-11-2018 7:14am

Unhappy.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

There's no way I can justify paying the kind of money they're asking. I'm the furthest thing from a professional photographer that you can get. I think I've occasionally taken some pretty decent photos but they're few and far between and they're not going to stand up to critical analysis.

I don't make any money from photography and barely anyone looks at what I've uploaded to Flickr. I didn't think of it as somewhere to just store my photos though but there's no way anyone is going to convince me something that was free yesterday is now suddenly €40 plus is a great bargain.

The way the staff member is responding to people asking questions isn't doing them any favours. Terrible decision made worse by terrible PR.

https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157702923034264/

Anyone know of a similar site? It doesn't have to be exactly like Flickr. Reduced file size wouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't even mind paying something, just not what Flick are asking. I'd like to download everything I have on Flickr and put them somewhere else.

Just use Google photos so. Unlimited free storage with the condition that the images are compressed by Google.

DaireQuinlan · 02-11-2018 9:49am

Neutral.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

I don't make any money from photography and barely anyone looks at what I've uploaded to Flickr. I didn't think of it as somewhere to just store my photos though but there's no way anyone is going to convince me something that was free yesterday is now suddenly €40 plus is a great bargain.

you're probably not the target market so, of more concern to them is the people who were paying €40 yesterday and are now being asked to fork up twice as much for the year. They're banking on the majority shelling out. I have a feeling, along with these concerns about advertising/tracking/privacy, that paid services are going to become more and more common going forward. But there are people who literally will not pay for something that they previously got for free. For them ? Data mining :-D

The way the staff member is responding to people asking questions isn't doing them any favours. Terrible decision made worse by terrible PR.

That's the Owner/CEO of smugmug, so the message is on brand and probably pretty deliberate.

thebaz · 02-11-2018 12:19pm

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

you're probably not the target market so, of more concern to them is the people who were paying €40 yesterday and are now being asked to fork up twice as much for the year. They're banking on the majority shelling out.

will old pro users not be able to use the November discount ? which keeps price around 40 euros

ps the banner page offering this discount and overall changes is now not being being displayed - maybe they are making further amendments

DaireQuinlan · 02-11-2018 12:38pm

Neutral.

thebaz wrote: »

will old pro users not be able to use the November discount ? which keeps price around 40 euros

ps the banner page offering this discount and overall changes is now not being being displayed - maybe they are making further amendments

Apparently not, justification being that they've kept the price the same for 3 years or something, which predates their takeover by about 2 years of course but whatevs

Bacchus · 02-11-2018 1:20pm

Unhappy.

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

I have a feeling, along with these concerns about advertising/tracking/privacy, that paid services are going to become more and more common going forward. But there are people who literally will not pay for something that they previously got for free. For them ? Data mining :-D

100%

This is the way industries have been moving for the past 5 years now thanks to the adoption of cloud services. Everything is now "pay as you go"... in the music industry you have Spotify, Google Play, iTunes, Amazon Music and a host of others... film media you have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon TV, Disney are bringing out their own streaming platform, HBO have theirs, and so on. Adobe only sell their photo editing tools on a subscription basis and are even trying to move you completely to the cloud. HP have a service you subscribe to and you getting ink shipped to you when you're running low. Smugmug/Flickr is no different, they're offering a service that you subscribe to.

If you want free stuff, you have to ask what the provider gets out of that arrangement. Simply put, you are the product. Just look at Facebook as a prime example of this. Google too, you think they host your email, photos, calendar, etc. etc. for free out of the kindness of their hearts. Nope.

Personally, I much prefer this model of offering services. I have regular (predictable) payments that go out every month (or year if I bill annually) for exactly the service I want. If I decide in the morning I no longer want a specific service I can just cancel it without penalty (unless of course it's an annual bill I opted to pay for it of course).

As for Smugmug itself (I can't speak to Flikr), I love that service... €4 a month for unlimited photo storage is great. The website is easy to use, the mobile app makes browsing through your photos as easy as if they were on your phone.

ED E · 02-11-2018 2:24pm

Not quite Photobucket bad, but effin close.

Ciaoooooo.

Irish Guitarist · 02-11-2018 3:27pm

This is the first time Flickr will actually be deleting photos en masse. Even when you could only see your latest 200 photos on your page they were still stored on the site, just not readily available.

I give Flickr a couple of years at most before it's finished. Free users will be the first to go but they'll also lose people with pro accounts who don't log in for a few months then see thousands of their photos deleted. In the end it will be just a few pro users left getting no views because everyone who used to look at their photos has moved on.

TomSweeney · 02-11-2018 3:31pm

Unhappy.

What ??? They are going to be deleting photos ??!!!

Irish Guitarist · 02-11-2018 3:46pm

TomSweeney wrote: »

What ??? They are going to be deleting photos ??!!!

If you have more than 1,000 photos they'll delete the oldest ones unless you either manually delete some yourself or pay for a pro account.

DaireQuinlan · 02-11-2018 3:52pm

Neutral.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

This is the first time Flickr will actually be deleting photos en masse. Even when you could only see your latest 200 photos on your page they were still stored on the site, just not readily available.

I give Flickr a couple of years at most before it's finished. Free users will be the first to go but they'll also lose people with pro accounts who don't log in for a few months then see thousands of their photos deleted. In the end it will be just a few pro users left getting no views because everyone who used to look at their photos has moved on.

I don't know that they will. Smugmug isn't free, 500px isn't free (well, has a crappy free tier but it's an upsell). The most damaging thing is ex-pro accounts who gave up their pro membership when Flick started offering the 1TB free storage and are now being asked to renew their pro accounts at twice the price as their previous pro accounts. They may or may not lose a bunch of them but I suspect they're counting on them still being engaged and willing to renew their accounts. Any alternative is roughly the same price or more expensive.

DaireQuinlan · 02-11-2018 4:29pm

Neutral.

Actually, just to add to this ...

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Free users will be the first to go...

They WANT free users to go. That's pretty much the bottom line. The basic free user tier will be kept to onboard potentially interested newbies and persuade them that a paid account is the way to go. They're not interested in long term free users. The reason that the hybrid paid/ad model is a failure is because you're essentially doing something that doesn't make any sense, you have a bunch of users with money, but they pay for the service. Then you serve ads to the users without money or without any desire to pay for stuff. This is not a particularly valuable demographic. And Flickr was giving those users 1TB of space. It was never going to pay off.

thebaz · 02-11-2018 4:49pm

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

The most damaging thing is ex-pro accounts who gave up their pro membership when Flick started offering the 1TB free storage and are now being asked to renew their pro accounts at twice the price as their previous pro accounts.

are you sure about that ??

My understanding from a quick read yesterday , was anyone can become a Pro member at the discount rate for November - which is about 40 euros - didnt see anything about exPro account holders excluded. or was Flick pro - 20 euros for a year ??

5rtytry56 · 02-11-2018 5:00pm

Wonder what the 17.65 percent of voters who thought "It's great" that smugmug was taking over have to say :-p

DaireQuinlan · 02-11-2018 5:02pm

Neutral.

thebaz wrote: »

are you sure about that ??

My understanding from a quick read yesterday , was anyone can become a Pro member at the discount rate for November - which is about 40 euros - didnt see anything about exPro account holders excluded. or was Flick pro - 20 euros for a year ??

Yeah I've been paying €20 a year up until now. When my 2 year sub expires next march I'll be on the new rate, which is roughly twice as much, and no 30% discount :-)

Irish Guitarist · 02-11-2018 5:36pm

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Actually, just to add to this ...

They WANT free users to go. That's pretty much the bottom line. The basic free user tier will be kept to onboard potentially interested newbies and persuade them that a paid account is the way to go. They're not interested in long term free users. The reason that the hybrid paid/ad model is a failure is because you're essentially doing something that doesn't make any sense, you have a bunch of users with money, but they pay for the service. Then you serve ads to the users without money or without any desire to pay for stuff. This is not a particularly valuable demographic. And Flickr was giving those users 1TB of space. It was never going to pay off.

I know that's what they want. My point is when that happens it's not going to be as great for them as they think it will be. With a large proportion of their user base vanishing the others will get bored of getting a fraction of the favourites and comments they used to get and start wondering why they're paying for a pro account.

DaireQuinlan · 02-11-2018 6:56pm

Neutral.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

I know that's what they want. My point is when that happens it's not going to be as great for them as they think it will be. With a large proportion of their user base vanishing the others will get bored of getting a fraction of the favourites and comments they used to get and start wondering why they're paying for a pro account.

Yeah I understand where you're coming from, they're obviously looking at Smugmug, where a similar model has proven very successful, and extending that model to Flickr and hoping people will get back on board with the changes. Time will tell. I think it'll work out well for them in the long run.

thebaz · 02-11-2018 7:34pm

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Yeah I've been paying €20 a year up until now. When my 2 year sub expires next march I'll be on the new rate, which is roughly twice as much, and no 30% discount :-)

ok, got it , so the old Flickr Pro was half price of 500px - 40 euros seams the going annual rate these days - I will probably pay up.

TomSweeney · 02-11-2018 9:02pm

Unhappy.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

If you have more than 1,000 photos they'll delete the oldest ones unless you either manually delete some yourself or pay for a pro account.

OK I have a pro account ..

But might back up anyway on amazon aws to be sure..

rgfuller · 05-11-2018 3:41pm

Unhappy.

I also have a pro account, and (had) 6k photos/videos, a mixture of event albums for private sharing, public albums for generic browsing and private albums for archival purposes (duplicating onedrive and an offline USB drive which I both use for archiving).

I've now turn off auto-renewal and deleted 5k photos, keeping just the ones I want to host publically.

DaireQuinlan · 05-11-2018 4:38pm

Neutral.

rgfuller wrote: »

I've now turn off auto-renewal and deleted 5k photos, keeping just the ones I want to host publically.

Too expensive ? Angry at how it was handled ?? Or ?

donegal_man · 05-11-2018 5:18pm

We just have to accept that every decent free service on the Web is going to disappear over time. There's no way any company was going to continue to provide a Tb of free storage to every user. That said I think limiting the free offer to 1,000 photos and/or videos seems a bit unfair as I can upload the same number of RAW images as the user who only posts quite small or low resolution jpegs even though I'll be using much more space.

rgfuller · 05-11-2018 5:39pm

Unhappy.

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Too expensive ? Angry at how it was handled ?? Or ?

A bit of both, but to me, it's passed my tipping point and is too expensive for what I get out of it. Also 100% cost increase is taking the proverbial.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i · 06-11-2018 12:33pm

At first I was a bit annoyed at the move, but thinking about it, the company has to make money. People getting irate because they are not getting something for free, very entitled. They are entitled to nothing. 1,000 pictures is quite a lot, for me anyway.

I won't be paying for pro as I won't benefit from it, but 40 per year is not bad even if you are not using it to it's full potential. I am more annoyed with the move from Adobe to move to subscription based packages. I am finding that incredibly expensive.

TomSweeney · 06-11-2018 4:42pm

Unhappy.

annoying thing too is the pro price has doubled, I did pay $25 USD for 1 year, now that will be $50 ....

jrar · 04-01-2019 2:31pm

I have several thousand photos on Flickr across multiple albums, mostly family/holiday/hobbies i/e. the usual stuff.

Have rec'd the notification from Flickr that my limit will be 1K photos from nxt week unless I upgrade to subscription 'pro' version.

I don't think the price is overly high (as many have pointed out, giving every user 1TB of storage was never going to be a viable long-term business model !)

My question is, what are my alternatives if I don't want to go down this route ?? My photos used to be on Picasa, so if I don't want to stay with Flickr, what can I choose instead in order to continue to have full access to my photos ??

AnimalRights · 01-02-2019 6:28pm

I have over 3,300 pics and paying those prices don't suit me, this all after pix.ie went belly up and I lost years worth of photographs ( I don't back up :P )

So what options would a skinflint like me have?

I don't mind a one off payment but not regular payments and I assume it would be very difficult to get my pics transferred from flickr to a new hosting site?

DaireQuinlan · 02-02-2019 11:31am

Neutral.

you can download them all, there's some option in your profile to 'Request my flickr data' which I think gets you everything in a bunch of zips. Might I suggest that this might be a good time to START backing stuff up, everything should be in at least two locations, ideally more. I have a redundant setup on my own machine, everything there backed up on another drive in a different location, and of course all the shots on flickr, but I don't really regard that as a backup, more a showcase.

DaireQuinlan · 02-02-2019 11:40am

Neutral.

Google photos might be an option, I don't know how much space you get nowadays when you sign up, I've got about 20GB free storage, that would be ample space to upload those 3000 shots assuming you need JPEG only, plus you can buy more if necessary, though that of course will end up costing about the same as Flickr for less space.

thebaz · 03-02-2019 1:46pm

AnimalRights wrote: »

I have over 3,300 pics and paying those prices don't suit me, this all after pix.ie went belly up and I lost years worth of photographs ( I don't back up :P )

So what options would a skinflint like me have?

I don't mind a one off payment but not regular payments and I assume it would be very difficult to get my pics transferred from flickr to a new hosting site?

Watch out for flickr deals - I got a yearly subscription for around 30 a year (once off) - thats not bad for unlimited storage - 2.50 cents a month - when you look at what spotify for instance charge for premium ( 10 euros a month). Think flickr is still best photo sharing web-site.

PS you should back-up , large external drives are pretty cheap and easy to use.

fixXxer · 03-02-2019 2:16pm

Unhappy.

I have 6000 photos to sort.

Help

the_syco · 12-02-2019 7:26pm

I notice I still need a Yahoo address to sign up to Flickr. I wonder will this change?

Flickr to be acquired by Smugmug

"As a Flickr account holder how do I feelsmumug are taking Flickr over. 37 votes

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