Flickr is coming to an end... of sorts

Like a lot of you folks, I just received a notice earlier of Flickr being sold to some company called SmugMug.

How does this affect the community, and does anyone have good recommendations for alternatives?

 

obviously there will be changes just based on how that article reads per CEO comments.

 

I'm planning to muddle through whatever changes are forced upon us, and hope that they don't end up shutting the whole thing down.

 

Flickr came to an end for me when the format changed a few years ago, turning it into a clunky and clumsy beast of an interface.

Betamax, Myspace and Flickr . . . meh!

 

Ugh...would suck if they killed it or changed it too much...photobucket already has 100's of my photos held hostage. I don't see how requiring customers send them money to free their photos could have been a good business decision.

I'm gonna hope for a changeover in name and ownership that goes largely unnoticed to the user, and won't fret about it in the meantime.

 

I'm tired of this shit.

Yahoo took over a perfectly good community-driven website and added advertising. Making millions off the back of other people's work. They messed around with the interface constantly, making it a lot worse. When they finally admit to themselves that maintaining it was way harder than they expected (and they were actually quite bad at it) they flog it off and do a runner. All that bullshit during the change over we had to wade through last time and now will most likely have to wade through it all again.

I'm on the verge of taking my collection photos off-line. It was fun, but maybe i should put my time and energy into something that benefits me and not faceless corporate business wankers. Anything good online that makes money always ends up fucked.

This sort of thing makes me hate today's internet.

 

I am nervous about this as everyone as I came back to Flickr in 2016. But in retrospect another photo site is handling this latest transition unlike when Yahoo took over and messed up an already functional and simple platform to try to monetize the shit out of it. If Verizon kept Flickr I would be more nervous as who knows what direction Verizon would have taken the platform. So I am cautiously optimistic.

I use Flickr for catalog purposes but if the changes are beyond what I can stomach I can bring it back to ipernity which, surprisingly, is managing to survive. If that fails, then an occasional post to instagram, which in some ways I find unacceptable as the format is very limited and if that is my only option, I can take our collection offline since I already have the foundation for the database I have been patiently building since 2006.

 

Great, now what am I going to use to store photos and post them here?

 

Can we get Super 7 to buy and host a domain image server?

p.s. yes, I'd definitely support a Go-Fund-Me effort on this one!

 

I don't boast it is of utmost interest, but if you want to have a last look at my gallery, now is the time.
I will remove all content by the end of the week.
Not so many pics, but it kind of reflected how my collection evolved since I opened my account in 2009.
I did not shoot anything for some time and was warming up again. I guess I'll keep those for myself now...

 

^^^Oh no! Please don't take down your photos! I really enjoy seeing your Bakura collection and the rainbows too!

p.s. Just got a Flickr email that explained that all content will be transferred to SmugMug (what a name!) and governed by it's rules unless you take down your existing Flickr content. So that explains that!

 

I'm wondering if this will break all links to your flickr photos. I would hope they would be smart enough not to do that, but you never know...

 

I'm sorry about that. I always felt that everybody's contribution, as little as it was helped to the uncover the riches of this deep hobby.
Unfortunately, I've always had a free flickr account and in no way am I going to pay anything to Smuggler Mug. I've looked at the site and they do not offer a free service.
I know it's not with my pics they're going to do any money, but it's a principle I don't condone.

I think this will definitively break all the links here unfortunately...

You all have amazing collections on flickr too and I can't imagine what it will do when users with very big accounts will stop using the service (Moog ?). The board will indeed become a full text ressource only...

I will try to find a way to post them somewhere else, but it will not mend any former links...

 

@The Moog @Lixx @plasticXO Don't panic, looks like in "the foreseeable future" nothing much will change:

https://www.smugmug.com/together/faq

 

@bunnyboy
Yeah, let's hope so. I'm not going to do anything rash for now but I'm going to back up the last few months photos just in case (I've already backed up everything before that) as soon as I get a chance.

 

Thanks for the quote @bunnyboy
Well, let's wait a little then...
I did not find this "nothing will change" faq...
But as they can change their conditions as much as they want with the least prior notice possible, I'd rather keep my eyes opened on this nonetheless...

I actually don't need to backup anything as I've always kept my pics (in much better resolution) on my computer.

 

Yay! A reprieve! Thank you plasticXO! I still want to see the Bakura photos
At first, I thought flickr was doomed to being a paying subscription, however, the FAQ says there won't be a change, "for now"
https://www.smugmug.com/together/faq

 

And so it begins. I've never seen a message like this before on any image hosting site, ever.

 

https://gizmodo.com/flickr-is-going-to-delete-a-bunch-of-photos-back-up-you-1830177165

 

Oh No! Thank you for sharing that! We'll need to back-up Chris's photos and relink them in the Buta Database -- it's an invaluable resource!

 

Is there more than a thousand photos in his account? If not, it sounds like its safe for now.