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Flickr Changes


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6 replies to this topic

#1
Marcus Rowland

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For those who haven't visited the site in the last few days:

 

Flickr free accounts are going to be limited to 1000 images from January 8th. If you have more than 1000 you won't be able to add more. Then on February 5th they delete your oldest pictures until there are 1000 left. The alternative is to switch to the pro version, at $49.99 a year (30% off if you switch this month), which leaves you with unlimited storage. And I suspect that the price won't hold for more than a year or two. Their claim is that most people with free accounts have less than 1000 pictures, which I suspect means that there are a lot of people with very small numbers who signed up then never really did much, then a smaller number of enthusiasts who have lots. E.g. I have over 2000 and would not describe myself as an incredibly active photographer.

 

It's not quite as bad as Photobucket, but the speed of the change is really annoying.

 

Not quite decided what to do next - my inclination is to go pro for a year while exploring other options, but it seems likely that the end of free photo hosting is nigh.

Any suggestions?



#2
Fletch

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I am one of those with only a couple hundred photos, I just don't post a lot.  I figure I'll wait till I get close to the limit and see what to do at that time.



#3
dcbear78

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I'm a bit unsure myself. I used to use Flickr quite a lot in my Pentax Forums days where it was far more active. I no longer use it as much now as I am shooting more for clients. But I did find it a handy online repository of my photos. A while ago I cancelled my paid subscription. Going forward I am not sure what I want to do other than I know I won't be paying for it.

 

The cynic in me says this is just Smugmug slowly killing it off to drive more customers to their primary business.



#4
sunshine

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I have uses both Flickr and Smugmug since before the merger.  For me, Flickr is mostly for fun and family stuff and Smugmug is for business, such as it is.  I never understood the Flickr business model.  I use an ad blocker and "ad free browsing" has never been an issue, so I never upgraded to the paid option.  It's easy to publish directly from Lightroom, and I like the groups, Explore, and other features of Flickr.  Like Marcus, I will probably take the paid option for the first year while they're offering a discount and decide next year whether to continue.  Smugmug spent a lot of money acquiring Flickr.  I don't think they plan to kill it off.  They would not have made the purchase unless someone thought that it could produce revenue.  Prior to the sale there were regular rumors that Yahoo/Verizon would kill it off.  There must be some potential for revenue or it would not have survived this long.  Any business that costs more to run than the income it generates is unsustainable, so I don't blame Smugmug for exploring new options.



#5
Marcus Rowland

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I think I can justify it on the grounds that any time I get an interesting lens I take a gallery of test photos, and link to it from ebay listings, which hopefully helps me sell things. Hopefully it'll more or less pay for itself in that respect, though there's no way to be sure.



#6
Tony

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Mr. Rowland,

 

I am glad that you began this thread.  I for one have had access to Flickr for nearly five years now.  I have really enjoyed it, meaning the groups, etc.,etc., however, it is invaluable to me for storing images and loading them into Pentaxforums.com.  Since Pentaxforums.com, Nikonforums.com and Canonforums.com are connected, I do wonder why the other two forums do not offer that service.

 

Anyway, back to the reason I decided to chime in with my two cents.  So again, after five years of free access to Flickr., I see no problem with them having to charge an annual fee in order to remain solvent.  This isn't a business that is open only from 8:00am to 5:00pm and closed on weekends.  I have access to Flickr., 24/7 and really appreciate that.

 

I failed to mention that with Pentaxforums.com I am able to upload my images from Photo Editor 10 into My Albums.  With the number of album space I am given it comes to around 900 images total.  There is a way around that by simply deleting old images to get the number below the limit.

 

There is a site from the U.K., called: ephotozine.com.  You get to upload only one image per day and can view photos from other members.  I don't believe it is possible to upload from them to another site.

 

Mr. Rowland, thanks again for getting this ball rolling.

Cheers,

 

Tony



#7
Marcus Rowland

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Thanks - like others, I have no objection in principle to paying for this, I know how much web space costs from my own site, and running something like Flickr can't be cheap. My problem is mainly the speed of the change, it feels like they're trying to rush people into it without giving them a lot of time to explore other options. What I really want to avoid is a situation where they get people locked in then start ramping up the price dramatically.

 

Incidentally, if you can find any way of justifying your picture as being of scientific or academic interest etc. it's very easy to upload images to Wikimedia Commons and link to them - for example, I have a lot of pictures of railway construction and of an industrial archaeological excavation there, and have used them in several blog entries etc. The down side is that you have to use copyright terms that let anyone use the images in Wikipedia and elsewhere, not a problem for me but some might find it restrictive. For example, this picture of a coot shows its feet unusually clearly:

 

800px-Coot-lobed-feet.jpg

 

This isn't actually used in Wikipedia at all, but it could be if they wanted to.