17 ms·

Smugmug Acquires Flickr

720 points by uptown 9y ago

kjgkjhfkjf 9y ago
The design of this site is simultaneously awesome and exhausting. I closed the tab halfway down the page.
rmason 9y ago
Finally Flickr will no longer be the neglected stepchild of a corporate parent and will receive some much needed love. Even though a lot of time has passed I'm optimistic that Flickr has a real chance to reassert its domination of online pictures.
- joshvm 9y ago
  Flickr has one really useful feature that I've used a lot: easy searching for public domain imagery. It's great that you can dial in whichever level of CC licensing you want and then grab some photos for marketing or wireframing. Also handy for machine learning!
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I generally like flickr and have been a "pro" paid user for a long time. This seems like a likely positive step as an uploader. That said. I also use flickr a lot as a CC/PD source for presentations. My expectation is that there will be changes that make this sort of thing decline or disappear.
  - asix66 9y ago
    Agreed. I’ve had some of my CC photos used, with attribution, by company websites and blogs. And been notified politely as to their use. I’m sure some have been used without my knowledge, but I’m ok with that. I’ve also been a pro subscriber since 2008. And even though Flickr has been languishing on simmer since, well, its inception, I keep my pro sub active, and upload new content (although not at the feverish pace of T Hawk!) :-O Smug: looking forward to Flickr's future.
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    I just used Flickr this last month after a LONG hiatus for a new reason. Wanted a site to make a shareable link to otherwise private photos for friends and family to see our in-progress trip. I hate Facebook and would be a hypocrite to post the pics to Instagram. Worked really well to upload photos from phone to a private repo. Captions, and a link in the SHARE TO camera library. Not everyone wants a travel blog. Current Flickr worked well.
  - endorphone 9y ago
    "It's great that you can dial in whichever level of CC licensing you want and then grab some photos for marketing or wireframing." A friend used a site that had those sorts of free use licenses, and then got hit by the Getty lawyers: It turned out that someone was just taking stock images and posting them on their own account with a gratis license, which of course does nothing to excuse the people trusting it in faith. Not sure how to solve that problem.
eveningcoffee 9y ago
I hope that they do not kill or maim it some way. Flickr is a treasure.
- garyrichardson 9y ago
  As a long time smug mug customer, my perception is this is the best possible home for Flickr. Smugmug is the online photo site we all want.
Clobbersmith 9y ago
When I worked at Yahoo they never quite knew what to do with Flickr. I hope at the very least Flickr gets resources to develop the site/app/other priorities because they make some pretty neat stuff.
- zokier 9y ago
  > at Yahoo they never quite knew what to do Isn't that true for Yahoo in general? They kinda stumbled upon being internet giant, and have been utterly confused on what to do next ever after.
  - Clobbersmith 9y ago
    For sure. Flickr wasn't the only company Yahoo mismanaged.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Some of the highest paid people ever, being handed incomes equivalent to a developing world country. I'd have trashed Yahoo for half of that!
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    I see this going on with Uber now. They’re a ride sharing service that seems to be bored with ride sharing.
abrowne 9y ago
Fifteen years ago I would not have been surprised by the reverse.
- gesman 9y ago
  +1 Solid consistent business model vs. mismanaged dyno Win step for smugmug.
wpietri 9y ago
Here's a more detailed article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-flickr-verizon-oath/537377002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-...
- wpietri 9y ago
  And I'll add that I'm excited by this. I have a lot of photos on Flickr, but fell off using it as Yahoo neglected it. I still don't feel like photos are a solved problem for me. Hopefully this will at least shake things up, but I'd love to see them turn again into my favorite tool for managing and sharing my photos.
  - jlarocco 9y ago
    I don't know your use cases, but FWIW I've been really happy with SmugMug. Browsing and discovering other people's photos is easier on Flickr, but SmugMug is miles ahead when it comes to hosting, printing, presenting, tracking, and organizing. Then again, I pay for it, so I'm sure that's part of it. I would love if SmugMug kept their existing interface (which I'm sure they will because a lot of pro-photographers use it and want it the way it is), but also gave an option to show SmugMug photos on Flickr.
jlarocco 9y ago
I wonder if they'll put something in place to link accounts for people who have them with both services. Funny thing is that I used to have a paid Flickr account, but at some point they downgraded me and stopped taking my money; I think around the time they bumped up free storage to 1 Tb. Not a huge deal either way because I haven't uploaded anything to Flickr in ages, and I imported everything into SmugMug when I signed up, but it'd be nice to have them unified. It's also very weird that one of the promo scenes is a dumpster fire. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but what do I know?
kornork 9y ago
I have a Flickr account with several thousand curated photos in it. Several years ago I let myself get convinced into turning on automatic photo upload. Before I knew it, my photostream was filled with garbage screenshots and photos of people blinking. It created 100s of tiny albums that cluttered my page and made my Flickr page a mess that I could no longer use, and I mostly abandoned photography. I spent several days this year deleting all of those photos (because of course there was no batch delete that I could find). Hopefully Smugmug does something great!
- tokyodude 9y ago
  I guess they need to make them more discoverable. in any case click You->Organize. Drag photos into batch area and pick Edit Photos->Delete
neom 9y ago
Hopefully they're smart enough to ask Stewart Butterfield to sit on their board. I remember when Flickr came out - pulled a lot away from the deviantART community and caused me many sleepless nights. :)
theDoug 9y ago
I remember an April Fools joke to this effect a decade ago, and it's great to see it come to life now. In the height of my pro-photo life, Smugmug was the only place to care about durability, presentation, and maintaining reasonable margins. While dozens of competitors faded off over time from ignoring one or the other. Glad to see the good ones win.
jiqiren 9y ago
The text on a pic of a dumpster-fire: "A Place Where Perspective Is Shared Not Forced." Nice commentary on Yahoo!
- hc91 9y ago
  I am surprised that I had to scroll for so long to find a comment about the dumpster fire!
aaronbrethorst 9y ago
This is exciting! I've long believed that Flickr should have doubled down on their existing users instead of trying to become another Instagram. Over on the USA Today article[0], there's this line: A longtime fan of Flickr, MacAskill says before making any decisions, he plans to collect feedback from employees and users. Hey Don - I used to pay money for Flickr, and I'm happy to start paying again if there is evidence of forward motion. I want to have a place to securely store my RAW files in addition to my edited photographs, and I want to see a focus on community again. [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-flickr-verizon-oath/537377002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-...
- onethumb 9y ago
  Don here, thanks so much for the vote of confidence. Big job ahead of us, but the community is the reason we did this. We want to invest, innovate and grow there. We'll be working hard. But first I have a lot of learning to do. Stay tuned.
  - jjguy 9y ago
    This is why I continue to hang out on HN. Is there anywhere else on the internet this kind of connection would happen?
    - IrrationalPhoto 9y ago
      Slashdot?
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      In terms of communities where you can get the most qualified person on a topic to reply, I think Quora would also qualify, and to a limited extent, Twitter.
      - reitanqild 9y ago
        Quora really seemed nice until they started publish everything I did there. I also think they had a real name policy. (At least thats how I remember it.) They might have fixed that now but I feel it would take quite some effort for them to make them feel safe again.
DEFCON28 9y ago
Flickr used to be great. Now it's unsuitably bad. I was a premium Flickr user for years, and then they broke sharing in a big way. I could no longer send "private" links to people I knew of my photo albums and expect them to be able to view the photos without signing up for an account. I now share simple photo albums with Microsoft Sway.
- anyfoo 9y ago
  Seems like they unbroke it eventually, at least I've been using those private share links pretty often in the past few months alone. In fact, the link is the very first thing you get when you click the "Share" button, no need to click anything else. That feature is actually one of the primary reasons I'm still a Pro user after all those years, so I'm glad they seem to still care about it. EDIT: I think I do vaguely remember that it was broken (or at least undiscoverable) for a while, so I'm not challenging you, I just wanted to inform you that it's back better than ever.
lkrubner 9y ago
By the way, if you are a Flickr user, then you control what I see on my television. By "television" I mean the screen and Apple TV, which is the only television I have. And I went into the settings and set "Most Popular on Flickr" as my screensaver. So I've often fallen asleep watching whatever images you have upvoted. The one feature I hope Smugmug adds is captions. I often see incredible nature photos, and I've no idea where on the planet the image is. Likewise, some images appear to be old, I would love it if these images had years attached to them. "Most Popular On Flickr" is the "show" that I watch more than any other, in the sense that I if I am home at my apartment, I often leave the screen on all day, so it is always there playing any time I look that way. A lot of the photos are mediocre, but sometimes something catches my attention and I look up and see something great.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  In a similar vein, I watch the Netflix screensaver quite a lot, or is it the Amazon Firestick screensaver ... either way, it's not a thing I'd ever have thought to install, but the images from around the world are beautiful and add a sort of contemplative calm to the day.
rinze 9y ago
As a longtime Flickr user (and sometimes paying member), anything that takes them out of Yahoo!/Oath hands is good news. I just hope they break the Yahoo! integration and I can finally close that spam account.
- mwambua 9y ago
  I second that. I deleted my Flickr account after it became apparent that Yahoo was in no way committed to security. I've planning to let go of Instagram too... Tried Unsplash... But found that it didn't have the features that make it easier for people on Flickr to build communities around different cameras, lenses, film, locations... etc
jjwiseman 9y ago
When has an acquisition like this resulted in the acquired site getting better?
- Reedx 9y ago
  Not often... But in this case I would bet on it being better than when it was acquired by Yahoo.
- foobarbazetc 9y ago
  1% of the time? Still probably better than getting killed off in a month under Oath.
maxpert 9y ago
Anything that takes them away from curse of Yahoo! is a blessing for the users and Flickr.
ryandrake 9y ago
As an early beta tester and long time user of SmugMug I’ve been impressed with its ability to do the thing it’s supposed to do really well. Too many services have tried to hang all sorts of junk off their main service, changing things to the point where their core function suffers. The founder had shown an attribute we don’t normally associate with good companies/services: restraint. SmugMug could have diluted itself by bolting on a chat app, or it could have gotten bogged down in endless site re-designs, or chased the suicidal “growth at any cost” goal. Remarkable that Don had the vision to not do these insane things. I wish these guys the best of luck with this new “turnaround“ project!
acdha 9y ago
This is so much better than I’d feared. Closing my Flickr account was one of those nagging to-do items and I’m really happy to drop it.
- jmcphers 9y ago
  +1. After a couple of years of Yahoo (now Verizon) ownership I knew I needed to get off the sinking ship, but now I can stay on a little longer. I hope Smugmug is a better steward.
  - acdha 9y ago
    We have a lot of family photos thanks to the permissions model. I was not looking forward to having to migrate every relative.
yardie 9y ago
So what will happen to users who have a smugmug and Flickr account? Will they do an almost merge ala Google and YouTube?
- onethumb 9y ago
  We're not planning on merging the products, but we realize there are customers with both that might like them to be even easier to use together. I don't know what shape that'll look like yet, or when you might expect it, but I'm excited to dig in and find out.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    You might want to see amygdyl's post (apparently dead by default): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16890797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16890797
  - NJHeart2Heart 9y ago
    I'm a longtime Flickr paid user (still am, as others have said, mostly from inertia). I am curious, if Flickr and Smugmug will stay separate, what differences between the two will be highlighted/ upgraded? What does the new owner envision will be their respective "expertise". For now I'll stick with Flickr, but I'd love to learn more about how Flickr and Smugmug will be similar and more importantly, different. There are so many photographers out there - differing quality, attention span, interests, and purposes.. so time will tell if/what niches these two entities will be touted to meet best.
username223 9y ago
Smugmug has a history of rescuing failed photo-sharing sites; see Picturelife: https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-priceless-memories-from-picturelife-74a0f7b65dff https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-... This is just about the best thing that could happen to Flickr, far better than being swallowed by GOOG/FB/DBX and then end-of-lifed.
justinph 9y ago
Makes me kind of regret deleting my account when they got sold to Verizon as part of the Yahoo! deal.
lsb 9y ago
Imagenet, the dataset upon which many DNNs have trained, has half its images from Flickr, and it was last updated in 2011. Most of the images from Flickr have still not been taken down. It would be wonderful to add to this foundational dataset.
mratzloff 9y ago
I'm a longtime paid Flickr user, but I mostly continue to use it out of inertia. I'd probably prefer to move to Smugmug at this point—so if Smugmug wants to save me the effort by migrating my photos themselves, I wouldn't object...
salimmadjd 9y ago
This is the best possible news for Flickr and its community. I've known the SmugMug founders from the beginning. First of all, they're one of the nicest people you can imagine. They're also super committed to the photographers and the photography community. Everyone there is not only a photo geek, but they're constantly helping, supporting and promoting photographers. 4 of my photos are printed in large size (one is wall-height) at their office along with many other photographers. That alone just shows you how much they're into their community. An interesting ironic story. In one of my old jobs, I signed a multiyear partnership with them and our company. They had just started. Flicker was couple of years old, but it was already surpassing the early photo sharing site, Pbase. The founders of SmugMug had earlier started FatBrain online bookstore and had a successful exit. But both my CEO and myself were photo geeks and we thought of ourselves as consumer experts. So we kept nagging on SmugMug to change their UI to resemble more like Flickr. Mind you, SmugMug now, looks very different than it did back then. However, the founders were very focused (obviously much smarter than we were) on what they thought should be their main focus, building an online solution for pro photographers. So, for me it's very ironic, that after all these years and us nagging on them to be more like Flickr, that they now own Flickr. I know some of you might be skeptical of mergers, and it remains to be seen. However, knowing the SmugMug DNA, I couldn't have imagined a better custodian for the Flickr and its community. Give the SmugMug guys a chance to prove themselves to you.
- onethumb 9y ago
  Don (CEO) here, thanks so much for the kind words and the walk down memory lane. I remember those days fondly. :) This is going to be far from easy, but I think it will be fun, exciting and rewarding. We're excited to thrill photographers all over the world.
- balladeer 9y ago
  I think it will be very important how they deal with the Flickr UI. Whether they will - change Flickr to look more like SmugMug (if at all the platforms are not merged), - or leave it as it is today (the slow, heavy, and glossy Flickr), - or try to bring back something close to the blazing fast Flickr days when it looked so clean and minimal and was not at all glossy. Many of us are pining for the latter.
mp3geek 9y ago
For a brief moment I read "Samsung".
- O_H_E 9y ago
  Yeah, quite tricky
vzaliva 9y ago
I am also a longtime Flickr user. I stopped paying after I realized that the site is going nowhere. I was just contemplating closing the account, but in view of this news, I will give it another chance. There are hundreds of sites where people can dump their unprocessed vacation photos from their iPhones. My main interest in Flickr was as a place to share and discover high-quality photo works. That means good support for high-resolution images, professionally looking albums, flexible sharing options (private groups, etc).
- onethumb 9y ago
  Thanks for the vote of confidence and trust. We'll work hard to earn it and live up to a high bar.
redm 9y ago
Great news, I enjoy seeing old sites like Flickr being saved from oblivion. SmugMug is a great company too. On a side note, this is a terrible announcement page when viewed on FireFox 59. It's barely usable. It works well on Chrome though. Its either poor design by SmugMug, superior design by Google Chrome, or leveraging some capability of chrome not available on FireFox. The cake flying is delayed by 1+ second each scroll. Please do more cross-browser testing!
- onethumb 9y ago
  We did a ton of cross-browser testing, but it's possible we missed something or had a regression. Checking. Thanks for letting me know!
  - 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
    Yah I'm on a 2016 15" MBP running 10.13.4 and Safari 11.1 and the site is almost unusable for me. If you want more specific information or would like me to test fixes you can email me at my user name @ gmail.com
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - foobarchu 9y ago
    I'm on Firefox ESR, and while the pages functioned just fine, the performance is...lacking. I think the degraded experience mostly comes down to crappy framerates on the parallax effect.
  - pcmaffey 9y ago
    Pretty much kills Safari. Me thinks you need a better scroll library / implementation.
  - chippy 9y ago
    The <div class="top-shadow"> covers the scroll bar at the top of the browser window (in Firefox) effectively rendering the scroll bar disabled for the top 1/3 of the window. Additionally, page down and space keys are disabled for navigation. I'm not sure its possible to scroll using any key on the keyboard.
himom 9y ago
When I heard Flickr, I don’t know why I immediately thought of Chad Hurley of Youtube, Hlaska and Delicious (not Flickr). Hurley is super awesome btw.
himom 9y ago
I take it Verizon (Oath) is breaking up, selling, absorbing and dissolving Yahoo properties. AOL mail isn’t long for this world, although I’m sure an email hosting company would love to buy that user-base of elders and tech luddites.
downer68 9y ago
Jesus christ, that fucking name, though. "smugmug" Can they drop that, and retain flickr, please. Please?
- Bye_Felicia 9y ago
  I take it you did not see yesterday's thread concerning the new open source social network: 'scuttlebutt' ?
  - krallja 9y ago
    Scuttlebutt is an actual English word, while SmugMug is not.
    - eecks 9y ago
      But Smug and Mug (Face) are.
      - downer68 9y ago
        But not the conjunction thereof.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Reminds me of the fictional company Chumhum from The Good Wife. Has 4 of the same letters, the same pattern X123123 and the different letters are C->S and G->H
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I agree. I had never heard of Smugmug until just now. I want to call it "Smug hug" or "Smug hub" .. no one is going to remember that name correctly. It's awful.
  - balls187 9y ago
    > I had never heard of Smugmug until just now. Smugmug's ubiquity is up there with B&H, KEH, FredMiranda and KenRockwell.
geuis 9y ago
What a terrible design on that page. Just a bunch of stuff moving around on mobile.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I agree. I have not heard of Smugmug before now; although I did use to have a paid Flickr account at one time and I hope they do better with it than Yahoo. But yes, that announcement page is god awful. The scrolling is slow, over done and a crazy bandwidth hog. That weird scroll hijacking shit needs to die in a fire. Some are cute if done right, but lately they're just super over done and useless.
fma 9y ago
Think they'll keep the free 1TB per user? It's what I use to backup and share photos from my phone.
philipps 9y ago
Great news. Happy to become a paying Flickr customer again. There still isn’t a good place to store and share photos where it doesn’t feel like someone else owns them. Good integration with mobile and reasonably priced storage would be at the top of my list. And I agree with the overall tenor that then community is what made Flickr amazing. Happy to contribute to the efforts of bringing that back. Lots of challenges ahead, but this feels like a good thing for the internet.
- geerlingguy 9y ago
  Agreed. Definitely would love to pay again now that it’s out of Yahoo’s hands. I still post batches of event photos, but have stopped participating in many of the formerly-amazing camera, regional, lens, and hobby-based communities that endeared me to Flickr at first.
Brendinooo 9y ago
Big fan of SmugMug, and I’ve been thrilled to see the iOS app get better and better over time. I’ve loved the laser-like focus of the site too. Here’s hoping SmugMug doesn’t languish or get bloated while they take on Flickr!
grumblepeet 9y ago
Long term Flickr user here, since the start and a paying customer. In the groups that I’m active in there is a thriving community and it would be a shame if that was compromised. I know people here are happy that it is out from the yoke of Yahoo, but over the years I’ve seen so many products that I use get bought up, enthusiastically changed, and then ruined or closed down by the new owners. Please don’t ruin it with arbitrary rules and attempting to make it “social” like Yahoo did. Despite what I’ve seen in some threads on here not every feels that a product has got to somehow keep adding features to be usable or feel alive as a community. It’s the photography that’s important, not the product and its features. I guess what I’m sayimg is I’m kind of burned out by products that I love getting acquired and ruined. I love Flickr and I couldn’t bear to see it go the same way. One last thing, I put a lot of artwork there too, drawings and stuff as well as my photos. Are we going to be penalised for content such as this that doesn’t fall into what you would call a photo? Edit: I just read my comment and it sounded negative towards Smugmug. That’s not my intention. If Flickr had to go somewhere, then I’m glad it’s with the Smugmug guys. I’ve heard good things about you over the years!
- onethumb 9y ago
  We'll work very hard to not ruin Flickr. After successfully not ruining it, we'll work even hard to make it better than its already awesome self. ;)
hexenhammer 9y ago
SmugMug is fantastic. I can’t say it enough, I am truly thrilled about this.
orasis 9y ago
Holy crap, congrats guys! I remember meeting you guys at Foo Camp waay back in the day. Way to stay after it!
abledon 9y ago
Oh how the mighty have fallen!
ayushgta 9y ago
Sometime in early 2000s, I had a meeting with Chris. It was early days for them and they were running out of their home. This was the time when Flickr was a darling of the valley (and wasn't acquired by Yahoo yet). Chris and I were talking, sitting around a dining table with a bench and some chairs. I remember there was a lot of light and windows all around. Don (his son) was going in and out of the house taking delivery of some hardware/servers. Toni (his wife) was handling customer support from a room upstairs. And there was a dog, I think. That's it! It was a breath of fresh air for me! In a place that has a deep-rooted infatuation with building products on raised capital, they were running their company as a small business. They were going up against giants like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Google, Yahoo and a bunch of others in a crowded space. Unlike those giants, they were charging money for their service! And they had the audacity of doing it under the name SmugMug. I recall Chris grinning about how much some people hated the name SmugMug! This was the only time I met them. I've thought back to that meeting many times over the years. It was inspiring for me to see software/technology being used build something for a niche need... with a clear focus on running it as a small business. I found that to be uplifting then and I still do today. Every couple of years I'd go to their site and see how they continued to grow. And each time it would bring a smile to my face. That they ended up buying Flickr is so darn sweet... I could not hoped for a better cherry-on-top to how I personally view the SmugMug story.
- foobaw 9y ago
  It's good to hear how much audacity it takes to succeed. I love stories where hard work really pays off. I'm a relatively late adopter (2009) but I really loved Smugmug from the start. As someone into both technology and photography, Smugmug was the perfect product! I remember really wanting to work for them as a college student - everything about the company was extremely motivating. It still is.
  - wowtip 9y ago
    Heh I reported a problem to Smugmug with their payment service for my credit card company which prevented me from purchasing a subscription. Their response? "Yeah, we know, it doesn't work with Credit Card Company AAAA yet, but thanks for telling us. Here, have a lifetime free pro account"
Markoff 9y ago
i use flickr as 1TB backup alternative to google photos, bit their app is next to useless so can't really use it actively for organizing photos as on desktop so any idea what will happen with free 1TB plan and the app? Google photos is the only reason i still keep gapps on my phone, it would be great to be able to rid off it
petre 9y ago
This is great news. Flicks has become infested with ads after the Yahoo acquisition to such an extent that it made me delete all my photos and close the account. I used to post in the street photography groups, had a heavily curated one of our own. Now I tend to use it more for looking at bicycle mod photos but the ads in between are so annoying. The only way Flickr could do worse would be being Pinterest.
ghostcluster 9y ago
how confident of them to use YouTube for this announcement rather than flickr's own video hosting service.
- TheWiseOne 9y ago
  Flickr doesn't really do videos though. Yea, you can upload them but playback is limited to just 3 minutes and it doesn't really have tools to work with videos.
- onethumb 9y ago
  Best tool for the job. SmugMug does video, too, but there's no-one in the world that does video as well as YouTube for this sort of thing. That's ok - we're way better at photos than YouTube is. :)
kwhitefoot 9y ago
As announcements go that's a masterpiece of uselessness. It tells me nothing about what it means to me as a Flickr user. It doesn't bode well for the future when there is nothing immediately visible to reassure users that important features such as 1 TB free storage will remain, etc.
rapathak 9y ago
I know nothing about the specifics here but I know Don and his respect for photographers and their creativity. I have 100% confidence that he and the SmugMug team will do the right thing for the Flickr community. Flickr+SmugMug FTW!
cJ0th 9y ago
Cool with me as long as they keep their humans.txt https://flickr.com/humans.txt https://flickr.com/humans.txt
bakli 9y ago
1. Pinboard charges money for their product and eventually buys former free-product competitor Delicious. 2. Smugmug charges money for their product and eventually buys free-product competitor Flickr. Charging customers for your service really does help you win in the long run. Edit: Taken from this tweet - https://twitter.com/zachleat/status/987523973612298240 https://twitter.com/zachleat/status/987523973612298240
- vnglst 9y ago
  I’ve paid for a Flickr Pro account for several years, it wasn’t a free-product to begin with.
throwawayad7d9f 9y ago
On the one hand, I'm happy that Flickr will stay alive but on the other, I'm worried about what Smugmug will do to it regarding policy. Smugmug's Acceptable Use Policy [0] is rather puritan, forbidding things that are "indecent", "lewd", "sexually suggestive" or anything else that "in the sole judgment of SmugMug, is objectionable, harmful". Flickr's [1] on the other hand is rather accepting: "If you would hesitate to show your photos or videos to a child, your family, or a stranger on the street, that means you need to set the appropriate content filter setting." I really hope Smugmug doesn't force their ideals on Flickr. It'd be nice if instead they used Flickr as an example of how to loosen content restrictions on Smugmug. [0]: https://www.smugmug.com/about/terms https://www.smugmug.com/about/terms [1]: https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Is it ideals or is it market placement? If they're staying separate then I imagine maximum market coverage means having a split where they maintain the family friendly visage of SmugMug and they keep the wide gamut of photography on Flickr.
  - throwawayad7d9f 9y ago
    Unfortunately I discovered this isn't the case. I contacted SmugMug support and they've already decided all Flickr users will be subject to SmugMug's policies as of May 25th. Existing Flickr content that satisfied Flickr's policies can be removed for SmugMug policy violations. This is destructive and makes me sad for Flickr's future. I just hope they don't decide to mass delete everything with a content filter applied, since in theory all that content violates their new policy.
eecc 9y ago
I remember a time when Flickr tried an in-browser photo editor tool. Is it still there? If so, burn it with fire. Such featuritis, wasting time and effort to ape functionalities of well established native applications. I’d suggest integration with native desktop applications, automated tagging with area crop (trivial these days), doubling down on IRL communities (Meetup wasn’t ever awarded a patent for that, no?)
thinkingemote 9y ago
Flickr Commons is a wonderful free resource for the Internet - free photography from institutions, libraries and museums. It seemed to go into a haitus a few years ago. Will these continue, and expand?
Rjevski 9y ago
Does this mean Flickr is no longer part of the Yahoo/Oath (I have to give them kudos for having the courage to call themselves "Oath" despite what they do) privacy nightmare? I've been looking for am Instagram alternative that respects my privacy and I'm happy to pay good money for it.
technion 9y ago
I'm intrigued at how the existing Flickr was kept alive. This thread notes most previously paying members - no longer are. I've never heard a marketing person talking about "advertising on Flickr". So income is low. Meanwhile, storage and bandwidth are two of the more expensive things around. Turning things around could as this thread suggests could greatly improve the income. But again, I feel surprised there was a Flickr still around to acquire.
roadbeats 9y ago
I very actively use Flickr since 2006 and here is my feedback: - As a photographer, I enjoy photography on desktop computers rather than mobile screens. This is why I prefer Flickr over Instagram. - Delete the Yahoo login please. - Bring back the community feeling. I used to check Flickr blog every week to see what is going on in the Flickr community. - Simplify the product please. I think Flickr is great at organizing photos but it's not ideal for following photographers. - Usernames are a mess. Let's say your username was "bob" when you registered as a Flickr user. Later, Yahoo Flickr renamed usernames as "handle" and introduced another username. Please unify usernames and handles and make it simple again. Best of luck. I hope Flickr's destiny won't be like Delicious.
stevenicr 9y ago
I have always loved flickr, and always worrried investor or wall street pressure would ruin it by causing it to censor more. Flickr has been able to keep naughty pics and groups and made mini social network groups that don't require real names. It's a little known bastion of the old net in some ways. Now that oauth is pushing these logging / sharing terms updates, I am glad they are getting rid of flickr. I just hope they don't start censoring more and become ruined by investors who push mainstream ad revenue acceptance over having less censored sharing. I understand they have ways to download your pics in batches to move elsewhere, however for me it's the groups of people who share similar things, comments using aliases, community from around the world, others sharing pics from events I'll likely never be able to visit, and easily creative commons narrow searches by type of license. There is no way to download all of that... wonder how as much as possible could be ported from and to scuttlebutts groups, buddypress systems and the like. It was sad watching tumblr and so many others get ruined by greedy overlords, I hope this great portal does not end the same way, and smugmug will let me continue as is.
- fencepost 9y ago
  I believe elsewhere in the thread someone stated that SmugMug's terms (including on content) would also apply to Flickr starting in late May, so that's something to look into.
  - stevenicr 9y ago
    thanks for pointing this out, took me a bit to find the terms. There is this gem "obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, sexually suggestive, hateful, harassing, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable or harmful, including without limitation: Photos, Videos or other User Content containing nudity that would be unacceptable in a public museum where minors visit;" Looks like they are ruining flickr right out the gate. thankfully it is quite easy to start a flickr clone these days. buddypress with rtmedia or mediapress and bam it's done. I was going to start podcasting with anchor fm, but reading over their terms it would be trivial for one group to to get another banned easily and vice versa, so there is no staying power / ownership of data there. Seeing the loss of data when an account is deactivated at tumblr, fbk, gplus, or other portals, it's not worth creating a community or group within these digital sharecropping portals.
455 9y ago
it's googke or alphabet
- 455 9y ago
  oh yeah the fonts there, couuld they be searching for hrc video using ml...
lifty 9y ago
I received the Flickr announcement email 11 times. Am I the only one?
- eMerzh 9y ago
  nope... 25 time for me
- Vinnl 9y ago
  I'm at 60 now. Looks like something went wrong there...
- roosterleft 9y ago
  I'm at 90 at this point
kiwijamo 9y ago
Great news as a ex-Flickr user who migrated to iPhoto and recently has recently migrated again to Smugbug! Only downside I've found so far is they don't support HIEF/RAW/DMG uploads so I had to convert these files to JPEG but other than that all seems to work as expected. So shouldn't be too many surprises for those used to Flickr/iPhoto.
icc97 9y ago
There's a similarity to pinboard buying delicious.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jarnix 9y ago
I didn't even know what Smugmug was before today, it does not happen a lot when a company buys a big player like Flickr!
Tomte 9y ago
I have an account, but never really used it. Give me this and I sign up for a paid account: * RAW storage for Fuji cameras * ad-free * no shenanigans where you try to own or sell my photos * privacy * acceptable price (hobbyist range, not pro photog) I‘m indifferent about: * video storage * a store to sell my photos * a service to print my photos I‘d consider a huge selling point: * some kind of ECC for photos, to fight bit-rot
- tecleandor 9y ago
  Out of curiosity... Why Fuji? Is there any specific thing about those RAW files or just your use case?
  - Tomte 9y ago
    Yes, it‘s my use case. Some services only cater to Nikon and Canon as the two dominant players and their RAW format.
aquihire 9y ago
Soon to be featured on https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
CNJ7654 9y ago
...Or as I've recently taken to calling it, Smugmug plus Flickr.
scottybowl 9y ago
As stupid as it sounds, I stopped using Flickr because I was forced to use a Yahoo account. I just wanted to login, not have another useless email account.
- dloprinzi 9y ago
  Actually I don't think you're alone. Seems to have been a nagging issue for quite some tome, but the good news is the Yahoo login mechanism will soon be gone.
ant6n 9y ago
I was expecting some press release, but this website is just moving colors or something. I can't visually parse it. Is there a plain-text version?
thisone 9y ago
Interesting, the first thing I ever knew about smugmug was their purchase/data save of Picturelife[1], and the story on the Reply-All podcast[2] about the problems Picurelife users were having (err, before the purchase, not after. The discussion of how things went bad for Picturelife is worth the listen). [1]https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-priceless-memories-from-picturelife-74a0f7b65dff https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-... [2] https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker
greggeter 9y ago
Build a migration tool so I can move my 70k Google photos to Flickr and an angel gets its wings.
Istribitel 9y ago
I hope that they might consider incorporating some of what made PhotoSIG so enjoyable. One thing in particular was the ability to search for community photos by lens type, camera type, film type, location, etc. I know you can do this with search engines and to some extent in flicker, but I like the way it was implemented there.
Groxx 9y ago
Sounds like fantastic news... though that landing page makes me concerned about the web perf of smugmug in general :\ abysmal scrolling on chrome and firefox. Flickr has generally been stable on things like that, at least from what I've experienced. I assume the app / site are generally better than this?
ryeguy_24 9y ago
My favorite use case for Flickr is the iPhone app Auto Upload feature to backup all my mobile photos. Just an FYI in case you (Smugmug) change or merge features.
dloprinzi 9y ago
Hi Don - I'm a long time Flickr user & fan - a "power user" as we're sometimes called. I also bought a SmugMug Business account about 6 months ago (switched from Zenfolio), and I must say - I love your service. Your customer service team is top tier! I understand you're going to listen to your customers for a while to learn what they want. So where will you be doing this? Is there a forum you have lined up where we can discuss? I'd love to join in the conversation! By the way, you'd be a welcome voice in the Flickr Help Forum if you're so inclined :-) https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157692729336502/ https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157692729336502/ Thanks for answering our questions - this is going to be really great - very happy to be along for the ride! -Darren
ntompson 9y ago
Great to see that Flickr is finally getting some love. I’ve hung in there until now with my pro account - but only just... I’d love to see Explore fixed. It’s a great concept for enthusiastic amateurs to get noticed, but these days the bots fill it with garbage by some inscrutable algorithm that makes the whole thing pointless. Would love to see it fixed.
thefifthsetpin 9y ago
That page is crazy. Are they trying to emulate fixed positioning with js updates of some other positioning?
promeus 9y ago
1.Force users out of Yahoo mail accounts. Its a hellish experience. 2.Dont touch anything related to user groups. 3.Optimize Flickr design with slow accurate steps. 4.Dont unify design of two services quick. Test hard before trying to mix features. 5.If you this right, you will be the only place for professionals and amateurs. The potential is huge, but the risks are there and in the process if you make really wrong decision.... 6.Focus of this service must be professional only. And don't touch free service, because flickr is actually free first pay for more features second. Wish you luck.
marc104 9y ago
I am pro paying user of flickr since more than 10 years With over 140 millions views and 15000 followers I am doing mostly artistic nudes and sharing ideas and experience with other photographers in the same domain. flickr was one of the only place i found where i could share this content with adequate curation If smugmug policy is applied , it will delete 90% of my content and 10 years of effort in buidling a network around my work
yannovitch 9y ago
Dear Don @onethumb, Thanks a lot for taking on the big task on reviving Flickr ! I think SmuMug is a good fit for this task =). If I can help in any way to help you do that, please email me ! I live in Europe so maybe if you need a rep there ahhahaha Some suggestions : - I am still a Pro Flickr subscriber amd I use Flickr mostly as my "photo hardrive in the cloud" and to share pictures in high quality for weddings & cie. - However it's unbearably slow to organize your pictures on Flickr when you have 40.000+/10+ years of pictures. I even tried to use Flickr-Fuse, mounted as filesystem on my computer, to try to reorganize my content, but no help on that point. - And I tended to use Flickr less as a "cloud photo backup harddrive" these last years because it has became quite slow and unreliable to upload pictures on Flickr. - Please simplify and improve the API too, so we can have cool tools again to go with Flickr/SmugMug (FlickMug? Smugkr ? hahaha ) - RAW format upload/download would be a big differentiator from Instagram & cie. All the best to you in this new big adventure ! Y
turbospudnik 9y ago
PhotoALBM Launches Ultimate Flickr Replacement Service. It is a truly photo-centric platform for professional photographers and photography enthusiasts where users upload photos to show off their work while enjoying the work of others. Think of it as YouTube for photographers.

720 points by uptown 9y ago

The design of this site is simultaneously awesome and exhausting. I closed the tab halfway down the page.

Finally Flickr will no longer be the neglected stepchild of a corporate parent and will receive some much needed love. Even though a lot of time has passed I'm optimistic that Flickr has a real chance to reassert its domination of online pictures.

joshvm 9y ago
Flickr has one really useful feature that I've used a lot: easy searching for public domain imagery. It's great that you can dial in whichever level of CC licensing you want and then grab some photos for marketing or wireframing. Also handy for machine learning!
- ghaff 9y ago
  I generally like flickr and have been a "pro" paid user for a long time. This seems like a likely positive step as an uploader. That said. I also use flickr a lot as a CC/PD source for presentations. My expectation is that there will be changes that make this sort of thing decline or disappear.
- asix66 9y ago
  Agreed. I’ve had some of my CC photos used, with attribution, by company websites and blogs. And been notified politely as to their use. I’m sure some have been used without my knowledge, but I’m ok with that. I’ve also been a pro subscriber since 2008. And even though Flickr has been languishing on simmer since, well, its inception, I keep my pro sub active, and upload new content (although not at the feverish pace of T Hawk!) :-O Smug: looking forward to Flickr's future.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  I just used Flickr this last month after a LONG hiatus for a new reason. Wanted a site to make a shareable link to otherwise private photos for friends and family to see our in-progress trip. I hate Facebook and would be a hypocrite to post the pics to Instagram. Worked really well to upload photos from phone to a private repo. Captions, and a link in the SHARE TO camera library. Not everyone wants a travel blog. Current Flickr worked well.
- endorphone 9y ago
  "It's great that you can dial in whichever level of CC licensing you want and then grab some photos for marketing or wireframing." A friend used a site that had those sorts of free use licenses, and then got hit by the Getty lawyers: It turned out that someone was just taking stock images and posting them on their own account with a gratis license, which of course does nothing to excuse the people trusting it in faith. Not sure how to solve that problem.

eveningcoffee 9y ago

I hope that they do not kill or maim it some way. Flickr is a treasure.

garyrichardson 9y ago
As a long time smug mug customer, my perception is this is the best possible home for Flickr. Smugmug is the online photo site we all want.

Clobbersmith 9y ago

When I worked at Yahoo they never quite knew what to do with Flickr. I hope at the very least Flickr gets resources to develop the site/app/other priorities because they make some pretty neat stuff.

zokier 9y ago
> at Yahoo they never quite knew what to do Isn't that true for Yahoo in general? They kinda stumbled upon being internet giant, and have been utterly confused on what to do next ever after.
- Clobbersmith 9y ago
  For sure. Flickr wasn't the only company Yahoo mismanaged.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Some of the highest paid people ever, being handed incomes equivalent to a developing world country. I'd have trashed Yahoo for half of that!
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  I see this going on with Uber now. They’re a ride sharing service that seems to be bored with ride sharing.

abrowne 9y ago

Fifteen years ago I would not have been surprised by the reverse.

gesman 9y ago
+1 Solid consistent business model vs. mismanaged dyno Win step for smugmug.

wpietri 9y ago

Here's a more detailed article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-flickr-verizon-oath/537377002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-...

wpietri 9y ago
And I'll add that I'm excited by this. I have a lot of photos on Flickr, but fell off using it as Yahoo neglected it. I still don't feel like photos are a solved problem for me. Hopefully this will at least shake things up, but I'd love to see them turn again into my favorite tool for managing and sharing my photos.
- jlarocco 9y ago
  I don't know your use cases, but FWIW I've been really happy with SmugMug. Browsing and discovering other people's photos is easier on Flickr, but SmugMug is miles ahead when it comes to hosting, printing, presenting, tracking, and organizing. Then again, I pay for it, so I'm sure that's part of it. I would love if SmugMug kept their existing interface (which I'm sure they will because a lot of pro-photographers use it and want it the way it is), but also gave an option to show SmugMug photos on Flickr.

jlarocco 9y ago

I wonder if they'll put something in place to link accounts for people who have them with both services. Funny thing is that I used to have a paid Flickr account, but at some point they downgraded me and stopped taking my money; I think around the time they bumped up free storage to 1 Tb. Not a huge deal either way because I haven't uploaded anything to Flickr in ages, and I imported everything into SmugMug when I signed up, but it'd be nice to have them unified. It's also very weird that one of the promo scenes is a dumpster fire. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but what do I know?

kornork 9y ago

I have a Flickr account with several thousand curated photos in it. Several years ago I let myself get convinced into turning on automatic photo upload. Before I knew it, my photostream was filled with garbage screenshots and photos of people blinking. It created 100s of tiny albums that cluttered my page and made my Flickr page a mess that I could no longer use, and I mostly abandoned photography. I spent several days this year deleting all of those photos (because of course there was no batch delete that I could find). Hopefully Smugmug does something great!

tokyodude 9y ago
I guess they need to make them more discoverable. in any case click You->Organize. Drag photos into batch area and pick Edit Photos->Delete

neom 9y ago

Hopefully they're smart enough to ask Stewart Butterfield to sit on their board. I remember when Flickr came out - pulled a lot away from the deviantART community and caused me many sleepless nights. :)

theDoug 9y ago

I remember an April Fools joke to this effect a decade ago, and it's great to see it come to life now. In the height of my pro-photo life, Smugmug was the only place to care about durability, presentation, and maintaining reasonable margins. While dozens of competitors faded off over time from ignoring one or the other. Glad to see the good ones win.

jiqiren 9y ago

The text on a pic of a dumpster-fire: "A Place Where Perspective Is Shared Not Forced." Nice commentary on Yahoo!

hc91 9y ago
I am surprised that I had to scroll for so long to find a comment about the dumpster fire!

aaronbrethorst 9y ago

This is exciting! I've long believed that Flickr should have doubled down on their existing users instead of trying to become another Instagram. Over on the USA Today article[0], there's this line: A longtime fan of Flickr, MacAskill says before making any decisions, he plans to collect feedback from employees and users. Hey Don - I used to pay money for Flickr, and I'm happy to start paying again if there is evidence of forward motion. I want to have a place to securely store my RAW files in addition to my edited photographs, and I want to see a focus on community again. [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-flickr-verizon-oath/537377002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-...

onethumb 9y ago
Don here, thanks so much for the vote of confidence. Big job ahead of us, but the community is the reason we did this. We want to invest, innovate and grow there. We'll be working hard. But first I have a lot of learning to do. Stay tuned.
- jjguy 9y ago
  This is why I continue to hang out on HN. Is there anywhere else on the internet this kind of connection would happen?
  - IrrationalPhoto 9y ago
    Slashdot?
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    In terms of communities where you can get the most qualified person on a topic to reply, I think Quora would also qualify, and to a limited extent, Twitter.
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      Quora really seemed nice until they started publish everything I did there. I also think they had a real name policy. (At least thats how I remember it.) They might have fixed that now but I feel it would take quite some effort for them to make them feel safe again.

DEFCON28 9y ago

Flickr used to be great. Now it's unsuitably bad. I was a premium Flickr user for years, and then they broke sharing in a big way. I could no longer send "private" links to people I knew of my photo albums and expect them to be able to view the photos without signing up for an account. I now share simple photo albums with Microsoft Sway.

anyfoo 9y ago
Seems like they unbroke it eventually, at least I've been using those private share links pretty often in the past few months alone. In fact, the link is the very first thing you get when you click the "Share" button, no need to click anything else. That feature is actually one of the primary reasons I'm still a Pro user after all those years, so I'm glad they seem to still care about it. EDIT: I think I do vaguely remember that it was broken (or at least undiscoverable) for a while, so I'm not challenging you, I just wanted to inform you that it's back better than ever.

lkrubner 9y ago

By the way, if you are a Flickr user, then you control what I see on my television. By "television" I mean the screen and Apple TV, which is the only television I have. And I went into the settings and set "Most Popular on Flickr" as my screensaver. So I've often fallen asleep watching whatever images you have upvoted. The one feature I hope Smugmug adds is captions. I often see incredible nature photos, and I've no idea where on the planet the image is. Likewise, some images appear to be old, I would love it if these images had years attached to them. "Most Popular On Flickr" is the "show" that I watch more than any other, in the sense that I if I am home at my apartment, I often leave the screen on all day, so it is always there playing any time I look that way. A lot of the photos are mediocre, but sometimes something catches my attention and I look up and see something great.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
In a similar vein, I watch the Netflix screensaver quite a lot, or is it the Amazon Firestick screensaver ... either way, it's not a thing I'd ever have thought to install, but the images from around the world are beautiful and add a sort of contemplative calm to the day.

rinze 9y ago

As a longtime Flickr user (and sometimes paying member), anything that takes them out of Yahoo!/Oath hands is good news. I just hope they break the Yahoo! integration and I can finally close that spam account.

mwambua 9y ago
I second that. I deleted my Flickr account after it became apparent that Yahoo was in no way committed to security. I've planning to let go of Instagram too... Tried Unsplash... But found that it didn't have the features that make it easier for people on Flickr to build communities around different cameras, lenses, film, locations... etc

jjwiseman 9y ago

When has an acquisition like this resulted in the acquired site getting better?

Reedx 9y ago
Not often... But in this case I would bet on it being better than when it was acquired by Yahoo.
foobarbazetc 9y ago
1% of the time? Still probably better than getting killed off in a month under Oath.

maxpert 9y ago

Anything that takes them away from curse of Yahoo! is a blessing for the users and Flickr.

ryandrake 9y ago

As an early beta tester and long time user of SmugMug I’ve been impressed with its ability to do the thing it’s supposed to do really well. Too many services have tried to hang all sorts of junk off their main service, changing things to the point where their core function suffers. The founder had shown an attribute we don’t normally associate with good companies/services: restraint. SmugMug could have diluted itself by bolting on a chat app, or it could have gotten bogged down in endless site re-designs, or chased the suicidal “growth at any cost” goal. Remarkable that Don had the vision to not do these insane things. I wish these guys the best of luck with this new “turnaround“ project!

acdha 9y ago

This is so much better than I’d feared. Closing my Flickr account was one of those nagging to-do items and I’m really happy to drop it.

jmcphers 9y ago
+1. After a couple of years of Yahoo (now Verizon) ownership I knew I needed to get off the sinking ship, but now I can stay on a little longer. I hope Smugmug is a better steward.
- acdha 9y ago
  We have a lot of family photos thanks to the permissions model. I was not looking forward to having to migrate every relative.

yardie 9y ago

So what will happen to users who have a smugmug and Flickr account? Will they do an almost merge ala Google and YouTube?

onethumb 9y ago
We're not planning on merging the products, but we realize there are customers with both that might like them to be even easier to use together. I don't know what shape that'll look like yet, or when you might expect it, but I'm excited to dig in and find out.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  You might want to see amygdyl's post (apparently dead by default): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16890797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16890797
- NJHeart2Heart 9y ago
  I'm a longtime Flickr paid user (still am, as others have said, mostly from inertia). I am curious, if Flickr and Smugmug will stay separate, what differences between the two will be highlighted/ upgraded? What does the new owner envision will be their respective "expertise". For now I'll stick with Flickr, but I'd love to learn more about how Flickr and Smugmug will be similar and more importantly, different. There are so many photographers out there - differing quality, attention span, interests, and purposes.. so time will tell if/what niches these two entities will be touted to meet best.

username223 9y ago

Smugmug has a history of rescuing failed photo-sharing sites; see Picturelife: https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-priceless-memories-from-picturelife-74a0f7b65dff https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-... This is just about the best thing that could happen to Flickr, far better than being swallowed by GOOG/FB/DBX and then end-of-lifed.

justinph 9y ago

Makes me kind of regret deleting my account when they got sold to Verizon as part of the Yahoo! deal.

lsb 9y ago

Imagenet, the dataset upon which many DNNs have trained, has half its images from Flickr, and it was last updated in 2011. Most of the images from Flickr have still not been taken down. It would be wonderful to add to this foundational dataset.

mratzloff 9y ago

I'm a longtime paid Flickr user, but I mostly continue to use it out of inertia. I'd probably prefer to move to Smugmug at this point—so if Smugmug wants to save me the effort by migrating my photos themselves, I wouldn't object...

salimmadjd 9y ago

This is the best possible news for Flickr and its community. I've known the SmugMug founders from the beginning. First of all, they're one of the nicest people you can imagine. They're also super committed to the photographers and the photography community. Everyone there is not only a photo geek, but they're constantly helping, supporting and promoting photographers. 4 of my photos are printed in large size (one is wall-height) at their office along with many other photographers. That alone just shows you how much they're into their community. An interesting ironic story. In one of my old jobs, I signed a multiyear partnership with them and our company. They had just started. Flicker was couple of years old, but it was already surpassing the early photo sharing site, Pbase. The founders of SmugMug had earlier started FatBrain online bookstore and had a successful exit. But both my CEO and myself were photo geeks and we thought of ourselves as consumer experts. So we kept nagging on SmugMug to change their UI to resemble more like Flickr. Mind you, SmugMug now, looks very different than it did back then. However, the founders were very focused (obviously much smarter than we were) on what they thought should be their main focus, building an online solution for pro photographers. So, for me it's very ironic, that after all these years and us nagging on them to be more like Flickr, that they now own Flickr. I know some of you might be skeptical of mergers, and it remains to be seen. However, knowing the SmugMug DNA, I couldn't have imagined a better custodian for the Flickr and its community. Give the SmugMug guys a chance to prove themselves to you.

onethumb 9y ago
Don (CEO) here, thanks so much for the kind words and the walk down memory lane. I remember those days fondly. :) This is going to be far from easy, but I think it will be fun, exciting and rewarding. We're excited to thrill photographers all over the world.
balladeer 9y ago
I think it will be very important how they deal with the Flickr UI. Whether they will - change Flickr to look more like SmugMug (if at all the platforms are not merged), - or leave it as it is today (the slow, heavy, and glossy Flickr), - or try to bring back something close to the blazing fast Flickr days when it looked so clean and minimal and was not at all glossy. Many of us are pining for the latter.

mp3geek 9y ago

For a brief moment I read "Samsung".

O_H_E 9y ago
Yeah, quite tricky

vzaliva 9y ago

I am also a longtime Flickr user. I stopped paying after I realized that the site is going nowhere. I was just contemplating closing the account, but in view of this news, I will give it another chance. There are hundreds of sites where people can dump their unprocessed vacation photos from their iPhones. My main interest in Flickr was as a place to share and discover high-quality photo works. That means good support for high-resolution images, professionally looking albums, flexible sharing options (private groups, etc).

onethumb 9y ago
Thanks for the vote of confidence and trust. We'll work hard to earn it and live up to a high bar.

redm 9y ago

Great news, I enjoy seeing old sites like Flickr being saved from oblivion. SmugMug is a great company too. On a side note, this is a terrible announcement page when viewed on FireFox 59. It's barely usable. It works well on Chrome though. Its either poor design by SmugMug, superior design by Google Chrome, or leveraging some capability of chrome not available on FireFox. The cake flying is delayed by 1+ second each scroll. Please do more cross-browser testing!

onethumb 9y ago
We did a ton of cross-browser testing, but it's possible we missed something or had a regression. Checking. Thanks for letting me know!
- 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
  Yah I'm on a 2016 15" MBP running 10.13.4 and Safari 11.1 and the site is almost unusable for me. If you want more specific information or would like me to test fixes you can email me at my user name @ gmail.com
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- foobarchu 9y ago
  I'm on Firefox ESR, and while the pages functioned just fine, the performance is...lacking. I think the degraded experience mostly comes down to crappy framerates on the parallax effect.
- pcmaffey 9y ago
  Pretty much kills Safari. Me thinks you need a better scroll library / implementation.
- chippy 9y ago
  The <div class="top-shadow"> covers the scroll bar at the top of the browser window (in Firefox) effectively rendering the scroll bar disabled for the top 1/3 of the window. Additionally, page down and space keys are disabled for navigation. I'm not sure its possible to scroll using any key on the keyboard.

himom 9y ago

When I heard Flickr, I don’t know why I immediately thought of Chad Hurley of Youtube, Hlaska and Delicious (not Flickr). Hurley is super awesome btw.

himom 9y ago

I take it Verizon (Oath) is breaking up, selling, absorbing and dissolving Yahoo properties. AOL mail isn’t long for this world, although I’m sure an email hosting company would love to buy that user-base of elders and tech luddites.

downer68 9y ago

Jesus christ, that fucking name, though. "smugmug" Can they drop that, and retain flickr, please. Please?

Bye_Felicia 9y ago
I take it you did not see yesterday's thread concerning the new open source social network: 'scuttlebutt' ?
- krallja 9y ago
  Scuttlebutt is an actual English word, while SmugMug is not.
  - eecks 9y ago
    But Smug and Mug (Face) are.
    - downer68 9y ago
      But not the conjunction thereof.
quickthrower2 9y ago
Reminds me of the fictional company Chumhum from The Good Wife. Has 4 of the same letters, the same pattern X123123 and the different letters are C->S and G->H
djsumdog 9y ago
I agree. I had never heard of Smugmug until just now. I want to call it "Smug hug" or "Smug hub" .. no one is going to remember that name correctly. It's awful.
- balls187 9y ago
  > I had never heard of Smugmug until just now. Smugmug's ubiquity is up there with B&H, KEH, FredMiranda and KenRockwell.

geuis 9y ago

What a terrible design on that page. Just a bunch of stuff moving around on mobile.

djsumdog 9y ago
I agree. I have not heard of Smugmug before now; although I did use to have a paid Flickr account at one time and I hope they do better with it than Yahoo. But yes, that announcement page is god awful. The scrolling is slow, over done and a crazy bandwidth hog. That weird scroll hijacking shit needs to die in a fire. Some are cute if done right, but lately they're just super over done and useless.

fma 9y ago

Think they'll keep the free 1TB per user? It's what I use to backup and share photos from my phone.

philipps 9y ago

Great news. Happy to become a paying Flickr customer again. There still isn’t a good place to store and share photos where it doesn’t feel like someone else owns them. Good integration with mobile and reasonably priced storage would be at the top of my list. And I agree with the overall tenor that then community is what made Flickr amazing. Happy to contribute to the efforts of bringing that back. Lots of challenges ahead, but this feels like a good thing for the internet.

geerlingguy 9y ago
Agreed. Definitely would love to pay again now that it’s out of Yahoo’s hands. I still post batches of event photos, but have stopped participating in many of the formerly-amazing camera, regional, lens, and hobby-based communities that endeared me to Flickr at first.

Brendinooo 9y ago

Big fan of SmugMug, and I’ve been thrilled to see the iOS app get better and better over time. I’ve loved the laser-like focus of the site too. Here’s hoping SmugMug doesn’t languish or get bloated while they take on Flickr!

grumblepeet 9y ago

Long term Flickr user here, since the start and a paying customer. In the groups that I’m active in there is a thriving community and it would be a shame if that was compromised. I know people here are happy that it is out from the yoke of Yahoo, but over the years I’ve seen so many products that I use get bought up, enthusiastically changed, and then ruined or closed down by the new owners. Please don’t ruin it with arbitrary rules and attempting to make it “social” like Yahoo did. Despite what I’ve seen in some threads on here not every feels that a product has got to somehow keep adding features to be usable or feel alive as a community. It’s the photography that’s important, not the product and its features. I guess what I’m sayimg is I’m kind of burned out by products that I love getting acquired and ruined. I love Flickr and I couldn’t bear to see it go the same way. One last thing, I put a lot of artwork there too, drawings and stuff as well as my photos. Are we going to be penalised for content such as this that doesn’t fall into what you would call a photo? Edit: I just read my comment and it sounded negative towards Smugmug. That’s not my intention. If Flickr had to go somewhere, then I’m glad it’s with the Smugmug guys. I’ve heard good things about you over the years!

onethumb 9y ago
We'll work very hard to not ruin Flickr. After successfully not ruining it, we'll work even hard to make it better than its already awesome self. ;)

hexenhammer 9y ago

SmugMug is fantastic. I can’t say it enough, I am truly thrilled about this.

orasis 9y ago

Holy crap, congrats guys! I remember meeting you guys at Foo Camp waay back in the day. Way to stay after it!

abledon 9y ago

Oh how the mighty have fallen!

ayushgta 9y ago

Sometime in early 2000s, I had a meeting with Chris. It was early days for them and they were running out of their home. This was the time when Flickr was a darling of the valley (and wasn't acquired by Yahoo yet). Chris and I were talking, sitting around a dining table with a bench and some chairs. I remember there was a lot of light and windows all around. Don (his son) was going in and out of the house taking delivery of some hardware/servers. Toni (his wife) was handling customer support from a room upstairs. And there was a dog, I think. That's it! It was a breath of fresh air for me! In a place that has a deep-rooted infatuation with building products on raised capital, they were running their company as a small business. They were going up against giants like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Google, Yahoo and a bunch of others in a crowded space. Unlike those giants, they were charging money for their service! And they had the audacity of doing it under the name SmugMug. I recall Chris grinning about how much some people hated the name SmugMug! This was the only time I met them. I've thought back to that meeting many times over the years. It was inspiring for me to see software/technology being used build something for a niche need... with a clear focus on running it as a small business. I found that to be uplifting then and I still do today. Every couple of years I'd go to their site and see how they continued to grow. And each time it would bring a smile to my face. That they ended up buying Flickr is so darn sweet... I could not hoped for a better cherry-on-top to how I personally view the SmugMug story.

foobaw 9y ago
It's good to hear how much audacity it takes to succeed. I love stories where hard work really pays off. I'm a relatively late adopter (2009) but I really loved Smugmug from the start. As someone into both technology and photography, Smugmug was the perfect product! I remember really wanting to work for them as a college student - everything about the company was extremely motivating. It still is.
- wowtip 9y ago
  Heh I reported a problem to Smugmug with their payment service for my credit card company which prevented me from purchasing a subscription. Their response? "Yeah, we know, it doesn't work with Credit Card Company AAAA yet, but thanks for telling us. Here, have a lifetime free pro account"

Markoff 9y ago

i use flickr as 1TB backup alternative to google photos, bit their app is next to useless so can't really use it actively for organizing photos as on desktop so any idea what will happen with free 1TB plan and the app? Google photos is the only reason i still keep gapps on my phone, it would be great to be able to rid off it

petre 9y ago

This is great news. Flicks has become infested with ads after the Yahoo acquisition to such an extent that it made me delete all my photos and close the account. I used to post in the street photography groups, had a heavily curated one of our own. Now I tend to use it more for looking at bicycle mod photos but the ads in between are so annoying. The only way Flickr could do worse would be being Pinterest.

ghostcluster 9y ago

how confident of them to use YouTube for this announcement rather than flickr's own video hosting service.

TheWiseOne 9y ago
Flickr doesn't really do videos though. Yea, you can upload them but playback is limited to just 3 minutes and it doesn't really have tools to work with videos.
onethumb 9y ago
Best tool for the job. SmugMug does video, too, but there's no-one in the world that does video as well as YouTube for this sort of thing. That's ok - we're way better at photos than YouTube is. :)

kwhitefoot 9y ago

As announcements go that's a masterpiece of uselessness. It tells me nothing about what it means to me as a Flickr user. It doesn't bode well for the future when there is nothing immediately visible to reassure users that important features such as 1 TB free storage will remain, etc.

rapathak 9y ago

I know nothing about the specifics here but I know Don and his respect for photographers and their creativity. I have 100% confidence that he and the SmugMug team will do the right thing for the Flickr community. Flickr+SmugMug FTW!

cJ0th 9y ago

Cool with me as long as they keep their humans.txt https://flickr.com/humans.txt https://flickr.com/humans.txt

bakli 9y ago

1. Pinboard charges money for their product and eventually buys former free-product competitor Delicious. 2. Smugmug charges money for their product and eventually buys free-product competitor Flickr. Charging customers for your service really does help you win in the long run. Edit: Taken from this tweet - https://twitter.com/zachleat/status/987523973612298240 https://twitter.com/zachleat/status/987523973612298240

vnglst 9y ago
I’ve paid for a Flickr Pro account for several years, it wasn’t a free-product to begin with.

throwawayad7d9f 9y ago

On the one hand, I'm happy that Flickr will stay alive but on the other, I'm worried about what Smugmug will do to it regarding policy. Smugmug's Acceptable Use Policy [0] is rather puritan, forbidding things that are "indecent", "lewd", "sexually suggestive" or anything else that "in the sole judgment of SmugMug, is objectionable, harmful". Flickr's [1] on the other hand is rather accepting: "If you would hesitate to show your photos or videos to a child, your family, or a stranger on the street, that means you need to set the appropriate content filter setting." I really hope Smugmug doesn't force their ideals on Flickr. It'd be nice if instead they used Flickr as an example of how to loosen content restrictions on Smugmug. [0]: https://www.smugmug.com/about/terms https://www.smugmug.com/about/terms [1]: https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Is it ideals or is it market placement? If they're staying separate then I imagine maximum market coverage means having a split where they maintain the family friendly visage of SmugMug and they keep the wide gamut of photography on Flickr.
- throwawayad7d9f 9y ago
  Unfortunately I discovered this isn't the case. I contacted SmugMug support and they've already decided all Flickr users will be subject to SmugMug's policies as of May 25th. Existing Flickr content that satisfied Flickr's policies can be removed for SmugMug policy violations. This is destructive and makes me sad for Flickr's future. I just hope they don't decide to mass delete everything with a content filter applied, since in theory all that content violates their new policy.

eecc 9y ago

I remember a time when Flickr tried an in-browser photo editor tool. Is it still there? If so, burn it with fire. Such featuritis, wasting time and effort to ape functionalities of well established native applications. I’d suggest integration with native desktop applications, automated tagging with area crop (trivial these days), doubling down on IRL communities (Meetup wasn’t ever awarded a patent for that, no?)

thinkingemote 9y ago

Flickr Commons is a wonderful free resource for the Internet - free photography from institutions, libraries and museums. It seemed to go into a haitus a few years ago. Will these continue, and expand?

Rjevski 9y ago

Does this mean Flickr is no longer part of the Yahoo/Oath (I have to give them kudos for having the courage to call themselves "Oath" despite what they do) privacy nightmare? I've been looking for am Instagram alternative that respects my privacy and I'm happy to pay good money for it.

technion 9y ago

I'm intrigued at how the existing Flickr was kept alive. This thread notes most previously paying members - no longer are. I've never heard a marketing person talking about "advertising on Flickr". So income is low. Meanwhile, storage and bandwidth are two of the more expensive things around. Turning things around could as this thread suggests could greatly improve the income. But again, I feel surprised there was a Flickr still around to acquire.

roadbeats 9y ago

I very actively use Flickr since 2006 and here is my feedback: - As a photographer, I enjoy photography on desktop computers rather than mobile screens. This is why I prefer Flickr over Instagram. - Delete the Yahoo login please. - Bring back the community feeling. I used to check Flickr blog every week to see what is going on in the Flickr community. - Simplify the product please. I think Flickr is great at organizing photos but it's not ideal for following photographers. - Usernames are a mess. Let's say your username was "bob" when you registered as a Flickr user. Later, Yahoo Flickr renamed usernames as "handle" and introduced another username. Please unify usernames and handles and make it simple again. Best of luck. I hope Flickr's destiny won't be like Delicious.

stevenicr 9y ago

I have always loved flickr, and always worrried investor or wall street pressure would ruin it by causing it to censor more. Flickr has been able to keep naughty pics and groups and made mini social network groups that don't require real names. It's a little known bastion of the old net in some ways. Now that oauth is pushing these logging / sharing terms updates, I am glad they are getting rid of flickr. I just hope they don't start censoring more and become ruined by investors who push mainstream ad revenue acceptance over having less censored sharing. I understand they have ways to download your pics in batches to move elsewhere, however for me it's the groups of people who share similar things, comments using aliases, community from around the world, others sharing pics from events I'll likely never be able to visit, and easily creative commons narrow searches by type of license. There is no way to download all of that... wonder how as much as possible could be ported from and to scuttlebutts groups, buddypress systems and the like. It was sad watching tumblr and so many others get ruined by greedy overlords, I hope this great portal does not end the same way, and smugmug will let me continue as is.

fencepost 9y ago
I believe elsewhere in the thread someone stated that SmugMug's terms (including on content) would also apply to Flickr starting in late May, so that's something to look into.
- stevenicr 9y ago
  thanks for pointing this out, took me a bit to find the terms. There is this gem "obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, sexually suggestive, hateful, harassing, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable or harmful, including without limitation: Photos, Videos or other User Content containing nudity that would be unacceptable in a public museum where minors visit;" Looks like they are ruining flickr right out the gate. thankfully it is quite easy to start a flickr clone these days. buddypress with rtmedia or mediapress and bam it's done. I was going to start podcasting with anchor fm, but reading over their terms it would be trivial for one group to to get another banned easily and vice versa, so there is no staying power / ownership of data there. Seeing the loss of data when an account is deactivated at tumblr, fbk, gplus, or other portals, it's not worth creating a community or group within these digital sharecropping portals.

455 9y ago

it's googke or alphabet

455 9y ago
oh yeah the fonts there, couuld they be searching for hrc video using ml...

lifty 9y ago

I received the Flickr announcement email 11 times. Am I the only one?

eMerzh 9y ago
nope... 25 time for me
Vinnl 9y ago
I'm at 60 now. Looks like something went wrong there...
roosterleft 9y ago
I'm at 90 at this point

kiwijamo 9y ago

Great news as a ex-Flickr user who migrated to iPhoto and recently has recently migrated again to Smugbug! Only downside I've found so far is they don't support HIEF/RAW/DMG uploads so I had to convert these files to JPEG but other than that all seems to work as expected. So shouldn't be too many surprises for those used to Flickr/iPhoto.

icc97 9y ago

There's a similarity to pinboard buying delicious.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jarnix 9y ago

I didn't even know what Smugmug was before today, it does not happen a lot when a company buys a big player like Flickr!

Tomte 9y ago

I have an account, but never really used it. Give me this and I sign up for a paid account: * RAW storage for Fuji cameras * ad-free * no shenanigans where you try to own or sell my photos * privacy * acceptable price (hobbyist range, not pro photog) I‘m indifferent about: * video storage * a store to sell my photos * a service to print my photos I‘d consider a huge selling point: * some kind of ECC for photos, to fight bit-rot

tecleandor 9y ago
Out of curiosity... Why Fuji? Is there any specific thing about those RAW files or just your use case?
- Tomte 9y ago
  Yes, it‘s my use case. Some services only cater to Nikon and Canon as the two dominant players and their RAW format.

aquihire 9y ago

Soon to be featured on https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

CNJ7654 9y ago

...Or as I've recently taken to calling it, Smugmug plus Flickr.

scottybowl 9y ago

As stupid as it sounds, I stopped using Flickr because I was forced to use a Yahoo account. I just wanted to login, not have another useless email account.

dloprinzi 9y ago
Actually I don't think you're alone. Seems to have been a nagging issue for quite some tome, but the good news is the Yahoo login mechanism will soon be gone.

ant6n 9y ago

I was expecting some press release, but this website is just moving colors or something. I can't visually parse it. Is there a plain-text version?

thisone 9y ago

Interesting, the first thing I ever knew about smugmug was their purchase/data save of Picturelife[1], and the story on the Reply-All podcast[2] about the problems Picurelife users were having (err, before the purchase, not after. The discussion of how things went bad for Picturelife is worth the listen). [1]https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-priceless-memories-from-picturelife-74a0f7b65dff https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-... [2] https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker

greggeter 9y ago

Build a migration tool so I can move my 70k Google photos to Flickr and an angel gets its wings.

Istribitel 9y ago

I hope that they might consider incorporating some of what made PhotoSIG so enjoyable. One thing in particular was the ability to search for community photos by lens type, camera type, film type, location, etc. I know you can do this with search engines and to some extent in flicker, but I like the way it was implemented there.

Groxx 9y ago

Sounds like fantastic news... though that landing page makes me concerned about the web perf of smugmug in general :\ abysmal scrolling on chrome and firefox. Flickr has generally been stable on things like that, at least from what I've experienced. I assume the app / site are generally better than this?

ryeguy_24 9y ago

My favorite use case for Flickr is the iPhone app Auto Upload feature to backup all my mobile photos. Just an FYI in case you (Smugmug) change or merge features.

dloprinzi 9y ago

Hi Don - I'm a long time Flickr user & fan - a "power user" as we're sometimes called. I also bought a SmugMug Business account about 6 months ago (switched from Zenfolio), and I must say - I love your service. Your customer service team is top tier! I understand you're going to listen to your customers for a while to learn what they want. So where will you be doing this? Is there a forum you have lined up where we can discuss? I'd love to join in the conversation! By the way, you'd be a welcome voice in the Flickr Help Forum if you're so inclined :-) https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157692729336502/ https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157692729336502/ Thanks for answering our questions - this is going to be really great - very happy to be along for the ride! -Darren

ntompson 9y ago

Great to see that Flickr is finally getting some love. I’ve hung in there until now with my pro account - but only just... I’d love to see Explore fixed. It’s a great concept for enthusiastic amateurs to get noticed, but these days the bots fill it with garbage by some inscrutable algorithm that makes the whole thing pointless. Would love to see it fixed.

thefifthsetpin 9y ago

That page is crazy. Are they trying to emulate fixed positioning with js updates of some other positioning?

promeus 9y ago

1.Force users out of Yahoo mail accounts. Its a hellish experience. 2.Dont touch anything related to user groups. 3.Optimize Flickr design with slow accurate steps. 4.Dont unify design of two services quick. Test hard before trying to mix features. 5.If you this right, you will be the only place for professionals and amateurs. The potential is huge, but the risks are there and in the process if you make really wrong decision.... 6.Focus of this service must be professional only. And don't touch free service, because flickr is actually free first pay for more features second. Wish you luck.

marc104 9y ago

I am pro paying user of flickr since more than 10 years With over 140 millions views and 15000 followers I am doing mostly artistic nudes and sharing ideas and experience with other photographers in the same domain. flickr was one of the only place i found where i could share this content with adequate curation If smugmug policy is applied , it will delete 90% of my content and 10 years of effort in buidling a network around my work

yannovitch 9y ago

Dear Don @onethumb, Thanks a lot for taking on the big task on reviving Flickr ! I think SmuMug is a good fit for this task =). If I can help in any way to help you do that, please email me ! I live in Europe so maybe if you need a rep there ahhahaha Some suggestions : - I am still a Pro Flickr subscriber amd I use Flickr mostly as my "photo hardrive in the cloud" and to share pictures in high quality for weddings & cie. - However it's unbearably slow to organize your pictures on Flickr when you have 40.000+/10+ years of pictures. I even tried to use Flickr-Fuse, mounted as filesystem on my computer, to try to reorganize my content, but no help on that point. - And I tended to use Flickr less as a "cloud photo backup harddrive" these last years because it has became quite slow and unreliable to upload pictures on Flickr. - Please simplify and improve the API too, so we can have cool tools again to go with Flickr/SmugMug (FlickMug? Smugkr ? hahaha ) - RAW format upload/download would be a big differentiator from Instagram & cie. All the best to you in this new big adventure ! Y

turbospudnik 9y ago

PhotoALBM Launches Ultimate Flickr Replacement Service. It is a truly photo-centric platform for professional photographers and photography enthusiasts where users upload photos to show off their work while enjoying the work of others. Think of it as YouTube for photographers.