7 ms·

The latest move of Flickr feels like my pictures were suddenly taken hostage. I decided to not pay them for that reason. Never negotiate with hostage takers lol

by kebman 7y ago

The latest move of Flickr feels like my pictures were suddenly taken hostage. I decided to not pay them for that reason. Never negotiate with hostage takers lol! :'( I was a pro member before, when they actually had a good service for pro members, but one day they sudden decided it was going to be free for all time, only to change their mind... That's a goodbye for me.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
I can understand why you're upset, but I can also understand Flickr's point of view: the "they" who decided it was going to be free for all time was Yahoo!, and they were by and large pretty terrible stewards of the service. And it's hard not to think that the stereotypically Silicon Valley "give it away for free and hope you find a way to monetize down the road" attitude is part of what nearly killed Flickr under their management. The "they" who own it now is SmugMug, and I don't think they can be blamed for deciding that the only practical way to monetize Flickr is to, well, charge for the service. Personally, in most cases I'd much rather pay directly for a service than get it for free from a company whose business model is "try and monetize it through advertising, mining user data and/or dark patterns and shut it down if all of those fail."
- kebman 7y ago
  Oh thank you, I didn't know. Perhaps I'll go a bit more easy on them. But mergers and ownership handovers aside, it still left me feeling betrayed.
  - Xelbair 7y ago
    Of course you felt betrayed - because you were betrayed for profit margins. A customer shouldn't care at all for the reason why the service suddenly sucks. Customer should only care about the quality and value the service provides to him/her.
owenversteeg 7y ago
Be glad you didn't pay... I did, it's atrocious. They've been removing critical features and claiming they'll come back "after a vacation", stranding users, completely breaking the service... It's been months with no updates (total radio silence!) on when the critical features will come back, if ever, when they were originally promised to return in weeks at most. They've completely broken the workflow of many professional photographers paying a good bit of money for Pro, leaving them stranded with no news for months. It's unacceptable. I don't think I've ever been so upset at a service before... I've been recommending people stay far, far away from Flickr and I advise anyone reading this to do the same.
- ghaff 7y ago
  What are these critical features? I've been a Flickr Pro subscriber for years and it still works fine for me.
  - owenversteeg 7y ago
    Camera Roll, which many people (me included) used as the main part of our work flow, is completely gone, despite them claiming it'd be back quickly. For those that used it, it basically _was_ Flickr, and despite claims to the contrary there are a number of workflows in Camera Roll that cannot be easily replicated with the handful of remaining Flickr features.
- onethumb 7y ago
  Feeling frustrated is totally justified. I'd feel frustrated, too. And no-one is more sorry that you're feeling frustrated than I am. However, "total radio silence" is not fair. We're very active, and very vocal, about our status updates and progress we're making on the Flickr Help Forum, on our blog, on Twitter, etc. In particular, Flickr now has a CEO (me) who frequently engages with the community and customers to keep them informed, something Flickr hasn't enjoyed since ~2005. We even have a status page, with frequent realtime updates, which I believe is a first for Flickr: https://status.flickr.net https://status.flickr.net There is a single feature, Camera Roll, which is still offline undergoing maintenance. No-one is happy it's offline, but it is what it is. It relied on technology internal to Yahoo, which we had to leave behind when we recently exited their datacenters. Given the hard deadline and the vast size, scale, and scope of the Flickr service, we managed to move everything (while keeping it online) except this. It will be returning shortly, but it's not quite ready yet. I hope you'll stick it out with us, because we're nearly done migrating one of the largest web services on the planet, which means we get to focus on building again instead of just copying. The future is bright. Disclaimer: I'm the co-founder, CEO & Chief Geek at SmugMug, the company that acquired Flickr from Yahoo last year.

by kebman 7y ago

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

I can understand why you're upset, but I can also understand Flickr's point of view: the "they" who decided it was going to be free for all time was Yahoo!, and they were by and large pretty terrible stewards of the service. And it's hard not to think that the stereotypically Silicon Valley "give it away for free and hope you find a way to monetize down the road" attitude is part of what nearly killed Flickr under their management. The "they" who own it now is SmugMug, and I don't think they can be blamed for deciding that the only practical way to monetize Flickr is to, well, charge for the service. Personally, in most cases I'd much rather pay directly for a service than get it for free from a company whose business model is "try and monetize it through advertising, mining user data and/or dark patterns and shut it down if all of those fail."

kebman 7y ago
Oh thank you, I didn't know. Perhaps I'll go a bit more easy on them. But mergers and ownership handovers aside, it still left me feeling betrayed.
- Xelbair 7y ago
  Of course you felt betrayed - because you were betrayed for profit margins. A customer shouldn't care at all for the reason why the service suddenly sucks. Customer should only care about the quality and value the service provides to him/her.

owenversteeg 7y ago

Be glad you didn't pay... I did, it's atrocious. They've been removing critical features and claiming they'll come back "after a vacation", stranding users, completely breaking the service... It's been months with no updates (total radio silence!) on when the critical features will come back, if ever, when they were originally promised to return in weeks at most. They've completely broken the workflow of many professional photographers paying a good bit of money for Pro, leaving them stranded with no news for months. It's unacceptable. I don't think I've ever been so upset at a service before... I've been recommending people stay far, far away from Flickr and I advise anyone reading this to do the same.

ghaff 7y ago
What are these critical features? I've been a Flickr Pro subscriber for years and it still works fine for me.
- owenversteeg 7y ago
  Camera Roll, which many people (me included) used as the main part of our work flow, is completely gone, despite them claiming it'd be back quickly. For those that used it, it basically _was_ Flickr, and despite claims to the contrary there are a number of workflows in Camera Roll that cannot be easily replicated with the handful of remaining Flickr features.
onethumb 7y ago
Feeling frustrated is totally justified. I'd feel frustrated, too. And no-one is more sorry that you're feeling frustrated than I am. However, "total radio silence" is not fair. We're very active, and very vocal, about our status updates and progress we're making on the Flickr Help Forum, on our blog, on Twitter, etc. In particular, Flickr now has a CEO (me) who frequently engages with the community and customers to keep them informed, something Flickr hasn't enjoyed since ~2005. We even have a status page, with frequent realtime updates, which I believe is a first for Flickr: https://status.flickr.net https://status.flickr.net There is a single feature, Camera Roll, which is still offline undergoing maintenance. No-one is happy it's offline, but it is what it is. It relied on technology internal to Yahoo, which we had to leave behind when we recently exited their datacenters. Given the hard deadline and the vast size, scale, and scope of the Flickr service, we managed to move everything (while keeping it online) except this. It will be returning shortly, but it's not quite ready yet. I hope you'll stick it out with us, because we're nearly done migrating one of the largest web services on the planet, which means we get to focus on building again instead of just copying. The future is bright. Disclaimer: I'm the co-founder, CEO & Chief Geek at SmugMug, the company that acquired Flickr from Yahoo last year.