5 ms·

What if Flickr fails?

97 points by bootload 16y ago

ammmir 16y ago
this reminds me of the geocities shutdown. you can't trust companies enough to keep data available and around forever. if you get too popular, controversial, or inactive, you should accept the fact that your data could be removed at any time.
- pyre 16y ago
  Even when you're paying them for the service? "Sorry. We know that you were paying us monthly/yearly for the service, but you've been inactive for too long. We're going to deactivate your account" That doesn't seem right to me.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    > That doesn't seem right to me. Alas, that doesn't matter - what matters is the contract you agreed to when paying them.
  - aw3c2 16y ago
    They might go bankrupt or discontinue for other reasons.
noahc 16y ago
Is there a business opportunity here? Backup all your crap around the web and then allow you to reupload it to another service with one click? EDIT: My point was more to pull in all data flickr, linkedin, facebook, twitter, myspace, hacker news, reddit, digg etc. Not just a single source, but all your web data and then upload it a new site if it is applicable. Obviously, it wouldn't make sense to upload your hacker news data somewhere else, but it might make sense to go back and pull out something for use elsewhere.
- teilo 16y ago
  Probably not. Smugmug will probably be the biggest beneficiary if the pros leave Flickr, and there are already tools for that. For example: http://www.smugglr.net/ http://www.smugglr.net/
  - bootload 16y ago
    "... Smugmug will probably be the biggest beneficiary if the pros leave Flickr, and there are already tools for that. ..." That is my strategy. When I hit 10K images I mirrored at smugmug. But the transition is not smooth. There is a flickr/smugmug mismatch of how they store data. For instance smugmug has (to my knowledge) title but no body equivalent of flickr the result is you loose data. The transfer tools are also pretty basic.
- jedschmidt 16y ago
  This is already possible with Flickr photos, thanks to flickrtouchr and Dropbox: git clone https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr.git cd flickrtouchr python flickrtouchr.py ~/Dropbox/myphotos
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    I've been looking for something like this, major thanks!
  - bootload 16y ago
    # TODO set up sidecar # write_sidecar(photoid, photo.getAttribute("secret"), dir) I'll have a look through this - looks like it also allows for metadata capture and I can see some code not implemented ~ https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr/blob/master/flickrtouchr.py https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr/blob/master/flickrt... more here ~ http://hivelogic.com/articles/backing-up-flickr http://hivelogic.com/articles/backing-up-flickr
- smanek 16y ago
  http://www.backupify.com/ http://www.backupify.com/
davi 16y ago
Pro users want access to a social network that has gotten huge because it's free. The pro users are nervous because free=fragile. This brings to mind Fred Wilson's recent call for content shifting tools (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/content-shifting.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/content-shifting.html, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085455 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085455).
ghshephard 16y ago
Just use Flickr with the presumption that the service is transitory, and will eventually go out out of business - hopefully with advance notice, but possibly not. Treat services like flickr, myspace, facebook as useful, but not guaranteed, CDNs for sharing your images with your social network. But transitory - their is every possibility they will decline and disappear. All the Flickr Pro users I know have a pretty well defined image-workflow, typically with Aperture or Lightroom, and flickr is just one (albeit important) branch of that workflow. In general: o Keep a local backup. (Time Machine, etc..) o Every so often, mirror that backup and take it off site. (Just sync your local backup to an external hard drive) o Keep a real-time cloud backup (ala Backblaze and friends) Keeping copies of your images is straightforward - the real challenge is managing that social network and backing it up - that's challenging.
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Perhaps someone needs to come up with a startup that treats S3 as storage medium for images, while retaining all the features of Flickr. Then you will truly own your images and not have to worry about company going out of business.
- steveplace 16y ago
  As noone's mentioned this, backupify is a pretty good service that solves this problem. Of course it could also be a transitory CDN, but that goes a little to far down the rabbit hole for me.
jarek 16y ago
I paid for my Flickr account and hope to continue paying for it, but at the same time I would feel better if they had explicit export/backup functionality. I hope if Yahoo! can't keep on supporting Flickr they will at least be able to sell it off to someone who will. It does have some revenue.
ja27 16y ago
I've paid for a Flickr pro account for a few years now. Ironically, I first got on Flickr when Yahoo Photos shut down and they forcefully migrated me to Flickr. But I'm letting my pro account expire this month. I've been using Flickr for 2 main purposes: sharing photos with friends and backing up all my photos. It hasn't been great for either. No matter how many guest passes and invites I mail friends, most of them only look at the photos I put on Facebook. Facebook keeps improving their photo service - removing album limits, increasing resolution. I can't name a single new Flickr feature in the past 3 years that's impacted me. For backing up, it's really not very convenient, especially if I had to restore. I've moved to rotating offsite hard drives a while ago. I do still enjoy some of the social aspects of Flickr groups, for general photography and related interests. That's enough to possibly keep me active there as a free user, but in general the quality of the average Flickr group is pretty low. It really depends on the group admins and Flickr doesn't offer any incentive for them. Wouldn't it be easy to offer free Pro accounts to the admins of the top 1% of Flickr groups? Or some swag? Or anything? Then there's the fact that every time I login there I cringe when I realize I'm using my ancient Yahoo id that's been discarded for every other purpose.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Facebook keeps improving their photo service - removing album limits, increasing resolution. Flickr both doesn't limit how many photos can be in a set or collection and provides the original resolution (at least for the pro account, I don't remember what the free account's limits are). These "improvements" Facebook is making is just catching up to flickr's base functionality. Obviously, Facebook may be more compelling to use for it's (monetarily) free price if you just want to post photos for your close friends to look at. I personally get tired of the photos of people's lame afternoons on Facebook, there's a lot more interesting content being posted to flickr, and I don't necessarily need to friend someone to be exposed to it or find it. I find flickr better for managing photos. It's the internet, it like one click to get anywhere. I've settled that if people don't bother to click through from Facebook (where my flickr photos get posted to my wall as thumbnails) to actually view the photos on flickr where they are public (requiring no account), they aren't actually interested in seeing it.
enneff 16y ago
I wrote this tool to export your photos from Flickr a few years ago. It should still work: http://nf.wh3rd.net/flickr-rip.tar.gz http://nf.wh3rd.net/flickr-rip.tar.gz
rorrr 16y ago
People should stop posting every single shitty photo they take. What is the point of that? Follow the links to the author's flick account. It's full of complete garbage. Not just garbage, but also repetitive garbage. There are sets of nearly identical tasteless snapshots. Who gives a fuck if you lose them? Its intrinsic value being displayed on a public photo site is zero. Just dump them on a hard drive, no need to display your garbage publicly.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  Jared Loughner is that you? Talk about rage 24/7...
- pahu 16y ago
  I'd have to agree. The way that the author uses Flickr is pretty pointless.
jchrisa 16y ago
Linked to http://unhosted.org http://unhosted.org and http://couchapp.org http://couchapp.org in the comments -- glad to see these sorts of concerns becoming more mainstream.
jacques_chester 16y ago
Ah, Emancipay. I reviewed them as part of my work on what is a very similar idea. My notes say "Academics who have not implemented anything". Hmm.
shashank261 16y ago
Is the problem with Flickr or Yahoo? I feel Yahoo management has let down Flickr users.
TanisDLC 16y ago
I feel that Flickr is going about it all wrong. They host pictures, but they lack focus. IMHO they should begin offering ways for their hobbyist audience to make money. 1) Allow companies to post picture descriptions they want, and allow Flickr users submit entries for those requests. Companies can buy the images they want; Flickr makes a small royalty per transaction. 2) Host a Stock Photo interface for users who want to participate. Users who submit entries for photo requests, which are not accepted, can be moved to their stock area. 3) Use their audience to build an online photography service directory - complete with galleries for each photographer represented. Allow customers to book and rate directly through the site.
- _delirium 16y ago
  They have an attempt to go in that direction, though it's not that streamlined: http://www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages/ http://www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages/
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
> Here’s a way EmanciPay will help newspapers. Sigh. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont...
hopeless 16y ago
"If you value your online photos, pay for the hosting and they'll still be around next year" That's been Smugmug's matra for years and I truely believe it, which is why I've been hosting my photos there for about 4 years now. I was burned by the closure of other free online galleries back in the early 2000's. It's also helped to shape my strategy when choosing other online services: if it's important to me and you won't take money for it, I'll assume you'll be dead soon and avoid your service altogether (the exception is Gmail).
- derobert 16y ago
  Google will happily take your money: https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage
PaulHoule 16y ago
I'm not so pessimistic about advertising, but I am pessimistic about Yahoo's stewardship of Flickr. After all, Yahoo deep-sixed geocities, and would have turned off delicious if they'd been able to get away with it.

97 points by bootload 16y ago

this reminds me of the geocities shutdown. you can't trust companies enough to keep data available and around forever. if you get too popular, controversial, or inactive, you should accept the fact that your data could be removed at any time.

pyre 16y ago
Even when you're paying them for the service? "Sorry. We know that you were paying us monthly/yearly for the service, but you've been inactive for too long. We're going to deactivate your account" That doesn't seem right to me.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  > That doesn't seem right to me. Alas, that doesn't matter - what matters is the contract you agreed to when paying them.
- aw3c2 16y ago
  They might go bankrupt or discontinue for other reasons.

noahc 16y ago

Is there a business opportunity here? Backup all your crap around the web and then allow you to reupload it to another service with one click? EDIT: My point was more to pull in all data flickr, linkedin, facebook, twitter, myspace, hacker news, reddit, digg etc. Not just a single source, but all your web data and then upload it a new site if it is applicable. Obviously, it wouldn't make sense to upload your hacker news data somewhere else, but it might make sense to go back and pull out something for use elsewhere.

teilo 16y ago
Probably not. Smugmug will probably be the biggest beneficiary if the pros leave Flickr, and there are already tools for that. For example: http://www.smugglr.net/ http://www.smugglr.net/
- bootload 16y ago
  "... Smugmug will probably be the biggest beneficiary if the pros leave Flickr, and there are already tools for that. ..." That is my strategy. When I hit 10K images I mirrored at smugmug. But the transition is not smooth. There is a flickr/smugmug mismatch of how they store data. For instance smugmug has (to my knowledge) title but no body equivalent of flickr the result is you loose data. The transfer tools are also pretty basic.
jedschmidt 16y ago
This is already possible with Flickr photos, thanks to flickrtouchr and Dropbox: git clone https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr.git cd flickrtouchr python flickrtouchr.py ~/Dropbox/myphotos
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  I've been looking for something like this, major thanks!
- bootload 16y ago
  # TODO set up sidecar # write_sidecar(photoid, photo.getAttribute("secret"), dir) I'll have a look through this - looks like it also allows for metadata capture and I can see some code not implemented ~ https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr/blob/master/flickrtouchr.py https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr/blob/master/flickrt... more here ~ http://hivelogic.com/articles/backing-up-flickr http://hivelogic.com/articles/backing-up-flickr
smanek 16y ago
http://www.backupify.com/ http://www.backupify.com/

davi 16y ago

Pro users want access to a social network that has gotten huge because it's free. The pro users are nervous because free=fragile. This brings to mind Fred Wilson's recent call for content shifting tools (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/content-shifting.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/content-shifting.html, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085455 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085455).

ghshephard 16y ago

Just use Flickr with the presumption that the service is transitory, and will eventually go out out of business - hopefully with advance notice, but possibly not. Treat services like flickr, myspace, facebook as useful, but not guaranteed, CDNs for sharing your images with your social network. But transitory - their is every possibility they will decline and disappear. All the Flickr Pro users I know have a pretty well defined image-workflow, typically with Aperture or Lightroom, and flickr is just one (albeit important) branch of that workflow. In general: o Keep a local backup. (Time Machine, etc..) o Every so often, mirror that backup and take it off site. (Just sync your local backup to an external hard drive) o Keep a real-time cloud backup (ala Backblaze and friends) Keeping copies of your images is straightforward - the real challenge is managing that social network and backing it up - that's challenging.

paraschopra 16y ago
Perhaps someone needs to come up with a startup that treats S3 as storage medium for images, while retaining all the features of Flickr. Then you will truly own your images and not have to worry about company going out of business.
steveplace 16y ago
As noone's mentioned this, backupify is a pretty good service that solves this problem. Of course it could also be a transitory CDN, but that goes a little to far down the rabbit hole for me.

jarek 16y ago

I paid for my Flickr account and hope to continue paying for it, but at the same time I would feel better if they had explicit export/backup functionality. I hope if Yahoo! can't keep on supporting Flickr they will at least be able to sell it off to someone who will. It does have some revenue.

ja27 16y ago

I've paid for a Flickr pro account for a few years now. Ironically, I first got on Flickr when Yahoo Photos shut down and they forcefully migrated me to Flickr. But I'm letting my pro account expire this month. I've been using Flickr for 2 main purposes: sharing photos with friends and backing up all my photos. It hasn't been great for either. No matter how many guest passes and invites I mail friends, most of them only look at the photos I put on Facebook. Facebook keeps improving their photo service - removing album limits, increasing resolution. I can't name a single new Flickr feature in the past 3 years that's impacted me. For backing up, it's really not very convenient, especially if I had to restore. I've moved to rotating offsite hard drives a while ago. I do still enjoy some of the social aspects of Flickr groups, for general photography and related interests. That's enough to possibly keep me active there as a free user, but in general the quality of the average Flickr group is pretty low. It really depends on the group admins and Flickr doesn't offer any incentive for them. Wouldn't it be easy to offer free Pro accounts to the admins of the top 1% of Flickr groups? Or some swag? Or anything? Then there's the fact that every time I login there I cringe when I realize I'm using my ancient Yahoo id that's been discarded for every other purpose.

thwarted 16y ago
Facebook keeps improving their photo service - removing album limits, increasing resolution. Flickr both doesn't limit how many photos can be in a set or collection and provides the original resolution (at least for the pro account, I don't remember what the free account's limits are). These "improvements" Facebook is making is just catching up to flickr's base functionality. Obviously, Facebook may be more compelling to use for it's (monetarily) free price if you just want to post photos for your close friends to look at. I personally get tired of the photos of people's lame afternoons on Facebook, there's a lot more interesting content being posted to flickr, and I don't necessarily need to friend someone to be exposed to it or find it. I find flickr better for managing photos. It's the internet, it like one click to get anywhere. I've settled that if people don't bother to click through from Facebook (where my flickr photos get posted to my wall as thumbnails) to actually view the photos on flickr where they are public (requiring no account), they aren't actually interested in seeing it.

enneff 16y ago

I wrote this tool to export your photos from Flickr a few years ago. It should still work: http://nf.wh3rd.net/flickr-rip.tar.gz http://nf.wh3rd.net/flickr-rip.tar.gz

rorrr 16y ago

People should stop posting every single shitty photo they take. What is the point of that? Follow the links to the author's flick account. It's full of complete garbage. Not just garbage, but also repetitive garbage. There are sets of nearly identical tasteless snapshots. Who gives a fuck if you lose them? Its intrinsic value being displayed on a public photo site is zero. Just dump them on a hard drive, no need to display your garbage publicly.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago
Jared Loughner is that you? Talk about rage 24/7...
pahu 16y ago
I'd have to agree. The way that the author uses Flickr is pretty pointless.

jchrisa 16y ago

Linked to http://unhosted.org http://unhosted.org and http://couchapp.org http://couchapp.org in the comments -- glad to see these sorts of concerns becoming more mainstream.

jacques_chester 16y ago

Ah, Emancipay. I reviewed them as part of my work on what is a very similar idea. My notes say "Academics who have not implemented anything". Hmm.

shashank261 16y ago

Is the problem with Flickr or Yahoo? I feel Yahoo management has let down Flickr users.

TanisDLC 16y ago

I feel that Flickr is going about it all wrong. They host pictures, but they lack focus. IMHO they should begin offering ways for their hobbyist audience to make money. 1) Allow companies to post picture descriptions they want, and allow Flickr users submit entries for those requests. Companies can buy the images they want; Flickr makes a small royalty per transaction. 2) Host a Stock Photo interface for users who want to participate. Users who submit entries for photo requests, which are not accepted, can be moved to their stock area. 3) Use their audience to build an online photography service directory - complete with galleries for each photographer represented. Allow customers to book and rate directly through the site.

_delirium 16y ago
They have an attempt to go in that direction, though it's not that streamlined: http://www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages/ http://www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages/

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

> Here’s a way EmanciPay will help newspapers. Sigh. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont...

hopeless 16y ago

"If you value your online photos, pay for the hosting and they'll still be around next year" That's been Smugmug's matra for years and I truely believe it, which is why I've been hosting my photos there for about 4 years now. I was burned by the closure of other free online galleries back in the early 2000's. It's also helped to shape my strategy when choosing other online services: if it's important to me and you won't take money for it, I'll assume you'll be dead soon and avoid your service altogether (the exception is Gmail).

derobert 16y ago
Google will happily take your money: https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage

PaulHoule 16y ago

I'm not so pessimistic about advertising, but I am pessimistic about Yahoo's stewardship of Flickr. After all, Yahoo deep-sixed geocities, and would have turned off delicious if they'd been able to get away with it.