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.
Since you're here, may I voice a thing I really enjoyed about Flickr? Community and actual human communication.
Perhaps in the mobile era this isn't possible anymore since everyone is attention starved and tiny screens and keyboards aren't conducive to longform communication, but this was Flickr's strength.
You'd find a group where your photos were relevant and start conversations with strangers halfway around the world. The ability for groups to self-moderate is key because it kept groups on topic. I just poked around some communities I used to frequent like Hardcore Street Photography [0] and Guess Where SF [1], and they're surprisingly still habited.
Instead of trying to be another Instagram, I hope the future of Flickr will play to its strengths.
To be honest, most of the Flickr groups seemed completely useless, full of HDR junk and asinine motivational stuff. Though I'm sure it's a bit like Reddit — the good communities are small and hidden.
Follower spam is another example of noise, and something Instagram is also rife with.
Social media does have tough challenges ahead, especially as bots/spam become more and more prevalent.
I would love to work on a bot-prevention team somewhere, but my background isn't in ML.
Bots can definitely contribute meaningfully in many ways. Mostly through organization (suggesting labels & other metadata, album creation, etc), spam filtering & rule enforcement (like reddit's automoderator), and even automatic editing (like some of the stuff Google Photos offers, like rotation suggestions and various automatic filters).
Case in point: Google visibility, if you are not Wikipedia no amount of quality content will get you above the link farms if you don't also follow the customary rites of pleasing the algorithm.
The good ones kept those gaudy things at arm's length. Some of these groups have a bit if an attitude at first, but as they get to know you and your dedication, they will warm up to you.
So what will replace it? I've been a Flickr user for more than 10 years.
vOv
I never lost any image and I'm now a happy Smugmug user/customer (ha!), so I don't really care about that anymore -- but yes, the login process is important! Many users would rather change shop than put up with crazy login procedures.
I've been a Pro user of Flickr since 2005 or so. I actually thought for the first time this year that I would cancel it. My number-one complaint is speed. It's so slow. As a professional infrastructure guy, it just kills me and I wished I could buy the company myself and make it fast again. I really hope you will invest in revitalizing this service because I really don't want to go.
My life--from young skier/mountaineer guy--to Army soldier--to dating a girl--marriage--kids--it's all documented there. I look at my old photos all the time but it's just so unbearably slow.
Chris aka https://flickr.com/photos/Defender90
Since you're here and talking about community, can you say what your approach is going to be to the copious content on Flickr that violates SmugMug's content policy (but not Flickr's)?
Flickr's approach in the past [0] has allowed most things as long as a content filter is applied to keep it from kids and those who don't want to see it. SmugMug's approach [1] is to very broadly ban anything "indecent" in any context whatsoever (even private backups).
I contacted support and the story right now is that SmugMug policy will apply and any Flickr content that violates it is up for removal. Are you sticking to that? If so, why? It seems like a very destructive thing to do to the community as your first act after acquisition.
Maybe you agree. I guess we'll find out. I wish y'all the best. Fun and competition is a positive for all.
Some questions: 1. Are you going to keep the 1TB free space for everyone?
2. Do you think you'll have a desktop uploader available for non-paying users?
3. What about open-source integration (digiKam, etc)? Last time I tried, I couldn't get it to work with Yahoo authentication.
Thanks, and looking forward to the new life :)
The way I run SmugMug is pretty simple: We love our customers, we listen to them, we build great experiences for them based on that feedback, then we do it all over again. We're going to apply that same approach to Flickr.
Simply migrating them into AWS, and getting off of Yahoo Auth, and the variety of other urgent issues, will take a lot of time, effort, energy, etc. But we're also very excited to get to work enhancing the existing experiences and building new ones.
So please be patient with me as I learn, come up to speed, and tackle some of the big obstacles in front of us. It'll be worth it. :)
I'm hoping for the best, and excited for new blood.
They might have fixed that now but I feel it would take quite some effort for them to make them feel safe again.
Don here is clearly much more on top of the situation than that, but my point is that any big social site ends up seeing this with enough outrage.
And when something is big enough news, it makes it to the top-10 news thing on the right-hand side of Facebook.
What I really would like to see in Flickr is a reliable upload application. When I'm back from a trip, I usually have a few gigabytes of photos. Regular applications can handle small (hundreds megabytes) batches but when you are talking about gigabytes they start crashing, or stopping in the middle, and cannot continue where they stopped reliably. I would like an application that uploads to Flickr, with retries, status, and with checksum verification on the client and in the server.
The same is true for download. Flickr handle well individual downloads and small batches of download. But when trying to download large albums they simple cannot handle it.
I have been writing my own applications and scripts to handle my photos on Flickr, so it's absolutely important to keep the current API open.
I rely a lot on those statistics to generate more views and contacts I would also like an expansion and more detailed analysis Why can't I know WHICH picture was found through Google (You don't, you say there were X finds through Google, but we can't see which picture)? Why don't you show the Google Search URL?
Looking at SmugMug price plans you are MUCH more expensive than Flickr, are you going to be raising PRO costs? And if you do, are you going to pull the PR stunt of saying it is needed to "To Grow and Improve" and"We think the services offered are at the best price point, there is always free" ? Because Free is not a middle ground.
Because you acquired Flickr, you knew what was coming with it, IE, customers, there is no way to pass raising Tariffs without upsetting your New user base which has never asked for you and is tired of being thrown around from one company to another.and saying you have "no plans for the immediate future" it really does seem that you care more about your increased bourse instead of offering your clients an increased experience?
Are you going to include website hosting services to flickr users within the PRO price and go after 500px, or will you Keep the two Services very clear of each other for a different experience?
If you are keeping the two Services Separate, then aren't you really just here to collect a bigger check? If Yahoo / Verizon / Oath was not willing to spend money to upgrade our services and gain more users and you are, wouldn't this mean our subscription fees will increase?
Why should we remain here instead of going to 500px which offers a similar service to you but for much cheaper?
The old adage of "you kind of get what you pay for" seems to apply.
I really don’t want to use another platform for storing my photos, even Twitter stream photos, and having Flickr, where I am in control was always my preferred choice.
Looking forward to keep using Flickr where the owners actually care.
Will you keep the current 1 TB free storage tier as is?
SmugMug has offered unlimited storage for more than 15 years, so we know a lot about the space. I'm excited to see what we can do with and for the community.
I have a smugmug account. Is there going to be a way to marry the two??? I have 11 years of photos on Flickr and would hate to have to move them (your sys people would hate it too I’m sure).
But logically, it makes sense that connecting them somehow makes a lot of sense. SmugMug has consumed the Flickr API for awhile, so some of the plumbing is already in place.
Stay tuned while we learn from our customers what they'd like and then build it. My hunch is better connectivity between the two services is going to be high on the list, but I'm going to let our customers drive that decision.
Much good luck!