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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

"First, and most crucially, the free terabyte largely attracted members who were drawn by the free storage, not by engagement with other lovers of photography. This caused a significant tonal shift in our platform, away from the community interaction and exploration of shared interests that makes Flickr the best shared home for photographers in the world."

I don't have a problem with their decision, and I'll certainly upgrade to pro in the next few weeks. But I also don't use Flickr for "community interaction and exploration of shared interests" - I just want to be able to create albums and put photos in them. So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't entirely convince me.

But this isn't unexpected, and I think the purchase by SmugMug was a good thing. I just hope they can stop randomly losing my photos after this...

(Edit: s/convince/entirely convince/)

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> So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't convince me.

What are you not convinced about? They were pretty clear that people who use Flickr as a storage space rather than a photography community are not their target audience, and therefor will not be the focus of their efforts and goodwill.

> What are you not convinced about? They were pretty clear that people who use Flickr as a storage space rather than a photography community are not their target audience, and therefor will not be the focus of their efforts and goodwill.

I suspect that the change is more to do with the cost of storage than with re-creating some photographic community that may have existed before 2013. But I'm also happy to be proved wrong.

Yes, I am just using Flickr for storage. And while most of my albums are public, my photographic skills are fairly average compared to many on Flickr, so they are unlikely to be able to monetise my efforts. But I'm not interested in being part of a "photographic community" because, while I enjoy photography, I don't do it to be in a community. And I suspect that they see community participation as basically user-generated content creation, and I'm not into that either.

I'm happy to accept that I'm not a user they can support for free. I like Flickr, wish it well, and am happy to pay for pro.

And we're happy to have you as Pro. Thanks! We have lots of customers who like to use Flickr for storage, and we're happy to have them. If you care about photography, for whatever reason, we care about you.

> I suspect that the change is more to do with the cost of storage

I think you're right about that, but they did address it up front:

> Second, you can tell a lot about a product by how it makes money. Giving away vast amounts of storage creates data that can be sold to advertisers, with the inevitable result being that advertisers’ interests are prioritized over yours.

> I'm happy to accept that I'm not a user they can support for free. I like Flickr, wish it well, and am happy to pay for pro

That's great! And I want to say that I highly respect the maturity and understanding you demonstrate here. I wish more people adopted this attitude.

There are still plenty of options if you "just want to be able to create albums and put photos in them".

Facebook, Apple Photos, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Photos and Unsplash all do this, with varying trade-offs of cost, quality, and privacy.

Amazon is even free and unlimited...

>I just want to be able to create albums and put photos in them. So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't convince me.

So, in other words... You're not the user they're trying to attract. That's exactly what they're saying.

Not quite. I am using their storage and I don't want to particiapte in a "community". The pictures in my albums don't bear much comparison with work that more able photgraphers than me can produce, but I'm selective about the pictures that I publish and spend time working on them in Lightroom. I'm not stuffing Flickr with cat photos like some social feed.

tldr is that I may not be the kind of user that they want or can support for free, but I think my use of the site is valid and I'm happy to pay to continue using it that way.

>I am using their storage and I don't want to particiapte in a "community".

Again, exactly the type of user they're trying to disuade from using their service...

I have a lot of pretty small pictures from a trail cam on Flickr so going only by number of pictures hurts me.

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