I am not a full-time photographer; there are runs of time every year where I spend a lot of of time shooting (e.g. live music gigs), and then long periods of inactivity.
I have over 1000 photos on Flickr. I've been a user for over a decade. And I found out about this change from this post, because I haven't been reading the associated Yahoo email that often.
So, leaving my account alone for 3 months = losing most of my photos forever.
Great.
Just the service I want to pay for.
I understand the business need, but perhaps could you take it easy on irreversible changes? Sure, make the photos over the 1K limit unavailable even to the account holders -- but let them buy the access back long after the change.
Not only you might get more subscriptions from that alone, but there's also this:
Unlimited storage might not be feasible for a fixed pricd. Photos are growing larger, dollar is getting cheaper - we're betting on HDD costs going down, but that's not a given.
You might need to have a change in the future.
Again.
And I don't want to lose data because I'd have missed that announcement - just like I missed this one.
How you treat your free users indicates what the paying attention ones can expect.
Please, for the sake of everything that's holy, give your devoted users some goddamn peace of mind that they can camp in the mountains for a year and don't return to see their data gone.
Yahoo! screwed up there - but two wrongs do not make a right.
Not all of us use the service every day. Take it easy on annihilating work and memories.
TL;DR: every account whose data you keep is a potential subscription. Every user whose data you deleted is a guaranteed loss of business and eternal scorn. Please take care of your intermittent, but devoted users.
I keep my full photo archive synced between a server, two workstations, and two laptops -- spread across at least two physical locations. I can't begin to imagine the thinking of someone who keeps all their photos on a single vendor's system, especially without some sturdy SLA in place (and even then...).
Quite a few assumptions you are making here.
I have all my photos since 2003 backed up. But I didn't keep track of all the sets I shared with people over a decade (I'm wiser now), and selecting the photos to present to other people takes a long time for me.
>A 'devoted user' that doesn't pay for the service
By that logic, there are no devoted FOSS users, no devoted redditors, etc. And as SmugMug said: I was paying for the service with my data. Now they want me to pay with money, and I am OK with that too.
>doesn't read the emails they send
...they didn't even send any. I assumed the fault was on my part; it was not.
>and logs on at less than 3 month intervals?
My usage pattern is intermittent periods of heavy usage, and that has been consistent over the past 10+ years. That is why I call myself a devoted user; I've stayed with them through Yahoo! and SmugMug acquisitions, and haven't shared photos with anything other than Flickr in the past 5 years.
This is the point I am trying to communicate: devoted users aren't just the ones who use the service all the time.
It sounded sarcastic when you said:
So, leaving my account alone for 3 months = losing most of my photos forever.
Great.
Just the service I want to pay for.
And no, I don't quite understand your recent claim that you were paying them with your data - that's not paying, and clearly your expectations were not aligned with the actual contract (or absence of same) that you had/have with the company.
You've since stated you have all your photos since 2003 backed up, but you claimed originally that this change of policy for non-paying users would see you 'losing most of my photos forever'. So, which is it?
If it's just 'sets of photos that you've selected to share with people' then that doesn't really mesh with your earlier complaints.
Your other complaint - that you haven't received an email they haven't sent yet - is disingenuous. The announcement was made on their web site, and (I'm sure) emails will follow. Mail-outs are typically staggered over many hours, perhaps days - but you typically want the web announcement available first. In the unlikely event you don't get an email in the next couple of days (though it sounds like you don't read that email account either, and haven't in your ten years of using this service thought to change your account's contact email address) then I'll concede this point.
OK, I really need to ask: are you a Flickr user?
When Yahoo! bought Flickr and forced everyone to use a Yahoo! login, it became extremely inconvenient not to tie your Flickr account to your Yahoo account if you have one, and I do. Logging in to Yahoo! mail would automatically log you in to Flickr (still does!).
Furthermore, if you have several accounts, you can't get notifications from all of them on an email that's used for logging into one of them.
You just can't. You get an "email associated with another account" error.
It so happens that I use my primary email as a login for a Flickr! account that I use for live music photography only (and, by the way, no notifications there either!) -- but that account has <1000 photos, so it won't be affected.
The whole use-email-as-login policy that Yahoo! instilled on users is a clusterfuck, but that's what it's been, and simply setting a contact email on the account requires jumping through some hoops. (..I am very glad that Flickr will finally move away from that).
So I have to ask: are you a Flickr user, or are you just arguing hypothetically on behalf of SmugMug?
Anyway. My main point was that I see nothing wrong with holding data for ransom, but deleting it without recovery options on a short notice is a very, very bad move. And three months for me is a very short notice in the context of my 10+ years of using the service.
Thank you.
So, you are not an active user of the platform we are discussing here, you are not affected by the update, and you don't know what it is that I'm talking about except for in general terms.
In light of that, stating your opinion on whether I can call myself a devoted user, and comment on what I should or should not expect from the service that you are not using seems.. mysterious?
And I didn't even get into a fraction of features and data that Flickr stores with photos (comments, photos being part of a set, etc -- Flickr is a social network, after all) that are hard or nearly impossible to back up. We are not discussing the merits of backups here, but let's not pretend that users who back up their files meticulously will not be adversely affected if they don't pay up within 3 months.
I think I can question your devotion to a service by how much you're willing to pay to use it (and how much you complain about it).
You appear to be complaining about having to stump up ~ USD$2 / month to continue to enjoy the same carefree usage you've managed to obtain for free for the last decade.
So reading your email apparently wouldn't have helped you at all.
Great job, SmugMug.