What if Flickr fails?
blogs.law.harvard.edu
blogs.law.harvard.edu
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)
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.
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.
But my average friend that would go look at my Flickr photos can't figure out how to navigate or download full-resolution. (That's mostly other parents.)
Leaving Flickr pro does mean losing letting other people download full-resolution of my photos, but I can only think of a handful of photos where that impacts me. I can upload those other places for free. It does mean only seeing my last 200 photos in my photostream, but apparently all my photos already added to groups will remain visible in the group pools. There's some other pro benefits like number of sets, set size, video length, etc. that I don't think will bother me at all.
I think they're in a tough spot of giving too much to free users and not enough benefit to Pro users. I can't argue with their price though. I've considered dropping pro before but $29 for the year is an easy payment to make. The last two years I've just shrugged and payed it rather than deal with it.
Flickr is a much better source for me of reference material and examples when I'm looking for inspiration on how to approach a subject - not as a straight copy but to stop me ever further refining my old work. It's also overwhelmingly where I get unsolicited usage enquiries from - got one yesterday as it happens.
If what you want is social sharing with your pre-existing network, I agree - use Facebook. I do. If you want a service more geared for photographers, Flickr is better IMHO.
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.
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.
git clone https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr.git
cd flickrtouchr
python flickrtouchr.py ~/Dropbox/myphotos # TODO set up sidecar
# write_sidecar(photoid, photo.getAttribute("secret"), dir)
I'll give it a go. Seems there is a 2Gb limit before you pay but there is nothing to say what exactly is backed up.
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.
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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085455).
"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.
Alas, that doesn't matter - what matters is the contract you agreed to when paying them.
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).
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.
Sigh. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont...