Flickr sold to SmugMug

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SAN FRANCISCO — Flickr has been snapped up by Silicon Valley photo-sharing and storage company SmugMug, USA TODAY has learned.

SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told USA TODAY he's committed to breathing new life into the faded social networking pioneer, which hosted photos and lively interactions long before it became trendy.

SmugMug, an independent, family-run company, will maintain Flickr as a standalone community of amateur and professional photographers and give the long neglected service the focus and resources it deserves, MacAskill said in an exclusive interview.

He declined to disclose the terms of the deal, which closed this week.

“Flickr is an amazing community, full of some of the world's most passionate photographers. It’s a fantastic product and a beloved brand, supplying tens of billions of photos to hundreds of millions of people around the world,” MacAskill said. “Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the Internet.”

The surprise deal ends months of uncertainty for Flickr, whose fate had been up in the air since last year when Yahoo was bought by Verizon for $4.5 billion and joined with AOL in Verizon’s Oath subsidiary.

More here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-flickr-verizon-oath/537377002/
 
Two points of interest there after reading the article and comments ,first off will we be finally able to ditch the never used and useless yahoo e.mail address ,and most importantly how much are we going to have to pay for what for the last few years has been a free service . I know some peeps have retained a “pro” account but in all honesty I realised a few years ago that was a mugs game achieving nothing extra .
 
Two points of interest there after reading the article and comments ,first off will we be finally able to ditch the never used and useless yahoo e.mail address ,and most importantly how much are we going to have to pay for what for the last few years has been a free service . I know some peeps have retained a “pro” account but in all honesty I realised a few years ago that was a mugs game achieving nothing extra .

What about the "status" of a pro account, please note sarcasm

facepalm.gif
 
Smugmug seem to be fairly decent. When I joined years ago the price you paid stayed the same while you had the account. You didn't pay more for the same account features. I had the same price for a decade.I'd think they would honour all the Pro account holders. I'm still one as it is $24 a year or so which is peanuts.
 
I have been a smugmug user for at least 10 years and I find them to be very good. I also have a flickr account, though I use it rarely now. Perhaps smugmug will breathe new life into flickr. It's worth a try as I think flickr will die if they get no help.
 
Flickr has gone downhill and become a hang out for spammers. If they can knock that on the head then it will be a great improvement.
 
Flickr has gone downhill and become a hang out for spammers. If they can knock that on the head then it will be a great improvement.
some good porn on there though ,sometimes you even find people you know ,just by searching tits :exit::exit::exit:
 
Is smugmug a similar sort of site to flickr? I honestly don't think I was more than vaguely aware it even existed.
 
Is smugmug a similar sort of site to flickr? I honestly don't think I was more than vaguely aware it even existed.
No, they provide websites so you can have your own customised portfolio / blog website on it's own custom domain. There's no combined social media aspect.
 
if you go to your flickr page ,top of page there is a symbol of two biscuits .click on that it takes you to smug mug/flickr advert ,scroll down to bottom enter your e/mail and hopefully will get up to date info rather than rumours and hearsay
 
Am i right in thinking you can only use smug mug if you pay, i cant find a free option.
 
Time to delete account? I have deleted my 500px account recently so maybe it’s flickr next and time to reserect that old domain name.
 
Is smugmug a similar sort of site to flickr? I honestly don't think I was more than vaguely aware it even existed.

As Paul says Smugmug is a website based platform. I moved to Smugmug from Zenfolio a couple of years ago and have always found them to be really helpful and seem to have plenty of knowledge about their own stuff.
 
Well, I abandoned Photobucket and jumped to Flickr just last year - now it looks like I'll be jumping from Flickr soon. Strangely enough, I thought something like this would happen so it's a good job I've got most of my photos backed up on external drives now.
 
dont quite think its time to jump ship ,nearly did when Marisa the bitch took over at flickr ,but just stuck with it and so far so good .and long as they dont bring in a excessive payment scheme its more hassle than its worth jumping .
 
A far as I'm concerned Flickr is the best it's ever been - no more sucky 1 photo at a time displaying galleries, no tedious waiting for images to load at 25% the speed of photobucket. It used to so bad that if someone linked to flickr I'd just ignore it and move on. I was never aware of a social side. Worst aspect currently is that it won't work with blogger, so any images for that have to be hosted elsewhere.
 
Not on the Blogger page I just tried it on. Maybe it's a template issue?

Interesting idea. It DID work at one time, but something changed, and others had noticed similar issues according to some google results I found at the time. The thing is that the template I used isn't complex & doesn't do anything 'clever', so I can't see why it would misbehave.
 
Interesting idea. It DID work at one time, but something changed, and others had noticed similar issues according to some google results I found at the time. The thing is that the template I used isn't complex & doesn't do anything 'clever', so I can't see why it would misbehave.
TBH I tried using Flickr links long ago, but found uploading straight to Blogger/Google is much easier.
 
Why are people shouting that they will leave Flickr? Why now, why not when Verison bought it? Smugmug will make better custodians then Yahoo (in latter years) and Verison. Smugmug could also be after the technology.
 
I'm just concerned about possible charging. I'm not adversed to paying a small amount, but who knows what the model will be.
 
I'm just concerned about possible charging. I'm not adversed to paying a small amount, but who knows what the model will be.
Interestingly I’ve just noticed they have started to offer ex pro users the chance to resubscribe at the original $25 annual rate. I’m not sure if that gives an idea of their potential pricing structure or not. the $25 offer is cheaper that the $50 it was potentially going to be a couple years back for new subscribers.

Edit: just noticed there is text to say it would auto renew at the current rate at that point.they would let you know about any price rises in advance so you could cancel the renewal. Not sure if that’s related to the takeover or not as I hadn’t been on Flickr for a few days both the takeover. I would be happy paying a subscription again if like you it’s a reasonable rate per year and doesn’t increase year on year.
 
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Why are people shouting that they will leave Flickr? Why now, why not when Verison bought it? Smugmug will make better custodians then Yahoo (in latter years) and Verison. Smugmug could also be after the technology.
If it stays the same no need to do anything. I use Flickr simply to host so I can post images on forums.

If I have to change the format to a more personalised smugmug style website I’d prefer to cash my chips in and run my own website that I will have full control over which won’t change again next month when smugmug offload it to a.n.other company.

I will take a look at actual Smugmug first however and that may be the better option than some half baked crossover implementation.
 
If I have to change the format to a more personalised smugmug style website I’d prefer to cash my chips in and run my own website that I will have full control over which won’t change again next month when smugmug offload it to a.n.other company.

I will take a look at actual Smugmug first however and that may be the better option than some half baked crossover implementation.

I think we will have to see what they do. I can’t see them trying to change Flickr into a personal website provider as it wouldn’t make sense as Flickr is built on the community aspect. Why would they acquire something like Flickr then change it into something they already do? I could understand that if they acquired say zenfolio as they are already similar products.

I would I to see them some how turn around the community involvement. Over the last few years it’s felt like a place just to post images on and like you say easily post on TP.
 
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I think we will have to see what they do. I can’t see them trying to change Flickr into a personal website provider as it wouldn’t make sense as Flickr is built on the community aspect. Why would they acquire something like Flickr then change it into something they already do? I could understand that if they acquired say zenfolio as they are already similar products.

I would I to see them some how turn around the community involvement. Over the last few years it’s felt like a place just to post images on and like you say easily post on TP.
Thing is I have zero interest in the social media side of it. None at all. I like it as a place to store images online to show people but as someone who has no FB, no twitter I don’t want that side of things.
 
My gut feel is that it's a good move. Flickr has been stale for quite a while, but it does what it does well.

Want to research a theme? You'll get better results than Google Images
Want to set up a group for your club/course/village/charity that's full of old fogies (like me) that don't use FriendFace?
Want to have a place you can host images and display them/link to them from elsewhere?

I think SmugMug will be looking to do *something* with Flickr unless they just wanted the tech for something SmugMug related. I suspect it will also be to advertise to the millions of photographers who have accounts :).

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. Either way - if they bugger it up - there's always Ipernity.
 
Let's hope it gets better from there. You can expect 500px copycat features fairly soon.

Flickr is pretty much the only social site that brought any real leads for my business but that has been down thanks to all the foul play by Marisa and neglect that followed.
 
The big thing to take out of this... make sure you have a backup of anything and everything on Flickr (just in case).

Well make sure you have backup of anything online.
 
if you go to your flickr page ,top of page there is a symbol of two biscuits .click on that it takes you to smug mug/flickr advert ,scroll down to bottom enter your e/mail and hopefully will get up to date info rather than rumours and hearsay


I think they're supposed to be doughnuts :ROFLMAO: But, cheers, I hadn't clicked it until now, signed up for info
 
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