Hmm, time to dump flickr and finally build my own website?

Harriers9 said:
Pro accounts have had them too. Asking us to rope a friend in.
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Yeah I noticed that too, asking to "Give Pro" to a non pro member.
I came to the conclusion that I didn't like anyone enough to "give" them a 30 quid Xmas present.
And that includes me :D
( I have both a free one and a pro)
 
The problem is they make it sound like they're about to go bust anyway so doesn't encourage you to pay for pro!
Maybe the model is simply unsustainable even when they have implemented a system to purge older photos above 1000.
 
4wd said:
The problem is they make it sound like they're about to go bust anyway so doesn't encourage you to pay for pro!
Maybe the model is simply unsustainable even when they have implemented a system to purge older photos above 1000.
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Both fair points.
Time will tell I guess...
 
If they brought the price down and guaranteed there wouldn't be creeping increases I'd pay. I contribute to a number of free web services because I value what they do but flickr needs to set the price at a point where it feels like value for money and TBH I'm probably only prepared to pay a couple of quid a month for it.
 
sirch said:
TBH I'm probably only prepared to pay a couple of quid a month for it.
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Maybe it would serve them (and us) better if they instigated a two-tier paid service. After all I guess that there's no end of competition in the cloud storage market, whilst what I see as Flickr's signature function, photo-sharing amongst peers, seems to have no direct rival.

They could have a plan A for 2 or 3 quid a month with limits on storage / file sizes, and what they have now as plan B for 4 or 5 quid. This would lower the threshold at which people might be tempted. On the other hand, many of those like me who've opted for the current 'pro' offering would no doubt down-scale to the more budget plan - so swings & roundabouts for Flickr's coffers ...
 
Google photos is a good option... Unlimited uploads with a 16mb limit on individual files... Has an app too... And you can link photos or albums....
 
4wd said:
The problem is they make it sound like they're about to go bust anyway so doesn't encourage you to pay for pro!
Maybe the model is simply unsustainable even when they have implemented a system to purge older photos above 1000.
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This. For the price I would like to see more extras like pixels.com e-commerce. I don't particularly like what smugmug does so will hold out to the new owner. Probably not long now to wait
 
I cancelled my sub after this year of Pro because they did nothing with it. I signed up to Pro when they bought it as a show of support, but they've done nothing front end. All the cool dudes are moving to AWS, but the cool dudes I'm working with are discovering it's also massively expensive. And I have seen degradation in Flickr performance this year rather than improvement.

It's definitely a first to ask for money and deliver nothing. Literally a "begging" letter as @Cobra hinted at. £XX/year definitely has buyers asking themselves why they should cough up again every 12 months. I forsee an Adobe style charging plan where they get you on a rolling £x/month plan so that you forget they're delivering nothing new.

Free Flickr is just too good to warrant paying what they're asking.

4wd said:
The problem is they make it sound like they're about to go bust anyway so doesn't encourage you to pay for pro!
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I know. This is a terrible strategy.

All I can think is that they must be desperate to send that email out.
 
Harlequin565 said:
All the cool dudes are moving to AWS,
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I wasn't aware of AWS until very recently, and I find that slightly unnerving TBH. My thoughts on Alexa ( et al) are well known,
I avoid google as much as possible, and now it looks like we have two companies fighting for our info,
despite Flickr saying the opposite ..

We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data.
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Yep and deleted it
 
Cobra said:
I wasn't aware of AWS until very recently, and I find that slightly unnerving TBH. My thoughts on Alexa ( et al) are well known,
I avoid google as much as possible, and now it looks like we have two companies fighting for our info,
despite Flickr saying the opposite ..
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If you buy hosting from AWS it is just hosting, Amazon aren't going to mine the data at a personal level because in most countries it would be illegal and if they got caught doing that they would loose all their AWS customers in a pretty short timescale. Besides a vast amount of what you do on line is now on AWS (around 50% IIRC) so it is almost impossible to avoid. Even sites that aren't on AWS probably serve up third party content and advertising that is on AWS.
 
I wasn't especially impressed either. For what I use Flickr - mostly hosting images to post here - I could have a small amount of space on a server at a similar or lower cost and with less outage problems. If they can't do it for the £40 odd PA that they charge then there's a problem with what they're doing.
 
[thread derail]

Cobra said:
I find that slightly unnerving TBH
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I have much stronger feelings than that... Partly because of...
sirch said:
Besides a vast amount of what you do on line is now on AWS (around 50% IIRC) so it is almost impossible to avoid
Click to expand...

Whilst it's not technically a monopoly, much like Google, Facebook and even Adobe at our level, this level of "market share" held by one company is rarely good for the consumer. And it's not so much about misuse of data as it is about cost and control of that data. AWS put their prices up by 20% what are Flickr going to do? Pay it, or kick off another large and expensive project to transfer it somewhere else? Any in-house talent they used to have to manage their own datacentres are gone.
[/thread derail]

Flickr isn't quite at that level of control with the likes of Imjur (amongst others) for hosting and Instagram (amongst others) for the social. But I'd be very sad to see it go, because private groups give me a level of interaction with my students during term time that I can't replicate without paying - or asking them to pay. Sadly their business model appears to be broken and their solution is "throw more money" at it in the hope "that will do".

Ignore me. Just re-read this and it comes off as a bit of a rant. I've just had the "we're losing 75 people in January" "Christmas" message from our CIO. Guarantee they will be technical people as more stuff gets offshored or plonked on AWS.

I'm getting too old now.
 
sirch said:
If you buy hosting from AWS it is just hosting, Amazon aren't going to mine the data at a personal level because in most countries it would be illegal and if they got caught doing that they would loose all their AWS customers in a pretty short timescale. Besides a vast amount of what you do on line is now on AWS (around 50% IIRC) so it is almost impossible to avoid. Even sites that aren't on AWS probably serve up third party content and advertising that is on AWS.
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Doesn’t mean they can’t use the photos to test their facial recognition software. They even admit they scan photos for faces that are stored as part of Amazon Prime.
 
Andrew Benbow said:
Doesn’t mean they can’t use the photos to test their facial recognition software. They even admit they scan photos for faces that are stored as part of Amazon Prime.
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Of course they use Amazon Prime photos, people agreed to that use when they signed up to Prime. People who signed up to Flickr did not agree to give Amazon rights to the Flickr photos. But then again there is nothing at all to stop Amazon, Google and anyone else mining public flickr photos, of which there are billions. So why would Amazon run the risk of the reputational damage of mining the back end data on Flickr when they can do it perfectly legitimately via the front end?
 
sirch said:
Of course they use Amazon Prime photos, people agreed to that use when they signed up to Prime. People who signed up to Flickr did not agree to give Amazon rights to the Flickr photos. But then again there is nothing at all to stop Amazon, Google and anyone else mining public flickr photos, of which there are billions. So why would Amazon run the risk of the reputational damage of mining the back end data on Flickr when they can do it perfectly legitimately via the front end?
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Because organisations like Amazon and Facebook don’t ask for permission, they ask for forgiveness if they get caught.
 
well i had the email as i had decided not to renew.
now if i renew it will cost £26.93
if this had been last month i would have jumped at it but now I am thinking im not sure how much it effects me.
 
Ganton Gunner said:
well i had the email as i had decided not to renew.
now if i renew it will cost £26.93
if this had been last month i would have jumped at it but now I am thinking im not sure how much it effects me.
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Edit: posting while ginned up is never a good idea [emoji849][emoji848]

Flickr won’t last forever if it can’t at least break even. If a company like Facebook buys it next then it will all go to s***.
 
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Dave70D said:
I have just cancelled my Pro account, as I still have until 29th of December 2019. So I will have a good look about for something else.
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That's what I did last year and they "Begged me" to return on the reduced price ;)
ie I got the new subscribers rates ;)
 
Dave70D said:
That`s what I hope they offer me, as if I do pay for pro again it would of been £48 :eek:
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Are you sure? mine was $49.99 which equates to about 40 quid.
 
droj said:
Further to what I said in post #605 above, in case it's useful, here's a link to the range of options that Ipernity is currently offering ...

http://www.ipernity.com/club
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Might as well consider joining fineartamerica with premium $30 subscription or do own site.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Might as well consider joining fineartamerica
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Is that relevant? It appears to be a selling (or attempted selling) site, where you post for commercial purpose. Flickr has never been that.
LongLensPhotography said:
or do own site.
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Again, let's be clear - for what purpose?

Neither of your options seem to embrace the function of being a community with sharing and dialogue between peers, which is a long-standing Flickr function.

Ipernity has the structure & potential to be that, but at present lacks the user base.
 
droj said:
Is that relevant? It appears to be a selling (or attempted selling) site, where you post for commercial purpose. Flickr has never been that.

Again, let's be clear - for what purpose?

Neither of your options seem to embrace the function of being a community with sharing and dialogue between peers, which is a long-standing Flickr function.

Ipernity has the structure & potential to be that, but at present lacks the user base.
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How easy is it to share photos from Ipernity to sites like this? For me that is one of flickr's biggest strengths. Is the Ipenity limit per year or a total limit? i.e. if I pay £21 per year can I upload 2000 files per year or is it 2000/5GB total?
 
droj said:
Is that relevant? It appears to be a selling (or attempted selling) site, where you post for commercial purpose. Flickr has never been that.

Again, let's be clear - for what purpose?

Neither of your options seem to embrace the function of being a community with sharing and dialogue between peers, which is a long-standing Flickr function.

Ipernity has the structure & potential to be that, but at present lacks the user base.
Click to expand...

User base - precisely that. You may have more luck with WP solution where you manage to attract visitors and have forum.

FAA does have a community aspect to it as well, but I never seriously got into it yet.

Personally the point of Flickr is driving visitors to own platforms and then offer products. I couldn't care less about likes or comments - Instagram is probably better for that now, and Face fail has the forum aspects where Flickr let it stagnate
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Personally the point of Flickr is driving visitors to own platforms and then offer products.
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That's the point from Flickr's point of view, maybe - there's usually a commercial impetus - but I'm not concerned with that, I'm concerned with the user's point of view.
LongLensPhotography said:
FAA does have a community aspect to it as well
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Well I took a quick look, & that escaped me. But the site's whole ambience is splashily commercial.
LongLensPhotography said:
I couldn't care less about likes or comments
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Me neither, except that they can be signifiers that work shared has been appreciated, and the value of that is qualified by who amongst one's peers has given the reponse.

It sounds as if your bent is pretty wholly commercial - fair enough, but mine is cultural.
 
Not much analysis or insight there ... just a bit of cheap press.
 
In my opinion, the decision a few years ago to allow unlimited photos on the free accounts was probably the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, it gave the expectation of something for nothing. At the time I think it was something like 100 photos for free and you paid for more (iirc - it was a long time ago).

I'm happy enough to pay for flickr, but then I have 16k+ photos on there.
Maybe there is an argument for a sliding scale of charges? I guess they have to stick to the 1000 free now, but maybe £10 a year from 1000-2000, £15 from 2000-3000 etc.

TBH, less than a quid a week for unlimited hosting / storage is very cheap. I pay twice the flickr charge to Amazon for my backup storage and that doesn't have any options to display them for others to see (and it would be even more expensive if it wasn't part of prime).
 
Crashed a couple of times this afternoon when uploading a few images - it's a PITA when you carefully add images to specific groups or do flickr-specific keywording. I got some images up, but gave up with a second batch. If the site was great then I'd not feel it was bad value, but as it is, there's too much frustration for me to want to renew in 2020, especially if the price goes up again.
 
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