What if Flickr fails?(blogs.law.harvard.edu)
blogs.law.harvard.edu
What if Flickr fails?
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2011/01/12/what-if-flickr-fails/
15 comments
Perhaps someone needs to come up with a startup that treats S3 as storage medium for images, while retaining all the features of Flickr. Then you will truly own your images and not have to worry about company going out of business.
As noone's mentioned this, backupify is a pretty good service that solves this problem. Of course it could also be a transitory CDN, but that goes a little to far down the rabbit hole for me.
I've paid for a Flickr pro account for a few years now. Ironically, I first got on Flickr when Yahoo Photos shut down and they forcefully migrated me to Flickr. But I'm letting my pro account expire this month. I've been using Flickr for 2 main purposes: sharing photos with friends and backing up all my photos. It hasn't been great for either.
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.
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.
Facebook keeps improving their photo service - removing album limits, increasing resolution.
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.
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.
For the most part I like the Flickr UI. It takes a bit to understand photostreams, sets, collections, and group pools, and the online organizer is a little different. But for the most part it's efficient and is broken a lot less of the time that Facebook's photos.
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.
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.
My (non-photography) friends look more at my photos on Facebook they're where I get the majority of personal feedback.
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.
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.
My photo site, OurDoings, offers two solutions to your "friends don't look at photos I mail" problem. First, you can send in seconds an email message in html with thumbnails of all your new photos. They don't have to leave their email to see if interesting (to them) photos are part of this update. Second, you can in one click create an album on Facebook for a given month and send that month's photos to it. The album has a link back to the month page on OurDoings where they can see the photos in a nicer format if they so choose.
http://ourdoings.com/
http://ourdoings.com/
I feel that Flickr is going about it all wrong. They host pictures, but they lack focus. IMHO they should begin offering ways for their hobbyist audience to make money.
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.
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.
They have an attempt to go in that direction, though it's not that streamlined: http://www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages/
Is there a business opportunity here? Backup all your crap around the web and then allow you to reupload it to another service with one click?
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.
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.
This is already possible with Flickr photos, thanks to flickrtouchr and Dropbox:
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've been looking for something like this, major thanks!
"... Backupify for Flickr archives your Flickr content. More details coming soon. ..." ~ https://app.backupify.com/service_types/flickr/backup_detail...
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.
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.
Probably not. Smugmug will probably be the biggest beneficiary if the pros leave Flickr, and there are already tools for that. For example: http://www.smugglr.net/
"... Smugmug will probably be the biggest beneficiary if the pros leave Flickr, and there are already tools for that. ..."
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.
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.
You can copy photosets from Flickr to Facebook or Picasa using http://showzey.com. It manual process now (photset by photoset).
I wonder if enough people are interested in paid option for continuously sync between these services?
Linked to http://unhosted.org and http://couchapp.org in the comments -- glad to see these sorts of concerns becoming more mainstream.
Pro users want access to a social network that has gotten huge because it's free. The pro users are nervous because free=fragile.
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).
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).
this reminds me of the geocities shutdown. you can't trust companies enough to keep data available and around forever. if you get too popular, controversial, or inactive, you should accept the fact that your data could be removed at any time.
Even when you're paying them for the service?
"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.
"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.
> That doesn't seem right to me.
Alas, that doesn't matter - what matters is the contract you agreed to when paying them.
Alas, that doesn't matter - what matters is the contract you agreed to when paying them.
They might go bankrupt or discontinue for other reasons.
[deleted]
"If you value your online photos, pay for the hosting and they'll still be around next year"
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).
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).
Google will happily take your money: https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage
I paid for my Flickr account and hope to continue paying for it, but at the same time I would feel better if they had explicit export/backup functionality.
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.
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.
> Here’s a way EmanciPay will help newspapers.
Sigh. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont...
Sigh. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont...
I'm not so pessimistic about advertising, but I am pessimistic about Yahoo's stewardship of Flickr. After all, Yahoo deep-sixed geocities, and would have turned off delicious if they'd been able to get away with it.
I wrote this tool to export your photos from Flickr a few years ago. It should still work: http://nf.wh3rd.net/flickr-rip.tar.gz
Ah, Emancipay. I reviewed them as part of my work on what is a very similar idea. My notes say "Academics who have not implemented anything". Hmm.
People should stop posting every single shitty photo they take. What is the point of that? Follow the links to the author's flick account. It's full of complete garbage. Not just garbage, but also repetitive garbage. There are sets of nearly identical tasteless snapshots. Who gives a fuck if you lose them? Its intrinsic value being displayed on a public photo site is zero. Just dump them on a hard drive, no need to display your garbage publicly.
I'd have to agree. The way that the author uses Flickr is pretty pointless.
Jared Loughner is that you? Talk about rage 24/7...
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:
Keeping copies of your images is straightforward - the real challenge is managing that social network and backing it up - that's challenging.