Snapjoy (YC S11) unveils Flickraft, one-click migration for Flickr users(flickraft.com)
flickraft.com
Snapjoy (YC S11) unveils Flickraft, one-click migration for Flickr users
http://www.flickraft.com
23 comments
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With Flickr, I get unlimited storage for $24/year. I'm probably nearing 100GB of photos there, so in order to store those same photos with Snapjoy, it would cost me $120/year. What's the extra value that I get for an additional $100/year?
And does Snapjoy integrate with iPhoto? I use Flickrfriend for iPhoto now to sync Flickr and iPhoto, but if I don't have a way to sync Snapjoy and iPhoto, it's a non-starter.
And does Snapjoy integrate with iPhoto? I use Flickrfriend for iPhoto now to sync Flickr and iPhoto, but if I don't have a way to sync Snapjoy and iPhoto, it's a non-starter.
The marketing is really funny, but I had the same thought pattern.
I looked on flickr and I have 15,711 pictures. It would cost me $60 a year on Snapjoy. Even if Snapjoy, which is still in beta, is better than good old reliable trusty flickr, that pricing is a non-starter for me.
What I really want to see is someone come up with a one click export to Picassa where I don't have to download all the pix first.
I looked on flickr and I have 15,711 pictures. It would cost me $60 a year on Snapjoy. Even if Snapjoy, which is still in beta, is better than good old reliable trusty flickr, that pricing is a non-starter for me.
What I really want to see is someone come up with a one click export to Picassa where I don't have to download all the pix first.
<snarky>Perhaps some peace of mind that with ~5 times the revenue-per-customer Snapjoy might survive and even thrive, where Yahoo's revolving-door CEO office with it's mandatory new-blood costcutting chestbeating puts Flickr's long term outlook in serious doubt?<.snarky>
I don't think FlickrFriend is available or supported anymore:
http://unpaq.com/software/flickrfriend/
That's sad. At least the copy I have still works.
This is tacky on two levels:
1) it just attacks flickr without really giving any reason. Flickr is a sinking ship. Great. Why? Why do we have any reason to believe Snapjoy is going to outlast Flickr?
2) Using the image of a sinking cruise ship weeks after a cruise ship wreck killed at least 17 people. I'm not easily offended, and this didn't personally offend me, but it's pretty much the first thing I thought of when I saw a drawing of a sinking cruise ship. Why run the risk?
1) it just attacks flickr without really giving any reason. Flickr is a sinking ship. Great. Why? Why do we have any reason to believe Snapjoy is going to outlast Flickr?
2) Using the image of a sinking cruise ship weeks after a cruise ship wreck killed at least 17 people. I'm not easily offended, and this didn't personally offend me, but it's pretty much the first thing I thought of when I saw a drawing of a sinking cruise ship. Why run the risk?
> Flickr is a sinking ship. Great. Why? Why do we have any reason to believe Snapjoy is going to outlast Flickr?
When I found out that del.icio.us was falling apart, the discovery of pinboard was a remarkable discovery! The founder posted a link to a migration tool that allowed me painlessly keep thousands of my old bookmarks. Just by itself that was reason enough for me to support them.
I can't speak to the long term viability of pinboard or SnapJoy, but that's true of a lot of web services, frankly. A few years ago you would've seemed crazy for calling Flickr a "sinking ship."
s/Flickr/del\.icio\.us/g
s/SnapJoy/pinboard/g
When I found out that del.icio.us was falling apart, the discovery of pinboard was a remarkable discovery! The founder posted a link to a migration tool that allowed me painlessly keep thousands of my old bookmarks. Just by itself that was reason enough for me to support them.
I can't speak to the long term viability of pinboard or SnapJoy, but that's true of a lot of web services, frankly. A few years ago you would've seemed crazy for calling Flickr a "sinking ship."
I thought the same thing regarding flickr being a sinking ship. The first thing I did was go to google news to make sure I had not missed something.
It's not "tacky," it's business. Products are not your friends. They don't have feelings.
I fail to see how Flickr is a 'sinking ship'.
btw to all the photo app creators out there: no API - no go.
btw to all the photo app creators out there: no API - no go.
Yeah, I have to agree on both points. I feel like I missed a memo about Flickr going down. AFAIK Flickr isn't even leaking, never-mind sinking... Am I wrong? Have I missed something?
And API is one of the things that makes Flickr great, Snapjoy may have a sweet web interface but that's not enough. I'm guessing from the fact that they have a GitHub account that they'll release an API when the code has settled down a bit more internally, so that's probably just a short-term issue.
The pricing though... the pricing isn't even remotely comparable. You gotta give me a damn good reason to spend that much more money on a competing tool that basically just hosts my images and makes them easily viewable.
And API is one of the things that makes Flickr great, Snapjoy may have a sweet web interface but that's not enough. I'm guessing from the fact that they have a GitHub account that they'll release an API when the code has settled down a bit more internally, so that's probably just a short-term issue.
The pricing though... the pricing isn't even remotely comparable. You gotta give me a damn good reason to spend that much more money on a competing tool that basically just hosts my images and makes them easily viewable.
Having been around conversations with some of the old Flickr people, I have to disagree. It's definitely sinking, and has been slowly gutted over the past few years. This is only the most recent piece of news:
http://nolancaudill.com/2012/01/30/the-front-line/
All of the core Flickr people have left, and some (like Aaron Straup Cope) are starting to build their own: http://straup.github.com/parallel-flickr/ http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2011/10/14/pixelspace/#para...
All of the core Flickr people have left, and some (like Aaron Straup Cope) are starting to build their own: http://straup.github.com/parallel-flickr/ http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2011/10/14/pixelspace/#para...
Nolan, here: the guy that wrote the post about the recent layoffs.
As stated in the post, I honestly believe that Flickr-the-site, in the long run, will be fine. Do these layoffs hurt? Of course! But Flickr has had bigger bumps in the past and has pushed through them all. The engineers there are an incredible crew of guys and Markus's post at the first of the year on blog.flickr.net shows that they've got some exciting stuff on the way.
I also have been (in a small way) helping Aaron with parallel-flickr and I think he as much as anyone would say that he's not building a replacement Flickr but more of being a good archivist and leaving nothing important up to chance, even if the odds are 1-in-some-big-number of Something Bad happening.
Obviously, I don't know the whims of major corporations like Yahoo, but Flickr-the-site, which is its content and its devotion to preserve that content, hasn't wavered in how it treats your data.
As stated in the post, I honestly believe that Flickr-the-site, in the long run, will be fine. Do these layoffs hurt? Of course! But Flickr has had bigger bumps in the past and has pushed through them all. The engineers there are an incredible crew of guys and Markus's post at the first of the year on blog.flickr.net shows that they've got some exciting stuff on the way.
I also have been (in a small way) helping Aaron with parallel-flickr and I think he as much as anyone would say that he's not building a replacement Flickr but more of being a good archivist and leaving nothing important up to chance, even if the odds are 1-in-some-big-number of Something Bad happening.
Obviously, I don't know the whims of major corporations like Yahoo, but Flickr-the-site, which is its content and its devotion to preserve that content, hasn't wavered in how it treats your data.
> It's definitely sinking
opinion != fact
existing alternatives != original sinking
I'm not a fan of Yahoo either, but all I hear is that is sinking because somebody got fired, or it's sinking because someone on a blog wrote that he doesn't like it no more.
So what there's pararell or whatever other apps to backup or sync? I've started making sth similar for django http://zalew.net/2012/01/11/django-flickr/ and what that has to do with Flickr failing?
BTW remember 'dying blog platforms' by Posterous?
opinion != fact
existing alternatives != original sinking
I'm not a fan of Yahoo either, but all I hear is that is sinking because somebody got fired, or it's sinking because someone on a blog wrote that he doesn't like it no more.
So what there's pararell or whatever other apps to backup or sync? I've started making sth similar for django http://zalew.net/2012/01/11/django-flickr/ and what that has to do with Flickr failing?
BTW remember 'dying blog platforms' by Posterous?
It's like a bank run; rumor spreads that Flickr is dying, so everyone pulls their photos and stops paying for pro accounts because they think Flickr is dying, causing Flickr to die.
Flickr is a huge site and they're not going to suddenly stop working one day. If they do decide to shut down, they're going to give users plenty of notice and probably offer easy ways to export photos and metadata. Until that happens, my photos are staying on Flickr and I'll continue to view my friends' photos on Flickr.
Flickr is a huge site and they're not going to suddenly stop working one day. If they do decide to shut down, they're going to give users plenty of notice and probably offer easy ways to export photos and metadata. Until that happens, my photos are staying on Flickr and I'll continue to view my friends' photos on Flickr.
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Okay so they have cut a few jobs and Yahoo! haven't done much to the site in 1-2 years. But why does that mean its sinking? The site still works great, still has loads of features, making it great to use. The pricing is brilliant for what you can get out of them (I only have around 3k on there). Plus their API is brilliant.
Until they start doing stuff that will effect how I use the service I wont be switching, I'd love to see some facts about users 'abandoning ship'.
Edit: Just tried signing up to SnapJoy and added my Flickr account, thats still pending and I cant seem to get any photos uploaded and showing on my homepage.
Until they start doing stuff that will effect how I use the service I wont be switching, I'd love to see some facts about users 'abandoning ship'.
Edit: Just tried signing up to SnapJoy and added my Flickr account, thats still pending and I cant seem to get any photos uploaded and showing on my homepage.
Lack of any product and engineering development on it is a clear warning sign that Yahoo is liable to cut the site. If it made them money, they'd put more work into it. If it's only making middling amounts of money, and they're not putting work into it, then they likely don't see growth potential and see it more as a burden than anything.
I've been worried about Flickr disappearing for a while, but I don't think it's anywhere close yet. Also I'm not really interested in yet another third-party service from someone even less trusted than Flickr.
I'm happy to see projects like parallel-flickr pop up. I even started my own version: https://github.com/aaronpk/Flickr-Archiver
There are few things I trust more than Flickr right now, but I want to be ready in case they sink in the near future.
I'm happy to see projects like parallel-flickr pop up. I even started my own version: https://github.com/aaronpk/Flickr-Archiver
There are few things I trust more than Flickr right now, but I want to be ready in case they sink in the near future.
If I used Flickr for photo storage, I might consider leaving, however, I have hard drives for that. I use Flickr for the community, and until some other site even begins to approach the number of talented photographers that Flickr's userbase has, I have no intention of bailing.
This is what many implementers of photo sharing sites don't get. (I didn't get it myself for a few years.) Flickr is a social network for photography enthusiasts. Just because another site puts photos on a web page doesn't mean it's a competitor. Especially Snapjoy, since automatic organization by date is more for pictures that tell your life story than for pictures that show your portfolio.
Would you say Yahoo is a sinking ship? Yahoo owns Flickr.
Yes, Yahoo! does appear to be a sinking ship, by all accounts.
Albeit a very large ship that will take a long time to sink.
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that's kind of the point.
This seems petty and a bit desperate.
The site is also broken. I can't click on the logo to find out more about Snapjoy. Pass.
The site is also broken. I can't click on the logo to find out more about Snapjoy. Pass.
It would be nice if I could also rescue some pictures from facebook too. Double brownie points if your software can automatically remove duplicates in the process.
Snapjoy automatically organizes using metadata, which Facebook strips out. That plus recompression make it difficult to detect duplicates from Facebook.
This is great -- I've been looking for a way to get my photos off Flickr before my pro account expires this May. Snapjoy sucked in 2200 photos in just a few minutes.
(The only glitch was when I clicked "Get Started Now" on the flickraft site, it just redirected me to snapjoy.com. I had to manually go into my settings and connect my Flickr account, which triggered the import automagically.)
(The only glitch was when I clicked "Get Started Now" on the flickraft site, it just redirected me to snapjoy.com. I had to manually go into my settings and connect my Flickr account, which triggered the import automagically.)
Snapjoy is awesome. I've been using it for a few months and have never looked back.
I agree - Snapjoy is fast, beautiful, and simple. They can win by doing less than the competition. Personally, I can't take the bloat and feature-creep that has turned Flickr into a giant hassle. Just getting your photos into Flickr has been a hurdle from day one, with no official app for iPhoto.
That's not to say there aren't Snapjoy features I want to see: the ability to create/share collections that span multiple dates/moments is at the top of the list.
But as soon as I started using Snapjoy I knew it had massive potential. I especially love the default timeline view, it puts just enough structure around your photos for discoverability, etc.
EDIT: I would love to be able to pay annually and save, though. $15 month is a lot of coin for a non-business app.
That's not to say there aren't Snapjoy features I want to see: the ability to create/share collections that span multiple dates/moments is at the top of the list.
But as soon as I started using Snapjoy I knew it had massive potential. I especially love the default timeline view, it puts just enough structure around your photos for discoverability, etc.
EDIT: I would love to be able to pay annually and save, though. $15 month is a lot of coin for a non-business app.
On the surface I love this idea. Flickr has been stagnant for years and starting to worry me. I don't mind paying for a photo sharing service but the market sure is saturated. I'll be looking for a little more than a pretty, overpriced UI over Amazon's S3.
Wouldn't it be great if a company came around and offered front ends for S3. One for photo sharing, one for docs. You could switch them out like skins. Your data is in one place and never moves. If a competitor comes along with a better front-end, you could change to them.
That would also be nice, because then you could have one monthly fee for all of you online storage needs. Let's be honest, they're all hosted by Amazon anyway.
Wouldn't it be great if a company came around and offered front ends for S3. One for photo sharing, one for docs. You could switch them out like skins. Your data is in one place and never moves. If a competitor comes along with a better front-end, you could change to them.
That would also be nice, because then you could have one monthly fee for all of you online storage needs. Let's be honest, they're all hosted by Amazon anyway.
Snapfish, DropBox, and several of the other large photo / filing sharing sites are essentially a UI for Amazon's S3 cloud.
I pay for dropbox primarily to store family photos & videos.
In fact the stuff I need to back-up that fits outside that category would fit in a free, or lower priced dropbox plan.
I would switch based on price alone since photos are fairly static, non-changing, and the #1 concern is that they survive a hard disk crash.
I wonder when Amazon just decides to go and own this market by offering a better photo UI, or buys somebody to do it for them.
Amazon has already shown they have no fear of running over profitable customer segments (eg they launched Prime Video while also counting NetFlix as a huge client).
I pay for dropbox primarily to store family photos & videos.
In fact the stuff I need to back-up that fits outside that category would fit in a free, or lower priced dropbox plan.
I would switch based on price alone since photos are fairly static, non-changing, and the #1 concern is that they survive a hard disk crash.
I wonder when Amazon just decides to go and own this market by offering a better photo UI, or buys somebody to do it for them.
Amazon has already shown they have no fear of running over profitable customer segments (eg they launched Prime Video while also counting NetFlix as a huge client).
I'd very surprised if Amazon or anyone comes up with a better UX/UI than Dropbox. It has to be one of the best designed, engineered, and executed startups in a long time. Whenever I use it share between my iPhone, iPad, laptop and ubuntu server, I'm amazed on how well it just works. To say it's "just a UI for S3" is a little simplistic.
More interested in something like open photo that is just forkable software and I pay for S3 http://theopenphotoproject.org/
Agreed! I really like the open photo project. I started making my own photo backup site as well: https://github.com/aaronpk/Flickr-Archiver I suspect we'll see many more attempts at building a solid photo archiving site before Flickr completely disappears.
Snapfish and all other photo sharing sites lack one fundamental thing that any photo enthusiast will identify immediately as one of the biggest problems.
Image de-duplication.
Snapjoy has the only image de-duplicating algorithm that I've seen that really works.
Image de-duplication.
Snapjoy has the only image de-duplicating algorithm that I've seen that really works.
Did you try the de-duplicating on http://ourdoings.com/ and if so what didn't work about it?
At least Flickr has an API if you want to pull your data out.
Snapjoy doesnt :)
Snapjoy doesnt :)
I love the infographic and the one-sentence pitch. It's funny, it's totally clear why I should use it, and I'll never forget it.
People here are saying that they're jumping the gun and Flickr isn't sinking yet. Maybe that's true. But great marketing can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that's what this looks like to me.
People here are saying that they're jumping the gun and Flickr isn't sinking yet. Maybe that's true. But great marketing can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that's what this looks like to me.
We built UnifyPhotos - http://export.goyaka.com a month back, which moved photos from Flickr to Facebook. We moved more than 850k photos.
I can say that the API limiting here is an implementation issue. Instead of querying information about each photo, if you could pass meta information (date_upload,geo,date_taken,icon_server,original_format, url_sq,url_o,url_m,url_b,description) while doing photosets.getPhotos, you don't have to query for each photo.
I can say that the API limiting here is an implementation issue. Instead of querying information about each photo, if you could pass meta information (date_upload,geo,date_taken,icon_server,original_format, url_sq,url_o,url_m,url_b,description) while doing photosets.getPhotos, you don't have to query for each photo.
Does Snapjoy work well with photo organization apps like Aperture?
I've hit the 100GB limit on Dropbox, and I'd like to be able to view albums on the web.
I've hit the 100GB limit on Dropbox, and I'd like to be able to view albums on the web.
I guess I'm starting to get jaded... I remember when Flickr was the liferaft of Yahoo Photos and then even before that when Yahoo Photos was the liferaft of Kodak Galleries.
I still don't have a photo storage solution that I'm happy with - but I'm hoping that in 10 years or so Google will have indexed the three or four hard drives in my storage unit and placed them into Picasa X.
I still don't have a photo storage solution that I'm happy with - but I'm hoping that in 10 years or so Google will have indexed the three or four hard drives in my storage unit and placed them into Picasa X.
"5GB's" should be "5GBs".
Thanks for pointing that out! Fixed now.
UnifyPhotos http://export.goyaka.com lets you move your Flickr photos to Facebook.
Interesting note mentioned there - "I love snapjoy's UI. But they don't allow import from flickr. Also, social circle in Snapjoy is something I have to build. Facebook fits the bill."
Interesting note mentioned there - "I love snapjoy's UI. But they don't allow import from flickr. Also, social circle in Snapjoy is something I have to build. Facebook fits the bill."
This is not unprecedented. We did this years ago with Zooomr. There was a tech crunch post about it: http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/16/why-is-flickr-afraid-of-zoo...
Many Flickr users were not happy when they discovered that the ability to migrate their accounts was considered "burn[ing] bandwidth and CPU cycles."
My co-founder, Kris, was quoted with the following:
> Tate from Zooomr says that the exports are a cost of doing business, that Web 2.0 is where “the roach motel stops” and that Zooomr will always make it easy for their customers to take their data elsewhere
Props to Snapjoy for creating an awesome product and giving people freedom. I hope that you guys get your license key back!
Many Flickr users were not happy when they discovered that the ability to migrate their accounts was considered "burn[ing] bandwidth and CPU cycles."
My co-founder, Kris, was quoted with the following:
> Tate from Zooomr says that the exports are a cost of doing business, that Web 2.0 is where “the roach motel stops” and that Zooomr will always make it easy for their customers to take their data elsewhere
Props to Snapjoy for creating an awesome product and giving people freedom. I hope that you guys get your license key back!
Snapjoy doesn't give people freedom, it just takes over from Flickr.
Flickr gives people more freedom, by letting users download their files.
Annnnnd Flickr just blocked their API key.
https://twitter.com/#!/garrytan/status/167030905821605888
because they hit their query per hour limits.
I think you might be violating some trademarks with that name...
I'm actually curious if this is a violation. Does anyone know? The font is definitely different and the F is even capitalized on the boat graphic, though the colors are the same and the name "flickr" is in there. It makes me think of those cereal brands that try to make you think they're the popular brand by dancing as closely as trademark law lets them.
Back in the day I was the first person to create a service using the Flickr API, so that the Flickr folks could show off their API when they launched. I called my demo app reviewr.com [1]
My original choice of colour scheme was (deliberately) very close to what Flickr was using at the time, and Stewart Butterfield (who ran the show back then) asked me to change the colours a bit.
I don't recall Stewart having a problem with me dropping a vowel in the domain name, even though at the time this was a novel domain hack on the part of Flickr.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20040406000559/http://reviewr.com...
My original choice of colour scheme was (deliberately) very close to what Flickr was using at the time, and Stewart Butterfield (who ran the show back then) asked me to change the colours a bit.
I don't recall Stewart having a problem with me dropping a vowel in the domain name, even though at the time this was a novel domain hack on the part of Flickr.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20040406000559/http://reviewr.com...
Just saw this. Interesting. You were working as an ally though, unlike the situation here :P
Sorry. I'm not leaving Flickr. It's one of my favorite spots on the Internet. I love the community aspect of the site and the countless quality (and not so quality) Creative Commons contributions.
I have spent more hours than I'd care to admit sifting through photos, admiring people's work, reading comments - all the while listening to trip hop or whatever is on SOMAFM.
It's one of the best parts of website design: finding the perfect image. I'm not going anywhere.
I have spent more hours than I'd care to admit sifting through photos, admiring people's work, reading comments - all the while listening to trip hop or whatever is on SOMAFM.
It's one of the best parts of website design: finding the perfect image. I'm not going anywhere.
"I love the community aspect of the site … "
This. 1000 times this. I _so_ often hear geeks saying "It's easy to leave Flickr, just host your photos on S3/Dropbox/your-own-web-hosting! Done!". That misses out on a _lot_ of what keeps people on Flickr. The social/community/discoverability side of it.
I suspect Flickr's successor will either:
1) be a service which provides all that "social/community/discoverability" stuff while letting users choose which of many backends actually do their photo storage (openphoto might be a first contender here),
or 2) one of the existing social networks will steamroller over the entire photo sharing space (Facebook seems to be gaining considerable momentum down this path).
This. 1000 times this. I _so_ often hear geeks saying "It's easy to leave Flickr, just host your photos on S3/Dropbox/your-own-web-hosting! Done!". That misses out on a _lot_ of what keeps people on Flickr. The social/community/discoverability side of it.
I suspect Flickr's successor will either:
1) be a service which provides all that "social/community/discoverability" stuff while letting users choose which of many backends actually do their photo storage (openphoto might be a first contender here),
or 2) one of the existing social networks will steamroller over the entire photo sharing space (Facebook seems to be gaining considerable momentum down this path).
Do you guys know of companies launching a side project which ended being bigger than their main business?
I'm getting an error saying Snapjoy's API key isn't valid. Guess Flickr didn't appreciate this marketing stunt.
I got that too.
This and the TC post annoy me because Snapjoy (or perhaps the tech press) is trying to spin this into some underdog vs evil big company story when it isn't.
For example, when Snapjoy says "We tried our best to stay within Flickr’s API limits, but the overwhelmingly positive response has exceeded our expectations.", what they are really saying is that they didn't implement rate limiting correctly.
And when they say "We’re a bit surprised that the key was disabled almost immediately after we reached the limit.", what they're saying is that Flickr actually did implement said limiting correctly (don't have personal knowledge, assume that's what happened).
I also like the spin from the tech press on this somehow meaning that your photos are locked into Flickr when Snapjoy has neither an API or any other mechanism to get photos out - all I see is a promise of a future feature to sync to Dropbox/S3.
I completely understand the PR game being played here but I wish it needn't be this way. Especially since Snapjoy seems to be a very slick product from a very talented team.
And all this ignoring the issues with the name - I'm not sure how it is ok to use a derivative of your competitor's name to build something designed to take users away from them.