Smugmug Acquires Flickr • Hacker News Board

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#11

Post by jlarocco » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:25 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #7

wpietri wrote: post #6

Here's a more detailed article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-...

And I'll add that I'm excited by this. I have a lot of photos on Flickr, but fell off using it as Yahoo neglected it. I still don't feel like photos are a solved problem for me. Hopefully this will at least shake things up, but I'd love to see them turn again into my favorite tool for managing and sharing my photos.

I don't know your use cases, but FWIW I've been really happy with SmugMug.

Browsing and discovering other people's photos is easier on Flickr, but SmugMug is miles ahead when it comes to hosting, printing, presenting, tracking, and organizing. Then again, I pay for it, so I'm sure that's part of it.

I would love if SmugMug kept their existing interface (which I'm sure they will because a lot of pro-photographers use it and want it the way it is), but also gave an option to show SmugMug photos on Flickr.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#12

Post by neom » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:26 PM UTC

Hopefully they're smart enough to ask Stewart Butterfield to sit on their board. I remember when Flickr came out - pulled a lot away from the deviantART community and caused me many sleepless nights. :)

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#13

Post by garyrichardson » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

eveningcoffee wrote: post #3

I hope that they do not kill or maim it some way. Flickr is a treasure.

As a long time smug mug customer, my perception is this is the best possible home for Flickr. Smugmug is the online photo site we all want.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#14

Post by theDoug » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

I remember an April Fools joke to this effect a decade ago, and it's great to see it come to life now.

In the height of my pro-photo life, Smugmug was the only place to care about durability, presentation, and maintaining reasonable margins. While dozens of competitors faded off over time from ignoring one or the other. Glad to see the good ones win.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#15

Post by jiqiren » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

The text on a pic of a dumpster-fire: "A Place Where Perspective Is Shared Not Forced."

Nice commentary on Yahoo!

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#16

Post by aaronbrethorst » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

This is exciting! I've long believed that Flickr should have doubled down on their existing users instead of trying to become another Instagram.

Over on the USA Today article[0], there's this line:

A longtime fan of Flickr, MacAskill says before making any decisions, he plans to collect feedback from employees and users.

Hey Don - I used to pay money for Flickr, and I'm happy to start paying again if there is evidence of forward motion. I want to have a place to securely store my RAW files in addition to my edited photographs, and I want to see a focus on community again.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/04/20/smugmug-buys-...

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#17

Post by DEFCON28 » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

Flickr used to be great. Now it's unsuitably bad.

I was a premium Flickr user for years, and then they broke sharing in a big way. I could no longer send "private" links to people I knew of my photo albums and expect them to be able to view the photos without signing up for an account.

I now share simple photo albums with Microsoft Sway.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#18

Post by lkrubner » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:30 PM UTC

By the way, if you are a Flickr user, then you control what I see on my television. By "television" I mean the screen and Apple TV, which is the only television I have. And I went into the settings and set "Most Popular on Flickr" as my screensaver. So I've often fallen asleep watching whatever images you have upvoted.

The one feature I hope Smugmug adds is captions. I often see incredible nature photos, and I've no idea where on the planet the image is.

Likewise, some images appear to be old, I would love it if these images had years attached to them.

"Most Popular On Flickr" is the "show" that I watch more than any other, in the sense that I if I am home at my apartment, I often leave the screen on all day, so it is always there playing any time I look that way. A lot of the photos are mediocre, but sometimes something catches my attention and I look up and see something great.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#19

Post by rinze » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:32 PM UTC

As a longtime Flickr user (and sometimes paying member), anything that takes them out of Yahoo!/Oath hands is good news. I just hope they break the Yahoo! integration and I can finally close that spam account.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#20

Post by jjwiseman » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 11:34 PM UTC

When has an acquisition like this resulted in the acquired site getting better?