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Smugmug Acquires Flickr

smugmug.com

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Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#191

Post by IgorPartola »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #16

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 evidenc…

Seconded. I currently pay for Dropbox solely to store RAW files. Would pay Flickr instead if this was offered.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#194

Post by usrusr »

alanfalcon wrote: post #97
et-al wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot about those gaudy animated badges. Social media does have tough challenges ahead, especially as bots/spam become more and more prevalent. I would love to work on a bot-prevention team somewhere, but my background isn't in ML.

I like the idea of building a reputation system that accepts bots as first class citizens instead of imagining them as an inherent problem. Anyone who meaningfully contributes is good even if they are a bot, and anyone who doesn’t gets left behind. (Easier said than done but the approach to the problem is what’s fundamentally different.)

Reputation systems, if they try too hard, quickly reach a point where ambitious fakes are more successful at convincing the system than casual real users.

Case in point: Google visibility, if you are not Wikipedia no amount of quality content will get you above the link farms if you don't also follow the customary rites of pleasing the algorithm.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#195

Post by thanatropism »

alanfalcon wrote: post #97
et-al wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot about those gaudy animated badges. Social media does have tough challenges ahead, especially as bots/spam become more and more prevalent. I would love to work on a bot-prevention team somewhere, but my background isn't in ML.

I like the idea of building a reputation system that accepts bots as first class citizens instead of imagining them as an inherent problem. Anyone who meaningfully contributes is good even if they are a bot, and anyone who doesn’t gets left behind. (Easier said than done but the approach to the problem is what’s fundamentally different.)

reddit (or some reddit users, it's hard to know) does this. There's a bot crawling around and whenever someone replies to a bot saying "good bot" or "bad bot" it updates a ranking.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#197

Post by usrusr »

Natanael_L wrote: post #167
alanfalcon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of building a reputation system that accepts bots as first class citizens instead of imagining them as an inherent problem. Anyone who meaningfully contributes is good even if they are a bot, and anyone who doesn’t gets left behind. (Easier said than done but the approach to the problem is what’s fundamentally different.)

(there's always a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/810/ ) Bots can definitely contribute meaningfully in many ways. Mostly through organization (suggesting labels & other metadata, album creation, etc), spam filtering & rule enforcement (like reddit's automoderator), and even automatic editing (like some of the stuff Google Photos offers, like rotation suggestions and various automatic filters).

Custom moderator automation would be a very valuable tool, bots are terrible at beating bespoke solutions. Is there some open source Amazon lambda clone that community platforms could easily make available to their power users? Funneling automaton onto a platform runtime could be extremely helpful in distinguishing between good and bad automation.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#198

Post by radlad »

dexterdog wrote: post #186
hackbinary wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a quick look over their pricing plans, and they actually seem pretty fair to me. $48 per year to store all of your photos on the basic paid tier, and all the other tiers seemed aimed at people that are either enthusiasts or professionals, eg people who want to have their own domain. The old adage of "you kind of get what you pay for" seems to apply.

In this day and age using your own domain adds no cost aside from the domain itself.

The price you sell something at should not be based on its cost to yourself, but rather the value you provide to your customers.

Re: Smugmug Acquires Flickr

#199

Post by thisone »

Interesting, the first thing I ever knew about smugmug was their purchase/data save of Picturelife[1], and the story on the Reply-All podcast[2] about the problems Picurelife users were having (err, before the purchase, not after. The discussion of how things went bad for Picturelife is worth the listen).

[1]https://news.smugmug.com/smugmug-rescues-nearly-200-million-...

[2] https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker

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