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Whatever happened to Flickr?

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Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#111

Post by derefr »

muststopmyths wrote: post #68
ianlevesque wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound like a successful or even self-sustaining online community though: > In 2019, SmugMug started deleting Flickr images of free users, except for the newest 1,000 and Creative Commons images. > User Frank Michel estimated that the site had lost 63% of its images as a result. In 2020, SmugMug increased the fee for a Pro account to $60 per year, saying that the site was still losing money. > It would appear…

So, I was really pissed off when they said they'd start deleting pictures instead of hiding them like the old Flickr. I was never going to re-upload all my pictures if I decided to go Pro again in the future. So I thought Flickr was effectively dead to me. However, in the 2 years since they announced that, all my 6000+ photos were still there. I never checked to see how many were still publicly visible, though. I won…

I bet what they actually did, is to only delete pictures from accounts that were clearly created by systems that used images as steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage. (The use of such systems is why Google Photos — originally offering unlimited storage — had to later limit free storage to 5GB.)

Flickr had to make it clear that any free-tier user could potentially be impacted; but in practice the impact was limited to users who were actually abusing the system (though in a way that was previously "within the letter of the law.")

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#112

Post by dpark »

bborud wrote: post #99
epa wrote: post #18

Marissa Mayer, thats what. [1] https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17264274/flickr-smugmug-yahoo-...

You can blame Marissa Mayer for a lot of things. But Flickr was doomed the second they were acquired by Yahoo!.

Mayer can’t be blamed for much at yahoo. She was brought in to save a sinking ship and it turned out to be unsalvageable. Steve Jobs couldn’t have turned that one around.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#113

Post by kaichanvong »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #77
kaichanvong wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good point! Instagram happened!

While Instagram and Flickr (at least in theory) serve a different audience. Flickr is for the professional or aspiring amateur photographer, to manage their photos and build show cases. Maybe even selling their photos online. Instagram is a mass market social network

I never aspired being the amateur photographer; simply hoped to connect, keep portraits (with permission ofc), delete accordingly, create good image/picture and more. Sometimes happening photos happened to be full of life/fun! Looking back; my photography naturally changed. Hopefully a few people found it. For me it was a process, going towards a dark room of being/keeping creative!

Flickr seemed a place for aspirations; people requesting and connecting.

-instagram is a quick snap, photograph; for me, at times. Seems more personal

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#114

Post by petilon »

dpark wrote: post #110
glenstein wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I remember Yahoo had another candidate that planned to turn Yahoo into a media company. Which even at the time I thought was a much better idea and direction. Instead the broad choose Mayer, and try to compete head on with Google. This is exactly right, and it perfectly highlights the dilemma of Yahoo that made it an unwinnable battle. "Being a media company" would have been a real answer, and a real decision that g…

I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Yahoo was racing downhill before Mayer was even considered for the CEO role there. I am doubtful anyone could have reversed Yahoo’s fortune. At least when Steve Jobs showed up to save Apple they had a core competency. Frankly Yahoo didn’t. Yahoo failed to capitalize on search until Google was entrenched. They failed to invest properly in targeted…

> I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline.

Not strange at all. That's literally what a CEO gets paid to do: to not be in decline.

Microsoft was in decline when Satya took over too. It is no longer in decline. He knows how to do the job, and he is doing it.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#115

Post by dpark »

petilon wrote: post #114
dpark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Yahoo was racing downhill before Mayer was even considered for the CEO role there. I am doubtful anyone could have reversed Yahoo’s fortune. At least when Steve Jobs showed up to save Apple they had a core competency. Frankly Yahoo didn’t. Yahoo failed to capitalize on search until Google was entrenched. They failed to invest properly in targeted…

> I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Not strange at all. That's literally what a CEO gets paid to do: to not be in decline. Microsoft was in decline when Satya took over too. It is no longer in decline. He knows how to do the job, and he is doing it.

The previous CEOs were also paid to do that job, so yes, it’s extremely strange when people point to Mayer as the problem with Yahoo and not, say, Koogle or Semel, who presided over a decade of bad decisions.

It’s like Mayer was brought in to manage a burning building and everyone acts like she’s incompetent because the fire department couldn’t save what was left.

(P.S. Microsoft was not actually in decline under Ballmer by sane metrics. Microsoft revenue had been climbing consistently. Stock was flat for a very long time though.)

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#116

Post by ipaddr »

mullingitover wrote: post #98
ipaddr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flickr was a failed video game that turned a feature into a product. For all those that say you can't pivot this raducally I would say sometimes you can.

I heard Tinder was originally going to be a coupon app before they pivoted.

Twitter was a side project that took over the office.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#117

Post by FireBeyond »

cycomanic wrote: post #90
tandav wrote: post #83

Cool kids moved from flickr to unsplash

>Unsplash grants you an irrevocable, nonexclusive, worldwide copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash. This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service. In other words Unsplash is a crea…

Well, a credit "would be appreciated", so they're - maybe - paying in that most valued of currencies, the "exposure buck".

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#118

Post by forgotpwd16 »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #69
wott wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be well organised grid-ordered thumbnails (regularly displayed even when from different aspect ratios) on a white background that made picture stand out, with titles and descriptions as first citizens. Ipernity ( http://www.ipernity.com/explore/whatshot ) kept more or less that appearance, if you want to see). Then in 2012 or 2013, they 'modernised' it into the current one: glued pictures with almost no se…

I think this gets at an insightful issue - In Flickr's heyday, much of its userbase was professional, aspiring, and amateur photographers who were effectively power users. They viewed Flickr as something like an extension of Lightroom, so they used it for storage but also curated their public profile, lists, etc in a sort of proto-Instagram way. When Flickr repositioned post Yahoo acquisition, it felt like it was aim…

>500px, which I don't like as much but is closer to Flickr in the good old days

Hmm... Checking the 500px's homepage and profiles it has the 'modernised' points that wott mentions.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#119

Post by mthoms »

cycomanic wrote: post #84

It's funny how the article glosses over smugmug and almost make them sound like some company that didn't know about this space. Smugmug was there from the beginning and always was the "better flickr", except they did not have (or only very limited, don't quite remember) free accounts. Now smugmug was never aiming to create a social network, but instead wanted to create a website for photographers to exhibit and share…

Smugmug was pretty cool except for the Comic Sans (-ish) logo. That thing was so hideous and amateur many people just didn't take them seriously.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#120

Post by jcun4128 »

derefr wrote: post #111
muststopmyths wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I was really pissed off when they said they'd start deleting pictures instead of hiding them like the old Flickr. I was never going to re-upload all my pictures if I decided to go Pro again in the future. So I thought Flickr was effectively dead to me. However, in the 2 years since they announced that, all my 6000+ photos were still there. I never checked to see how many were still publicly visible, though. I won…

I bet what they actually did, is to only delete pictures from accounts that were clearly created by systems that used images as steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage. (The use of such systems is why Google Photos — originally offering unlimited storage — had to later limit free storage to 5GB.) Flickr had to make it clear that any free-tier user could potentially be impacted; but in practice th…

> steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage

I'd be curious how you sell that. I understand you can have some API to take whatever data, put it into the images, upload the images, reverse for use. But some portal somewhere is like "buy secret storage" or something? I guess it is worth the processing/possible data loss efficiency.

Or is it just using bandwidth?

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