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Whatever happened to Flickr?

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Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#181

Post by Aeolun »

vr46 wrote: post #151
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…

They said. I never had a single picture removed, going back to 2005.

Just checked. Also still have all my pictures going back to 2004.

Glad that this was used only for actual abusers. The website does show me a warning now though.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#182

Post by jboy55 »

Amazingly no one has brought up the declining sales of DSLR cameras. https://www.statista.com/statistics/799526/shipments-of-digi...

Flickr is great when, and arguably designed for, uploading photos from your computer. This after you dumped your DSLR's photos and edited them. The primary source of photos is now a phone, so services designed around that fare better.

Also, the professional photographer market doesn't really want to share all of their photos to everyone. SmugMug was better at allowing a photographer to control access to their photos and charge for access. Then the photographer puts a few up on Insta for publicity and advertising. Flickr was kind of caught in the middle, really designed for the pro-sumer DSLR owner, who are disappearing.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#183

Post by codetrotter »

rocqua wrote: post #135
jcun4128 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You build an app that will create your backups for you using your free image sharing account. Or maybe instead of backups it's for big filetransfers, or sharing somewhat secret documents. The main point is to make use of the effective endless storage, rather than to store things hidden in plain sight.

I remember also back when GMail first became available to people by invitation, and at the time the amount of storage you were given, while not as impressive by today’s standards, was pretty significant at the time. And someone created a system to allow you to backup files from your computer onto your GMail. I wonder if that system inspired Google to build Google Drive.

Here’s an article from the time, and an excerpt from said article:

> As many of you know, Gmail is Google's free web mail service that gives you 2+ Gigs of free storage for your email and attachments. Now that is a lot of storage; actually more storage than most people really need. So what can we do with all that extra storage you may be wondering? What if I told you that we could use all this extra storage to act as an online hard drive for you to store files?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-...

And the original page, which is still around too.

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

> GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Mail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.

Windows XP. Good times :)

If Google did take inspiration from it when later creating Google Drive then maybe that’s even where they took the name for Google Drive from.

Speaking of Google, storage space, and that time period, here’s a comic strip I remember from back then :)

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/669.html

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#184

Post by mfranc42 »

It seems to me that it's comparing apples and oranges. I use Instagram because everybody else uses Instagram. I use Flickr, because I'm into photography and I don't mean Iphone or Android photography. I mean photography in general.

Instagram is a mobile app. End of story. There is some web/desktop whatever, but it's a joke. I do most of the image manipulation on my laptop/desktop, so I want something that works there. I want to share a full sized result, not a 1080px preview. Mobile app is a welcomed bonus.

Instagram is not a site for photographers. It's an image centric social network. Photographers can use it to reach wider audience, but besides that it has zero features geared towards photography as such. It works for exactly 3 (yes, three!) image sizes and doesn't even show EXIF data.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#185

Post by overeater »

neilk wrote: post #85

There are a couple of threads here that argue Marissa Mayer was the problem. I don't think that can be true. Mayer took the reins at Yahoo in 2012. Facebook had crushed Flickr in desktop-shared photos by 2009 or so, and over 2010-2012 or so, Instagram had created a whole new photo experience for mobile that Flickr missed. Instagram was acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012. Mayer may or may not have exac…

> The article just happens to use a photo of Mayer because she was the CEO at the time Flickr was sold to SmugMug.

Wait, isn't that just another way of saying that she sold Flicker to SmugMug? If so, she sounds very blamable.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#186

Post by dpark »

glenstein wrote: post #173
petilon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blame is merely a function of the job title Marissa Meyer's name is indelibly linked to the Flickr fail. She promoted herself as a UX expert, then "improved" Flickr and ended up f??king it up. Excerpt from NYT story: “My focus at Google has been to deliver great end-user experiences, to delight and inspire our end users,” Ms. Mayer said in an interview. “That is what I plan to do at Yahoo, give the end user somethi…

I'm just going to note that, as pointed out by the other person, this interpretation is riddled with misinterpretations of the articles, and it's elevating this in a way that's out of proportion to the broader structural forces that led to Yahoo's decline. And, again, the analogy to Microsoft is confused and incorrect, and, again, your comments below suggest that attribution of failure is a function of business norms…

Right. Imagine if a large passenger jet loses all 4 engines at cruising altitude and then the rudder also stops working. The plane starts gliding toward the ground and the pilot is having no luck at getting it flying again. The pilot finally gives up and says “I can’t fly this thing” and walks away (or is told to walk away). The same thing happens with the copilot. The passengers then select a couple of other passengers with flight experience but they also can’t steer the thing meaningfully. Meanwhile the plane is still rapidly falling out of the sky.

Finally the passengers ask who else is willing to try. Someone steps forward and says, “I can do it. I’ve got experience with engine maintenance.” That person tries and fails to restart the engines and ends up crashing the plane into a field.

Who’s responsible for the plane crash? Is it really the last person who tried to pilot the thing? They took over when the plane had already dropped to 3000 feet. Sure, they clearly failed at the job of flying the heap of busted scrap metal. Maybe they also made a mistake by focusing on engine #3 when engine #4 was more promising in hindsight. But also they stepped in to fly a plane that was about to crash. A crash was the expected outcome at that point by anyone with a clue. It’s wrong to pin it all on them just because they were the last to try. Especially when one of the previous pilots turned down an offer from a huge passing airship to safely bring everyone on board. And maybe that last person is a really incompetent pilot. I’m just not sure how you establish that from what happened here.

(Can you tell that Mayer is the final pilot and Yang turned down the airship offer? It’s some subtle metaphor I’ve got going here.)

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#187

Post by naravara »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #156
micromacrofoot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord was an internal comm system for a game studio too

Conclusion: We, as an industry, should ditch everything else and just throw all our R&D money at video games. (But seriously, whatever pivots most readily and allow fastest development probably is a good point of investment)

Video games now seem to have a lot of the same driving power in tech that porn used to.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#189

Post by devwastaken »

Without Flickr nonprofit advertising work would not be possible for me. Flickr has many users that offer open licensing, it's also used by various government orgs around the world and posts open licensing or public domain works.

Re: Whatever happened to Flickr?

#190

Post by annadane »

leoh wrote: post #163
neilk wrote: post #85

There are a couple of threads here that argue Marissa Mayer was the problem. I don't think that can be true. Mayer took the reins at Yahoo in 2012. Facebook had crushed Flickr in desktop-shared photos by 2009 or so, and over 2010-2012 or so, Instagram had created a whole new photo experience for mobile that Flickr missed. Instagram was acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012. Mayer may or may not have exac…

Blaming Marissa Mayer for everything to do with Yahoo really pisses me off. Yahoo was a sinking ship, Mayer tried to save it, she couldn't. The obsession with blaming her feels extremely sexist to me. Regardless of whether it is sexist, people need to lay off of her. Blame is a boring, pathetic game that silently drowns and shuts down the minds of its participants over time. Sometimes people are good in a situation,…

I'm curious what you think about Zuckerberg
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