Flickr free- soon to be limited to 1000 photos

mhedges

Well I can't say I'm shocked by this, but still it's a bit disappointing. Wonder if there will be significant backlash? I suppose I'll have to sign up for the Pro account - I use flickr to share pics I take of my kids soccer games and have way more than 1000 pics already uploaded.

spraynpray

I did hear the other day that the available web storage is getting choked, I suppose this is part of that.

NSXTypeR

That is quite a significant drop, from 1 tb to 1,000 photos. I honestly think they just want one service for people to pay for and if you have to sacrifice one of the two, then so be it sort of mentality.

mhedges

Does the "Pro" membership have other useful benefits? They tout "Advanced Stats" but I don't really see how that helps me.

mhedges

NSXTypeR said:

That is quite a significant drop, from 1 tb to 1,000 photos. I honestly think they just want one service for people to pay for and if you have to sacrifice one of the two, then so be it sort of mentality.

Not quite sure I'm following you - meaning other services like Google/apple photos?

NSXTypeR

mhedges said:

Not quite sure I'm following you - meaning other services like Google/apple photos?

I meant that as the company that owns Flickr also owns SmugMug, and so by doing this they're forcing people to either pay for Flickr or move to SmugMug where I think you need to subscribe as well.

Is there a quick way to figure out how many photos you've uploaded to Flickr? I'm glad I didn't use it as a way to back up my photos when they offered everyone 1 tb of storage. That would have been incredibly foolish now in hindsight.

mhedges

NSXTypeR said:

mhedges said:

Not quite sure I'm following you - meaning other services like Google/apple photos?

I meant that as the company that owns Flickr also owns SmugMug, and so by doing this they're forcing people to either pay for Flickr or move to SmugMug where I think you need to subscribe as well.

Is there a quick way to figure out how many photos you've uploaded to Flickr? I'm glad I didn't use it as a way to back up my photos when they offered everyone 1 tb of storage. That would have been incredibly foolish now in hindsight.

OH OK. Yeah I forgot about Smugmug. I assume they will eventually be consolidating the two somehow.

If you go to your photostream page - on the right hand side of your banner pic it will tell you how many images you have uploaded.

PB_PM

Storage isn’t free, so either they sell your personal info (email address, name, etc) or make you pay, so be thankful you get 1000 images. I suspect the move came due to increases in fees from the amazon s2 servers that Smugmug uses for its data. They did the same thing a few years back for the users of Smugmug for the same reason.

NSXTypeR

mhedges said:

OH OK. Yeah I forgot about Smugmug. I assume they will eventually be consolidating the two somehow.

If you go to your photostream page - on the right hand side of your banner pic it will tell you how many images you have uploaded.

Thanks. Wow, I consider myself a light user and I already have 1204 photos there. Well, I guess that's it then, not continuing with Flickr. I wonder if anyone has any alternatives to Flickr in order to post photos online then?

PB_PM said:

Storage isn’t free, so either they sell your personal info (email address, name, etc) or make you pay, so be thankful you get 1000 images. I suspect the move came due to increases in fees from the amazon s2 servers that Smugmug uses for its data. They did the same thing a few years back for the users of Smugmug for the same reason.

I'm not expecting it to be a completely cost-free service, but considering that it's been a mostly free service for most of its life, springing this cost on us all of a sudden was unexpected. The community on Flickr was quite nice and I enjoyed sharing photos through Flickr with the NRF community. Now, maybe not so much if I'm required to pay $50 a year. Plus, that's not even touching upon the poor security of Flickr by association to Yahoo accounts. I guess they really wanted to destroy whatever goodwill Flickr users had left.

mhedges

NSXTypeR said:

I'm not expecting it to be a completely cost-free service, but considering that it's been a mostly free service for most of its life, springing this cost on us all of a sudden was unexpected. The community on Flickr was quite nice and I enjoyed sharing photos through Flickr with the NRF community. Now, maybe not so much if I'm required to pay $50 a year. Plus, that's not even touching upon the poor security of Flickr by association to Yahoo accounts. I guess they really wanted to destroy whatever goodwill Flickr users had left.

They did say that they are developing a "Yahoo-free" login and expect to have that going in the new year.

As far as expectations - I never expected 1 tb of free storage to last. But I think the 1000 image limit is a tad low. Then again I already paid for the "pro" account, so I guess their strategy worked on me.

dissent

Some food for thought -

https://petapixel.com/2018/11/02/why-flickr-limiting-free-users-to-1000-photos-is-a-smart-move/

exit quote: “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.”

I'll pony up the dough, at least for a little while, unless things change drastically with the user experience.

mhedges

dissent said:

Some food for thought -

https://petapixel.com/2018/11/02/why-flickr-limiting-free-users-to-1000-photos-is-a-smart-move/

exit quote: “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.”

I'll pony up the dough, at least for a little while, unless things change drastically with the user experience.

That piece does raise some interesting points. I like his line about "many users simply began using Flickr as a backup site for all of their photos. Instead of sharing their best photos with a community, they simply dumped everything on their hard drive to Flickr" - that certainly describes me to a certain extent with all the kids sports pics I put up on there to share with the other parents. I wish there was a way to have separate but linked accounts.

NSXTypeR

dissent said:

Some food for thought -

https://petapixel.com/2018/11/02/why-flickr-limiting-free-users-to-1000-photos-is-a-smart-move/

exit quote: “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.”

I'll pony up the dough, at least for a little while, unless things change drastically with the user experience.

mhedges said:

That piece does raise some interesting points. I like his line about "many users simply began using Flickr as a backup site for all of their photos. Instead of sharing their best photos with a community, they simply dumped everything on their hard drive to Flickr" - that certainly describes me to a certain extent with all the kids sports pics I put up on there to share with the other parents. I wish there was a way to have separate but linked accounts.

They are interesting points for sure, but it still doesn't make me want to pay for the service enough. I already hate Adobe for making software a subscription, I'm not planning on paying for Flickr. I shoot for my own enjoyment and I post up to Flickr for fun. I enjoy the community, but even then it's not enough for me to pay $50 a year for that. So I'm content with keeping my money to myself. I'm still curious if any forum members have any alternative services to Flickr to post to Nikon Rumors.

spraynpray

NSXTypeR said:

I'm still curious if any forum members have any alternative services to Flickr to post to Nikon Rumors.

Me too.

WestEndFoto

500px, but you pay.

WestEndFoto

dissent said:

Some food for thought -

https://petapixel.com/2018/11/02/why-flickr-limiting-free-users-to-1000-photos-is-a-smart-move/

exit quote: “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.”

I'll pony up the dough, at least for a little while, unless things change drastically with the user experience.

This article has sold me. I have found myself more willing to pay and less enamored with free sites over the last couple of years. When Starbucks offers me a card, I tell them that they are not willing to pay my asking price for my personal data.

Ton14

In the last couple of years too much cloud services, free and paid changed, always only to make it more expensive. We had KPN unlimited BACKUP for € 15.- a year, changed in 100MB!! a year and 1TB € 20.- per month.

I used Flickr only to make a link for publishing a photo on this forum.

My cloud is the Synology 212J with 2tb (now very old) drives and still working fine for the last 6 years and is installed by a friend of mine (I have his NAS here).

Last month I bought the Synology DS218+ with 2 4tb NAS drives which works exactly as Dropbox, Onedrive, Google drive Amazone etc. etc.

OK, one time € 600.-, I have a very fast 4tb cloud, I can reach with all my devices, at least the next 6 years for ALL my files, not only photo's, without sudden change surprises.

500px has also a free account possibility.

Sports

After I found out how Flickr mixed my images with ads (because my account was a free account), I decided to try 500px. I uploaded a few images, nothing special, just to try. Within the first 24 hours I got a handful of unexpected likes and strange comments. Then I uploaded a few more - now "real" - pictures, and got no responses. The first responses were obviously fake, generated by 500px to make me love their "community". Closed my account and chose to pay at Smugmug. I'm not using my account that much, but I prefer paying a few dollars to a company that actually deliver an honest, ongoing service than paying to a) a company that thinks I'm stupid, or b) a company that wants to make money from my personal info or my images.
PS: I know Smugmug bought Flickr, but I'm pretty sure Flickr users should be happy about this.
Q: If you upload a picture of a cat to google, will you be surprised if you start seeing cat's food ads?

mhedges

People keep mentioning annoying ads on Flickr, but honestly I can’t remember ever seeing any. And I don’t use ad blockers. Not sure what it is

manhattanboy

mhedges said:

People keep mentioning annoying ads on Flickr, but honestly I can’t remember ever seeing any. And I don’t use ad blockers. Not sure what it is

If you log in, then there are no ads. If you don't log in, then there are ads... at least this is what I noticed.

mhedges said:

“If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.”

The main problem is that people goto Flickr because it is available to EVERYONE. If they put too many restrictions and start charging people, why bother? Usage will fall off a cliff and all the visitors that used to "see" your photo will no longer bother coming. Those folks instead would be more inclined to use another site that is free to share on like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. This move will make smugmug/flickr money, however, it will be short-lived as users flee Flickr just as they did Webshots when it did the exact same thing Flickr is doing now. Its history (or is it stupidity?) repeating itself.

This list should bring back some memories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites#Defunct_photo-sharing_websites

NSXTypeR

manhattanboy said:

The main problem is that people goto Flickr because it is available to EVERYONE. If they put too many restrictions and start charging people, why bother? Usage will fall off a cliff and all the visitors that used to "see" your photo will no longer bother coming. Those folks instead would be more inclined to use another site that is free to share on like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. This move will make smugmug/flickr money, however, it will be short-lived as users flee Flickr just as they did Webshots when it did the exact same thing Flickr is doing now. Its history (or is it stupidity?) repeating itself.

This list should bring back some memories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites#Defunct_photo-sharing_websites

I completely agree. This is basically killing all the good will Flickr users had for sticking with the service. I don't blame them for charging us, server maintenance isn't free. But I don't love the service so much that I'm willing to pay them $50 a year for a hobby of mine, no matter how much money I dump into gear when I shoot for my own pleasure. Sure call me cheap, but I can live without Flickr.

mhedges

NSXTypeR said:

manhattanboy said:

The main problem is that people goto Flickr because it is available to EVERYONE. If they put too many restrictions and start charging people, why bother? Usage will fall off a cliff and all the visitors that used to "see" your photo will no longer bother coming. Those folks instead would be more inclined to use another site that is free to share on like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. This move will make smugmug/flickr money, however, it will be short-lived as users flee Flickr just as they did Webshots when it did the exact same thing Flickr is doing now. Its history (or is it stupidity?) repeating itself.

This list should bring back some memories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites#Defunct_photo-sharing_websites

I completely agree. This is basically killing all the good will Flickr users had for sticking with the service. I don't blame them for charging us, server maintenance isn't free. But I don't love the service so much that I'm willing to pay them $50 a year for a hobby of mine, no matter how much money I dump into gear when I shoot for my own pleasure. Sure call me cheap, but I can live without Flickr.

Well your response is certainly very common. I don't mind paying the $35 a year (discounted promotional price) - that's pretty negligable considering what I have spent on equipment over the last year or so.

Flickr's price is at least plausible, unlike the insane $400/year price Photobucket thought they could get away with. I'd like to read a long form story about what a incomprehensible screw up that decision was.

manhattanboy

mhedges said:

Well your response is certainly very common. I don't mind paying the $35 a year (discounted promotional price) - that's pretty negligable considering what I have spent on equipment over the last year or so.

Flickr's price is at least plausible, unlike the insane $400/year price Photobucket thought they could get away with. I'd like to read a long form story about what a incomprehensible screw up that decision was.

Flickr may want more money, but how much of their current market position is because folks can go there to browse what everyone has uploaded for free? I would argue that most of their views falls into that category, as others uploading photos trying to make money are already using other sites like (cough) Smugmug. Flickr should have increased advertising...wait for the eventual user complaints to arise...and then introduce a paid "advertisement free" option to "solve" that problem. That's how you would strategically keep most users and monetize a good chunk of them without destroying what got you to the number 1 market position for photo sharing sites in the first place.

NSXTypeR

Just curious, does Instagram offer similar posting options as Flickr does onto forums? I never joined Instagram because I don't really trust their privacy either (not that Flickr had exemplar privacy/security) but I especially don't trust them now under Facebook ownership.

mhedges

I believe the only offer embedded Instagram pages, similar to embedded tweets. I don’t think they allow images only.

PB_PM

Apparently if you have more than 1000 images, but the ones beyond 1000 are marked as Creative Commons those images will not be removed. That may only apply to images already on Flickr though.