Hey friends, I received this in an email the other day as someone who uses the photo service Flickr and figured I’d make a post about it to keep you in the loop if you are using it as well and if this message hit your Junk Mail folder.
The Announcement:
We’re excited to announce that Flickr has agreed to be acquired by SmugMug, the photography platform dedicated to visual storytellers. SmugMug has a long history of empowering people who love photography and who want to improve their craft, making them a perfect fit for Flickr and our creative community. With SmugMug, we’ll continue to focus on you, the Flickr members who inspire us all with your work.
Nothing will change immediately with regard to your Flickr account. You will still access Flickr with your current login credentials and you will have the same Flickr experience as you do now. We will continue to work to make your Flickr experience even better.
We think you are going to love Flickr under SmugMug ownership, but you can choose to not have your Flickr account and data transferred to SmugMug until May 25, 2018. If you want to keep your Flickr account and data from being transferred, you must go to your Flickr account to download the photos and videos you want to keep, then delete your account from your Account Settings by May 25, 2018.
If you do not delete your account by May 25, 2018, your Flickr account and data will transfer to SmugMug and will be governed by SmugMug’s Terms and Privacy Policy. Read more detailed FAQs about this transition on the Flickr Blog. We’re happy that Flickr is your home for photography and we look forward to the next chapter in our adventure together as we join the SmugMug family.
Thanks, The Flickr Team
*** end of transmission ***
Piercing Ken Thoughts: So I’ve been using Flickr for a maybe a little over five years at the time of this announcement. Maybe its been a little longer but that doesn’t matter at the end of the day. I began using it so I could “feed” a gallery link to images in my personal Facebook profile. Speaking frankly, I didn’t like allowing Facebook to maintain complete control over a gallery and have it at their own disposal or find said images shared at will with strangers. Flickr allowed me to specify the website I ran or our other socials and it did the job. Maybe you were using it with the same mindset. As I scrolled through them I seem to have mostly local band friends photos in there and since I have the original images and these shoots are now rather old, I’ve made the decision to kill the Flickr account entirely. SmugMug is something I’ve looked into using in the past but it is a pay to use on a monthly rate based on your needs sort of thing. The accounts run from $4 to $42 a month but I’ve just handed a hefty bill based on some website development stuff so surplus cash is not here at all to be using it to keep such galleries online. Were this PiercingMetal photography the decision might have been different. Closing up, I’d say that some of you have some decisions to make about the process. I’m going to use Google Photos from now on for this kind of photo sharing. This closing notion has me wondering if I can somehow migrate all of the images from one service to another. Oh yeah and one more thing. I clicked the Flickr support forum and the community wondered if the free accounts would remain intact and the common answer was that they would “for the time being and foreseeable future”. Please remember that this sort of statement is often heard during a transition and that in time those free accounts will need to become fully SmugMug accounts. What do you think of this development? Does it affect you and the way you use your photography on a regular basis? Chime in down below and thanks for reading.
Official Websites:
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
SmugMug: http://www.smugmug.com