Update November 21: Yup, saw that coming. The new owners of Flickr have decided to limit the free accounts to 1000 photos and starting in February of 2019 if one hasn’t bought their new Pro account, guess what? Your photos are deleted.
I really like how Smugmug made this big deal in their email about the community, with this little gem:
“Let’s be candid. The strength of Flickr has always been you.”
Yes, please, let’s be candid. “It’s all about money. And it’s always been about money and nothing else whatsoever.” Yahoo gave us 1TB for free, and I hosted all of my photos on this blog, there. I had a Pro account for years but eventually didn’t need it with the unlimited storage. Now that’s all changed. I have over 14,000 photos on Flickr, and the vast majority of them are embedded in this website. So, if I don’t upgrade and pay a yearly subscription, only the most recent 1,000 photos will be hosted, and I cannot upload any more photos without deleting previous ones. That doesn’t sound very community oriented to me.
Recently I’ve been trying to decide if I even want to keep this blog up and running, as with all my new projects, I have less and less time for text blogging. I just built a small 32 track digital recording studio and I have a new album underway. I’m also live streaming, but I’ve even cut that down a bit. I had meant to do some more blog posts but I haven’t found the time. There are some interesting things that have been happening that I really should share, but by now my readership of this blog is probably non-existent.
For the record, I’m leaning towards the Pro account. It’s pretty cheap, but I don’t like being held hostage. These new owners didn’t even wait an entire year before they reversed the “we’re not going to change anything” line they fed us at the beginning…..
If you haven’t heard the news, Flickr has been acquired by SmugMug, a photo site. What this means for the thousands of photos on this blog that are hosted at Flickr, I have no idea. They may suddenly become unavailable. If that actually happens, it would virtually destroy this blog as it is based entirely on photographs we’ve taken over a decade or more. If I find out anything relevant I will be sure to inform you. Thanks for your support!