Flickr-Geddon
“Flickr at its best is a place to connect, to discover, and to evolve as photographers and lovers of photography. This is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. Here, together, this newly-independent community can shape the future of photography itself.”
Flickr attracted attention for all the wrong reasons recently, with the revelation that it will be stopping its free terabyte storage initiative and introducing a 1,000 image cap. If that wasn't all, it would start deleting users' images as of January 2019 in a bid to reduce them to that limit.
That is a big photo cull, but some images will be safe from the Flickr-geddon as it’s been referred to.
The only way to prevent this is to pay for their pro account priced at $49.99 USD. For which you would be awarded unlimited storage. Ad-free browsing and Advanced statistics, which basically means you would have the ability to see which of your photos were trending, and which had performed the best, but only over the span of your pro account.
FLICKR REVEALS CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTOS WILL NOT BE DELETED IN ITS BIG IMAGE PURGE.
According to Don MacAskill, SmugMug's CEO (who now own Flickr), creative commons and Flickr commons images will be safe.
Flickr’s blog reads;
"Freely licensed photos are deeply important to us. After SmugMug acquired Flickr, one of the first meetings we had was with Ryan Merkley, the CEO of Creative Commons. We want to keep that partnership alive and strong, and we are actively working on how to grow it for the future,"
"Whatever changes come in the years going forward, the importance of these photos will always matter to us.
"We not only want to preserve the photos we have, we want to keep partnering with organisations such as libraries, museums, and government agencies to contribute to The Flickr Commons as well."
Understandably this news has gone down well with those at Creative Commons, seeing them take to twitter to show their appreciation.
I TOOK TO TWITTER
I have yet to receive a response to this last tweet.
CONCLUSION
Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos. If you need unlimited storage, you’ll need to upgrade to Flickr Pro.
Now, when I did use flickr, I never saw it as a cloud based storage site. I used it to showcase my work, which quite frankly when I look back was dreadful by comparison. So to have the opportunity to store, FOR FREE, 1000 photos and/or videos I don’t think is a bad deal, at all. If I’m honest, by the time I reach the 1000 limit, those at the older end of the scale will be massively overdue replacing anyway.
Whilst I think Flickr may find a slight decline in the number of people continuing with the site, I don’t believe it will be that detrimental to whether it succeeds or not. It’s success or failure will be determined on the creative limitations of those in charge.
BE CREATIVE. BE INSPIRED. BE YOU.
e: gary.fernon@photoreceptorcell.co.uk
