In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

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harkins
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In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by harkins »

I received an email overnight from the CEO of Smug Mug/Flickr and it's a kind of begging letter for current subscribers to try and persuade friends and family to sign up because they are still losing money. It does rather come across as warning that Flickr is in the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" and could well cease to exist.

I know a lot of people won't care at all as I believe that Facebook and Instagram is where everyone posts their photos now. I'll be disappointed though as while it has certainly seen a huge drop in activity since the 1000 photo or pay limit, I still really like it as a way of storing my favourite photos in a nice easy to view anywhere anytime way. I'll miss it if it does go.

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iaint
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by iaint »

An email Went out to non-Pro members too.its an awful email,

SmugMug “saved“ Flickr? I don’t ever recall yahoo threatening the site with closure?? And as for saving everyone’s precious photos? Only if you coughed up money - non payers would lose their photos over 1000...

Notice the sneaky line stating the ‘small price increase required next year’? :question:

But a 25% discount offer - I see no reason why the email went out today, the same discount goes live on Boxing Day anyway, so where’s the incentive to buy today?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iainthomson84/

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harkins
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by harkins »

There is a bit of the Photobucket about their behaviour. And you're quite right, it isn't a great email at all. Pretty certain it won't have much impact on gaining new subscribers.

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Wrexham Mackem
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Wrexham Mackem »

I read the email this morning and thought, "that's a gypsy's warning if ever I've seen one". The problem with flickr is that I can't see the business model at all. They have to monetise it somehow, because the storage and hosting costs must be astronomical, yet they made it a free to use resource. Which of course everyone has lapped up until it they made some attempt to recoup the costs..

But before the subscription was introduced, how on earth did they ever expect to make money from it?

Facebook and instagram are rubbish for sharing photos, the quality isn't good enough. Any photo posted on there may as well have been taken on a phone. Just like music lately, quality is going out of the window in favour of instant availability.

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BDL
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by BDL »

So, whats the alternative? Any suggestions for something similar? I've already got Google Photo's but you can't embed these as easily as Flickr.

I've just renewed so I have a bit of time to look into where I store my stuff. If they do go t*ts up then it would be good to know what else is available.

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by HeyfordDave111 »

i use Zenfolio myself.

35,000+ of my pics there, and i can add unlimited for £50 per annum.

I can also take orders and sell then from there for a fee if i want.

Been there 8 years, never a problem, and of course i have the pics backed up in 4 other drives too.
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BDL
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by BDL »

HeyfordDave111 wrote:i use Zenfolio myself.

35,000+ of my pics there, and i can add unlimited for £50 per annum.

I can also take orders and sell then from there for a fee if i want.

Been there 8 years, never a problem, and of course i have the pics backed up in 4 other drives too.


Looks interesting, i'll check it out. Thanks

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rockfordstone
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by rockfordstone »

i got this email as well. honestly, i've already started moving my images away from it and hosting it on my own web hosting space now rather than having it away.

i wouldn't mind paying for it in the long term but it doesn't offer anything. you can't customise it, you can't use it to sell things so you are only really paying for somewhere to store and display images and there are other arguably better ways of doing that (smugmug albeit paid being the prime example). I barely use it now and haven't uploaded any of my recent image sets to it.

i haven't yet tried sharing images from my website onto here yet (the process should be the same largely), but apart from the ease of sharing to 3rd party platforms Flickr doesn't offer me anything worth paying for anymore.

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harkins
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by harkins »

rockfordstone wrote:i wouldn't mind paying for it in the long term but it doesn't offer anything. you can't customise it, you can't use it to sell things so you are only really paying for somewhere to store and display images and there are other arguably better ways of doing that (smugmug albeit paid being the prime example). I barely use it now and haven't uploaded any of my recent image sets to it.

The lack of customisation has always been a bit annoying, but for me the biggest issue is that since the 1000 image limit for non subscribers, the community element of the site has all but died a death. So you might as well just keep them on your hard drive now. I know Facebook is the go to place now, but for me Facebook could be the last website on the net and I wouldn't use it.

Just out of interest, what costs and skills are involved in creating your own website?

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by rockfordstone »

harkins wrote:
rockfordstone wrote:i wouldn't mind paying for it in the long term but it doesn't offer anything. you can't customise it, you can't use it to sell things so you are only really paying for somewhere to store and display images and there are other arguably better ways of doing that (smugmug albeit paid being the prime example). I barely use it now and haven't uploaded any of my recent image sets to it.

The lack of customisation has always been a bit annoying, but for me the biggest issue is that since the 1000 image limit for non subscribers, the community element of the site has all but died a death. So you might as well just keep them on your hard drive now. I know Facebook is the go to place now, but for me Facebook could be the last website on the net and I wouldn't use it.

Just out of interest, what costs and skills are involved in creating your own website?

so i have built mine in WordPress which is really simple, you can use a free theme and they are highly customisable (paid ones you get more customisation options).
i think i pay 12 quid a year for my domain and another 100ish for my host which gives me 100gb of space, i can host multiple sites on it as well should i need to.
its not as simple overall as say going with flickr, but you are largely in control of your own destiny

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by ErrolC »

rockfordstone wrote:
harkins wrote:...
Just out of interest, what costs and skills are involved in creating your own website?

so i have built mine in WordPress which is really simple, you can use a free theme and they are highly customisable (paid ones you get more customisation options).
i think i pay 12 quid a year for my domain and another 100ish for my host which gives me 100gb of space, i can host multiple sites on it as well should i need to.
its not as simple overall as say going with flickr, but you are largely in control of your own destiny


As long as Wordpress is still around, that is.

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by rockfordstone »

ErrolC wrote:
rockfordstone wrote:
harkins wrote:...
Just out of interest, what costs and skills are involved in creating your own website?

so i have built mine in WordPress which is really simple, you can use a free theme and they are highly customisable (paid ones you get more customisation options).
i think i pay 12 quid a year for my domain and another 100ish for my host which gives me 100gb of space, i can host multiple sites on it as well should i need to.
its not as simple overall as say going with flickr, but you are largely in control of your own destiny


As long as Wordpress is still around, that is.

no platform is guaranteed to survive which is why i said largely :)

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Ian G »

Wordpress is great for hosting your images however if you go down the route of using a hosting company there is usually a limit of 262144 files (inodes). While this sounds like a lot, it does take in to account all of the files for themes, plugins and all other things to do with the website. In addition, when uploading photos to a Wordpress site it will create several different sized versions of each image, dependant on the theme you have so one photo could end up with 6 - even up to 20, in some cases - different versions.
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by rockfordstone »

Ian G wrote:Wordpress is great for hosting your images however if you go down the route of using a hosting company there is usually a limit of 262144 files (inodes). While this sounds like a lot, it does take in to account all of the files for themes, plugins and all other things to do with the website. In addition, when uploading photos to a Wordpress site it will create several different sized versions of each image, dependant on the theme you have so one photo could end up with 6 - even up to 20, in some cases - different versions.

this is true. WordPress is currently creating for me (in conjunction with the theme i use) 6 versions of the image and i have a capacity of 150,000 inodes.
eventually, i will have to change how i use my website (currently im hosting all my images for purpose of a blog) and yes the inodes should be a consideration

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by helired3 »

And so the price hike begins $59.99 a year now $117.99 for two years is this the beginning of the end ?
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Blackbird »

As I've only just paid my renewal for 2020, I can't decide whether to take advantage of renewing for another year at the old price :question: . Also, unless I've missed something, it doesn't say how long the offer lasts.

Andy :smile:

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harkins
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by harkins »

helired3 wrote:And so the price hike begins $59.99 a year now $117.99 for two years is this the beginning of the end ?

The two year saving is so small, why would you commit to that now, especially when the sense is that the platform is on shaky ground?

I'll be very sad to see it go, but I can't help but feel it's almost inevitable. Yay, Facebook/Instagram, the only website left on the web. Lucky us!

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Pen Pusher »

harkins wrote: Yay, Facebook/Instagram, the only website left on the web. Lucky us!


You could always make your own website. Not difficult.

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harkins
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by harkins »

Even with a large community of other people where I can 'fave' their photos that I like or are of interest to me? And could I create albums and groups and have the exif data visable and show time and dates of photos and locations and allow commenting etc? Can I do this easily whilst also doing my 9 to 5 and all the other stuff that I do in my non work time? I know it's crazy but I quite like paying someone else run a site like Flickr. More realistic options are either surely even to use another ready made site like Zenfolio (but that doesn't have the community element) or just use Facebook like admittedly most people apparently do now, but then I fear I'd be subjected to all the other "Kris Kris Tofferson!" that is there, "Share this picture of a sad dog or you are really mean" type bollocks.

I could just create a folder on my on PC to keep my least worst photos in one place and look at them myself every now and again, but I do quite like Flickr.

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Airwolfhound »

I have to admit that I have put faith (and my money) into Flickr and have just renewed for another two years on top of my current subscription which runs out in April I think ?

As Harkins said above, for what I get out of Flickr, I am quite happy to pay towards it.

I also use Instagram, but am rapidly running out of patience with the stuff on Facebook at the moment, not a huge amount of love amongst the world on there :grin:
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harkins
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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by harkins »

Airwolfhound wrote:am rapidly running out of patience with the stuff on Facebook at the moment, not a huge amount of love amongst the world on there :grin:

Indeed. You might as well post your photos up on the Daily Mail comments sections if you're into that kind of abuse. I have to say that Flickr in my experience is a rather nice benign world for hosting your favourite photos. And the way I use it in terms of who I follow and what I fave, I often forget that it is not exclusively an aviation site. I expect that I will continue to pay in as long as it continues. The 1000 limit change was also a bit of a shame though as the community has definitely shrunk a bit since then.

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by cg_341 »

Pen Pusher wrote:You could always make your own website. Not difficult.

And what about the thousands of Pounds worth of SEO and PPC you'll need to do to get your website to the top of Google (other search engines are available) for a given search query, such as an aircraft registration and location?

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Pen Pusher »

cg_341 wrote:
Pen Pusher wrote:You could always make your own website. Not difficult.

And what about the thousands of Pounds worth of SEO and PPC you'll need to do to get your website to the top of Google (other search engines are available) for a given search query, such as an aircraft registration and location?


Just did a search in Google for duxfordfotogallery, my web site, and it came up top of the page in 0.38 seconds and didn't cost me anything.

https://www.google.com/search?q=duxford ... e&ie=UTF-8

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by Airwolfhound »

Pen Pusher wrote:
cg_341 wrote:
Pen Pusher wrote:You could always make your own website. Not difficult.

And what about the thousands of Pounds worth of SEO and PPC you'll need to do to get your website to the top of Google (other search engines are available) for a given search query, such as an aircraft registration and location?


Just did a search in Google for duxfordfotogallery, my web site, and it came up top of the page in 0.38 seconds and didn't cost me anything.

https://www.google.com/search?q=duxford ... e&ie=UTF-8

Brian


I just typed in 'Duxford photos' to prove that as Joe Pubic (sic) would not necessarily know your website and thus not type in 'duxfordfotogallery' into google, and thus not have your website come up first. So much for that idea............... :lol: :lol: It came out top :lol:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?source= ... CAc&uact=5

However, having said that, Flickr is great to see so much other stuff than aviation. Some great wildlife shots on there and various other themes, it would be a sad loss to me if Flickr did cease.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/24874528@N04/

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Re: In the "Kris Kris Tofferson!" Flickr?

Post by stuart n »

Out of interest are people here renewing their Flickr pro subscription? Mine is up for renewal, I've seen some people are moving towards Instagram while others are still posting using Flickr.

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