Flickr to SmugMug?

I would really love to know any information people have about this too! :/ I'm really hoping it works out x.x

 

There is this thread @ flickr, you may want to check it out.
They say nothing will happen now but "they dont know about the future" g.g
I saw it but didn't really understand (specially because here in my country no one uses smugmug).
I tried checking smugmug site but apparently is only free for 14 days? Will we all have to pay for flickr now?
I bought my doll used, and I like to have the past owner flickr to check information about her past (like when she arrived and all that). I wonder if everything is going to be deleted someday?

As for alternatives, I use tumblr (for smaller pics) and google photos when I just want to store the picture and not really use the comunity.

 

This is the FAQ on Smugmug:
Together, SmugMug + Flickr | Frequently Asked Questions

They're moving over to Smugmug's Terms of Service and server architecture (instead of Yahoo's) but it doesn't sound like they're planning to get rid of Flickr or anything. They're leaving things up in the air a little because I think they might change the subscription/monetization model, but Smugmug is a site specifically for professionals and Flickr is not, which I think they understand. Honestly, I trust them with it more than I trust Yahoo! Yahoo's been so shady and made terrible changes to Flickr while it was in their hands. At least Smugmug has photographers in mind.

 

In interview SmugMug owner said they are unsure about the future, and even in this FAQ they talk about notifying about changes and "keep up to date on changes" - and something about making it profitable - so I guess something will change at some moment. A guy who says he knows people from inside (both flickr and smugmug) said he doesnt think flickr will kill the free product, but "think that they might try to nudge people in the direction of paid Pro"
To be fair I don't think it can be as bad as what happened with photobucket, but I think it can both: go really well or really bad.
I just don't want to lose my memories. It was really a great place at 2009, dolly collectors everywhere, friends popping from here and there, but its pretty empty for me now, so I'm more about the nostalgia. If it doesn't close like orkut did, I'm fine.

 

I must admit that Flickr is one of the few sites where I pay to subscribe. I was rather horrified to get the email from Flickr because SmugMug is such an awful name :/ and I know nothing about them.

It's true that Yahoo! are an awful mess and have been for years. Recently I've had considerable problems due to a conflict between my Flickr password and my Yahoo! password. But as @flornosertao says, I've got lots of stuff there going back years. I gave up on photobucket some time ago.

It does make you realise how vulnerable all your stuff stored in the cloud can be. I've got photos on Google, Flickr and even Microsoft!

I hope there will be more information before too long. May is a fairly fast-approaching deadline.

 

@flornosertao Yeah, it's a bit of a mystery! I can see why, though. The site's definitely been struggling for years and given Yahoo's tendency to buy sites and shut them down eventually I felt like the future of Flickr was pretty up in the air. I worried when I read the news too, but I think my level of trust for Yahoo is lower than it is for the unknown, haha. I remember pre-Yahoo Flickr too, in its hayday. All the doll communities were so vibrant there, I miss them.

@glass_mountain Did you hear about what happened to Polyvore? A clothing company just recently bought the site out and took the whole thing down instantly with no warning. They just made it redirect to their online store. It's just awful. =( I think of stuff online as like data on your hard drive, if you're storing it in only one place, it's not safe! But new owners shutting down a social site/platform overnight isn't something you can plan for.

 

@Glace Leau I hadn't heard about Polyvore, and that's not good at all. I did delete all my stuff from Livejournal, though I downloaded it. And I must say most of my photos are on Google.

But it is a problem. I'm not sure about the States, but I can't think that what the retailer did to Polyvore would be legal in this country. Though I have no idea. But a lot of internet companies like Facebook and Yahoo! have been rolling out new Terms and Conditions. I never really read these, and with a lot of them you have to agree or else your agreement is assumed if you continue using the site.

 

I was looking on their site this morning and their basic is 48$ a year, compared to the 25$ I was paying on Flickr can't say i'm too thrilled about it. Flickr had a nice BJD community going on. I'm going to download all my photos just in case I don't like SmugMug ( what an awful name). This is a good reminder that no online storage solution is really permanent.

 

I know another site that had a similar fate. It was an american photography site, it was pretty old - probably from when digital pictures started begin a thing, a lot of people had family photos there, it was not anything profissional, more like family album or something like that. I didn't had an account, but I visited the site to acess a specifically family account, there were so many precious pictures and one day suddenly it was gone! Everything was gone!
To be fair, I do think people were give the option to backup their things before it was gone, but there was no alert in the main page so visitors didnt knew, it never crossed my mind before that someday they would just shut things, I regreted not saving someone's else family pics LOL
I would say that kind made compulsive about photography backups. I trust no one with my pics, even myself - because once I broke a pen drive full of photos and lost some years of memory.

 

If it makes you feel better, the anime convention I work with uses it as our official photography host, and has for many years with very positive feedback from the photo department. It's not really an unknown site (I've also heard of it frequently outside of the context of the convention), just one that leans more toward professionals than Flickr with amateurs. That phrase "unsure about the future" really doesn't mean anything other than "we want to retain the flexibility to respond to what the future brings." (That also of course doesn't mean they won't change the pricing or free option for Flickr, just that they want to be able to respond without locking themselves into something they said early in the process.)

 

Its not really unknown, is just more of a professional thing than social network, though I understand your concern.
There is google photos, deviant art, dropbox, 500px (which I find the closest to flickr), imgur (this one I don't ever had an account at, but seems unorganized to me, I'm mentioning anyway because people here said it is a great option for people in the hobby so I think its worth a try)...

 

I love Flickr the way it is now and I hope SmugMug doesn't change it too much. I'm not going to lie, I have a bad feeling about this! If we can't use Flickr to share pictures anymore, can we use DeviantArt for photo sharing? Flickr is the only website I know that most people use with DOA. I am familiar with DeviantArt and I heard some people use it to share photos on DOA if I am not mistaken. I definitely don't want to use Photobucket.

 

Gah this is sucky to hear. I'd hate to see flickr go the way of photobucket.
I think you can still use tumblr to store and share pics here, but who knows for how long...

 

I used Flickr for many years, but a couple of years ago I abandoned it completely, because I was sick to death of constantly non-working features, or the site completely conking out altogether. I have used Smugmug for photo storage in the last two years and it's been extremely reliable.
Smugmug has a neat layout (in my opinion), but it's not user-friendly in terms of socialising and it's not a social site in any case. Indeed, Smugmug is more expensive and has no free option. It would do them no good at all to charge their prices for Fickr, so I can't personally see that happening.
Likewise, I hope Flickr stays the same, especially in terms of costs, and free options, etc, but with Smugmug's reliability. However, for all of us, it's just a waiting game . . .
500px has very little in terms of BJD images, but Instagram seems a more 'doll-friendly' site. I have since replaced Flickr with Ipernity, which I personally really like, but it's to each their own.

 

@TwilightBabyDoll
I've used Deviant Art for my photos on this forum in the past and it works great.

Haha, just recently I started using Flickr, actually...
So I was wondering about all this Flickr and SmugMug stuff too, so it's good to see some discussion of it on here. Thanks!

 

I searched for updates but couldn’t find any so I’m chiming in here with my ‘rest of the story’.
Beginning January 8, 2019, I’m seeing that Flickr will
- Start renewing all Pro memberships, including grandfathered ones, to the new much higher subscription rate.
- Limit/reduce all free accounts to 1000 photos regardless of size, still with ads
- Not allow links to sales websites on free accounts.

Unknown which photos over 1k they will just delete if free accounts do not reduce them by Jan 8.
Exceptions are CC licensed photos over the 1k photo limit but...after Jan 8, you still can’t upload additional photos without a Pro account.
Correct me on anything if it’s wrong, please?

I’m sticking with our existing Flickr pro membership until I can sit down and sort it out but with the Photobucket and Flickr changes plus other limitations and privacy issues on social media websites like FB, Instagram and Tumblr (doll nudity = nudity to automation, y’all!), I’m ready to return to ‘the old ways’ of hosting hotlinked photos from one of our own domains, only using social networks to share.
It was devastating to lose so much historical photo information here with the photobucket changes, (now with the huge watermarks), I don’t even consider tumblr usable anymore, and FB and Insta aren’t going to give us more feed control any time soon even for purely hobby pages or accounts...so folks, I give up.
Stable website > Socials.
Meh.

 

After the debacle that was Photobucket I switched over to Imageshack and I have no complaints.
On the contrary I've caught myself wondering why I didn't switch over a decade ago.
This news with Flickr further cements my decision to stick with them.