Flickr change(s) for free accounts (and evidently Pro accounts too)

[Fauve Aeon]

Free accounts soon to be limited to the most recent 1000 images. All Pro accounts to be charged at the new Pro rates on auto-renewal, details at the website.

Edit: Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts
Edit 2: Seems all pro accounts will be charged the new rates regardless of age.
Flickr: The Help Forum: Flickr grandfathered Pro subscriptions

 

[Free]

Free is never really free.

I mean, except for me! I am always me.

 

[Khamon]

A thousand seems like a lot of images to host for free.

 

[Fauve Aeon]

Free is never really free.

I mean, except for me! I am always me.

If you aren’t paying for the product, usually you ARE the product.
Someone wiser than I has probably said this in a much better way.

 

[Pati]

I understand storage and bandwidth can be expensive, but I'm sad that a lot of things currently hosted there will probably vanish. So many cool libraries on the most diverse topics, like art deco, house plans, architecture, old movie stars, foreign movie posters, and so much more. I love browsing all the interesting albums you can find on Flickr. This blows. And 100 picks? Why not a certain amount of space, like 1GB? Not all images weight the same. One's 1000 images could be someone's else 5.000.

I wish there was a place people could upload and the images would just stay there. Something like the archive.org, but only for images.

 

[Khamon]

Where are those terms on the website?

 

[Noodles]

I understand storage and bandwidth can be expensive, but I'm sad that a lot of things currently hosted there will probably vanish. So many cool libraries on the most diverse topics, like art deco, house plans, architecture, old movie stars, foreign movie posters, and so much more. I love browsing all the interesting albums you can find on Flickr. This blows. And 100 picks? Why not a certain amount of space, like 1GB? Not all images weight the same. One's 1000 images could be someone's else 5.000.

I wish there was a place people could upload and the images would just stay there. Something like the archive.org, but only for images.

If you have Amazon Prime it includes unlimited photo storage.

Still paid but a lot of people have Amazon Prime.

 

[Kara Spengler]

WTF flickr? I used to be a paid account there then you made the free accounts more attractive for what I needed.

 

[Fauve Aeon]

Where are those terms on the website?

I can see them here when I’m not signed in. It might look different if logged in. Let’s be candid.
Edit: the ‘let’s be candid’ text is just how the homepage pasted here I pasted the dot com address.

Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts

 

[Plurabelle Laszlo]

The main problem is, that they announced they will delete the exceeding pictures of free accounts, starting in three months from now. Not make them invisible or recoverable, but delete them forever. This will include accounts of people who lost access to their sign-up emails, the accounts of deceased people who might have stored their family photos, or the accounts of people who went inactive for a while and didnt pay attention to the announcements - and who might come back and find their pictures gone forever. They are going to downsize free accounts from 1 TB to 1000 pictures... 1 TB was probably a stupid business model, because it made going pro useless for a lot of people. But on the other hand it encouraged people to upload everything, which made flickr very attractive for research and increased the userbase and the number of views for pro-accounts and free accounts alike. If all those pictures vanish, a lot of linked content of blogs and websites will break.

1000 pictures is not that much, not even for amateur photographers. Nor for me and many other SL-photographers, bloggers and designers. Especially when accounts are affected that are more than a decade old. In my case it means that I am supposed to pay 50 dollars per year for less than 1 GB storage - or delete one third of my pictures.

 

[Fauve Aeon]

The main problem is, that they announced they will delete the exceeding pictures of free accounts, starting in three months from now. Not make them invisible or recoverable, but delete them forever. This will include accounts of people who lost access to their sign-up emails, the accounts of deceased people who might have stored their family photos, or the accounts of people who went inactive for a while and didnt pay attention to the announcements - and who might come back and find their pictures gone forever. They are going to downsize free accounts from 1 TB to 1000 pictures... 1 TB was probably a stupid business model, because it made going pro useless for a lot of people. But on the other hand it encouraged people to upload everything, which made flickr very attractive for research and increased the userbase and the number of views for pro-accounts and free accounts alike. If all those pictures vanish, a lot of linked content of blogs and websites will break.

1000 pictures is not that much, not even for amateur photographers. Nor for me and many other SL-photographers, bloggers and designers. Especially when accounts are affected that are more than a decade old. In my case it means that I am supposed to pay 50 dollars per year for less than 1 GB storage - or delete one third of my pictures.

After the Photobucket fiasco, which broke so much valuable older content on blogs and forums, I’m surprised people trust their important photos to a changeable service without backing them up in at least one other place and trust a freebie hosting place at all when there’s no control over things? I’d screenshot the photos I wanted to keep if I had lost account access/family photos/important pix etc. I have one paid account there and I still keep backups.
Trust no website.

If you have Amazon Prime it includes unlimited photo storage.

Still paid but a lot of people have Amazon Prime.

Before I rely on this, I’d read up on what happens to the storage if I someday decide to stop using Prime.

 

[Nika Talaj]

I actually do it the other way around: I use Prime to back up my local pic storage.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

1000, that's not bad because in 2007, when I joined flickr, free users only got to show 200 in their photostream. IIRC, they could upload more, but recent uploads would replace older ones in the Photostream once they reached 200. The account owner could still see them all, of course, and IIRC they could choose which ones to display instead of relying on Flickr's FIFO.

I've been Flickr Pro since 2007, it was Alaska Metropolitan that gave me the heads up for flickr and how good a deal Pro was. I've been grandfathered under the original Pro-rate for years.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

WTF flickr? I used to be a paid account there then you made the free accounts more attractive for what I needed.

It's quite simple: Flickr doesn't belong to Yahoo! any longer, it was bought by SmugMug. And contrary to Yahoo the new owners want to earn real money with it again, but not to rely on ads, which have become nowadays a very unsteady source of income due to the rise of adblockers.

Personally I don't care; I've got a dedicated root server running since years with vast amounts of storage, if needed. I would just install Piwigo on it, and will be ready to go.

 

[GradyE]

...and Instagram goes "THANKS SMUGMUG!"

 

[GradyE]

srsly, I have a long standing pro account and about 2000 followers on Flickr. Judging by the number of Insta signups my followers are posting on Flickr I am guessing I am going to lose somewhere between 30-50% of them.

 

[Seven]

1000, that's not bad because in 2007, when I joined flickr, free users only got to show 200 in their photostream. IIRC, they could upload more, but recent uploads would replace older ones in the Photostream once they reached 200. The account owner could still see them all, of course, and IIRC they could choose which ones to display instead of relying on Flickr's FIFO.

I've been Flickr Pro since 2007, it was Alaska Metropolitan that gave me the heads up for flickr and how good a deal Pro was. I've been grandfathered under the original Pro-rate for years.

Hmm I thought I heard they were going to start charging all accounts the same prices, regardless of them being grandfathered. Can anyone confirm?

That would be such a slap in the face for all those grandfathered accounts that supported them for all those years if true.

 

[Seven]

I'm kinda weird in that I've had an account on Flickr since 2008 and I only have around 400 photos. I used to post a quiet often in the beginning but I really slowed down after that. I guess it's just my store stuff and the occasional random thing. I doubt I'll hit the limit any time soon, and premium never appealed to me.

I'm mostly upset about what this change will do to other peoples streams. It's super fascinating looking at old SL pictures on there, some people's streams are like a visual story of their SL experience for nearly a decade. It's a shame that so much of that will be lost.

I wish there was a good alternative, I don't think Instagram is the right format for SL bloggers and photographers.

 

[Fauve Aeon]

Seems all pro accounts will be charged the new rates regardless of age.
Flickr: The Help Forum: Flickr grandfathered Pro subscriptions

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I'm kinda weird in that I've had an account on Flickr since 2008 and I only have around 400 photos. I used to post a quiet often in the beginning but I really slowed down after that. I guess it's just my store stuff and the occasional random thing. I doubt I'll hit the limit any time soon, and premium never appealed to me.

I'm mostly upset about what this change will do to other peoples streams. It's super fascinating looking at old SL pictures on there, some people's streams are like a visual story of their SL experience for nearly a decade. It's a shame that so much of that will be lost.

Well beggars can't be choosers, right? And if you are not paying for it, it only means that you are the product .

It's always the same: people are cheap, they do fell for such services without a charge and wake up with a headache, when it either gets cancelled or goes freemium instead.

I guess most are going to choose Instagram or Facebook as replacement, falling into the same trap again.