If you have been on the Internet for a while and you like photography, you surely know the history of Flickr, the photographic storage service that became a reference and is now in a very delicate situation. So much so that, its current CEO, has asked through an email here to its users to pay for the Premium subscription to keep it standing. The problem? It will be very complicated.
Flickr: referring to one more
Flickr was launched in 2004 and for years it was a clear reference among amateurs and photography professionals. If you wanted to see photos of all kinds you went there. With the passage of time new functions were included that even allowed to sell such content. Based on its popularity one would never have thought that it could come down, but we already know how these of the internet companies work.
Over the years, with the arrival of platforms such as Instagram and other photo storage services, everything changed. Along with a somewhat debatable management, Flickr’s popularity was falling and its advantages shone. Especially for all those who were Pro users and paid for the best they offered.
All this plus a significant drop in active users and changes in conditions in free accounts, which went from 1TB of storage to a limitation of 1,000 photos , did the rest. Therefore, after some problems of Yahoo! which was bought by Verizon to then sell Flickr to SmugMug take us to the present time.
SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill has sent an email to its users asking them to pay for the premium subscription to keep Flickr active. Yes, it is somewhat strange because he is not asking to be told what they need to improve Flickr and make it more attractive, what he is doing is directly telling them to pay.
As a Flickr user for many years, I no longer consider it very complicated. Despite the 25% discount of the annual fee that is being offered, with the many current options I think few would be willing to pay for a service that seems destined to fall.
Where to go if Flickr falls
If you are a Flickr user today, you may have thought about where to go in the event that it ends up closing. If you do a quick search you will get a multitude of alternatives, from SmugMug itself – a company that bought Flickr – to other options such as 500Px, Instagram or Google Photos.
Given that Google Photos offers unlimited storage if you accept that they optimize the image, the truth is that it seems the most attractive option of all. And you can combine it with Instagram to achieve that visibility that can be interesting for professionals.
And then, if what you want is to keep the originals, or you pay for storage in Google Photos or you mount a local or cloud system through a NAS. Of course there are many options, although it is true that if Flickr disappears we will feel a little sorry. After all, it is one of those services that marked an era of internet where the image began to gain importance.
