

What if Flickr fails? - bootload
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2011/01/12/what-if-flickr-fails/

======
ghshephard
Just use Flickr with the presumption that the service is transitory, and will
eventually go out out of business - hopefully with advance notice, but
possibly not. Treat services like flickr, myspace, facebook as useful, but not
guaranteed, CDNs for sharing your images with your social network. But
transitory - their is every possibility they will decline and disappear.

All the Flickr Pro users I know have a pretty well defined image-workflow,
typically with Aperture or Lightroom, and flickr is just one (albeit
important) branch of that workflow.

In general:

    
    
      o Keep a local backup.  (Time Machine, etc..)
      o Every so often, mirror that backup and take it off 
        site. (Just sync your local backup to an external hard 
        drive)
      o Keep a real-time cloud backup (ala Backblaze and friends)
     

Keeping copies of your images is straightforward - the real challenge is
managing that social network and backing it up - that's challenging.

~~~
paraschopra
Perhaps someone needs to come up with a startup that treats S3 as storage
medium for images, while retaining all the features of Flickr. Then you will
truly own your images and not have to worry about company going out of
business.

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ja27
I've paid for a Flickr pro account for a few years now. Ironically, I first
got on Flickr when Yahoo Photos shut down and they forcefully migrated me to
Flickr. But I'm letting my pro account expire this month. I've been using
Flickr for 2 main purposes: sharing photos with friends and backing up all my
photos. It hasn't been great for either.

No matter how many guest passes and invites I mail friends, most of them only
look at the photos I put on Facebook. Facebook keeps improving their photo
service - removing album limits, increasing resolution. I can't name a single
new Flickr feature in the past 3 years that's impacted me.

For backing up, it's really not very convenient, especially if I had to
restore. I've moved to rotating offsite hard drives a while ago.

I do still enjoy some of the social aspects of Flickr groups, for general
photography and related interests. That's enough to possibly keep me active
there as a free user, but in general the quality of the average Flickr group
is pretty low. It really depends on the group admins and Flickr doesn't offer
any incentive for them. Wouldn't it be easy to offer free Pro accounts to the
admins of the top 1% of Flickr groups? Or some swag? Or anything?

Then there's the fact that every time I login there I cringe when I realize
I'm using my ancient Yahoo id that's been discarded for every other purpose.

~~~
thwarted
_Facebook keeps improving their photo service - removing album limits,
increasing resolution._

Flickr both doesn't limit how many photos can be in a set or collection and
provides the original resolution (at least for the pro account, I don't
remember what the free account's limits are). These "improvements" Facebook is
making is just catching up to flickr's base functionality. Obviously, Facebook
may be more compelling to use for it's (monetarily) free price if you just
want to post photos for your close friends to look at. I personally get tired
of the photos of people's lame afternoons on Facebook, there's a lot more
interesting content being posted to flickr, and I don't necessarily need to
friend someone to be exposed to it or find it.

I find flickr better for managing _photos_. It's the internet, it like one
click to get _anywhere_. I've settled that if people don't bother to click
through from Facebook (where my flickr photos get posted to my wall as
thumbnails) to actually view the photos on flickr where they are public
(requiring no account), they aren't actually interested in seeing it.

~~~
ja27
For the most part I like the Flickr UI. It takes a bit to understand
photostreams, sets, collections, and group pools, and the online organizer is
a little different. But for the most part it's efficient and is broken a lot
less of the time that Facebook's photos.

But my average friend that would go look at my Flickr photos can't figure out
how to navigate or download full-resolution. (That's mostly other parents.)

Leaving Flickr pro does mean losing letting other people download full-
resolution of my photos, but I can only think of a handful of photos where
that impacts me. I can upload those other places for free. It does mean only
seeing my last 200 photos in my photostream, but apparently all my photos
already added to groups will remain visible in the group pools. There's some
other pro benefits like number of sets, set size, video length, etc. that I
don't think will bother me at all.

I think they're in a tough spot of giving too much to free users and not
enough benefit to Pro users. I can't argue with their price though. I've
considered dropping pro before but $29 for the year is an easy payment to
make. The last two years I've just shrugged and payed it rather than deal with
it.

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TanisDLC
I feel that Flickr is going about it all wrong. They host pictures, but they
lack focus. IMHO they should begin offering ways for their hobbyist audience
to make money.

1) Allow companies to post picture descriptions they want, and allow Flickr
users submit entries for those requests. Companies can buy the images they
want; Flickr makes a small royalty per transaction.

2) Host a Stock Photo interface for users who want to participate. Users who
submit entries for photo requests, which are not accepted, can be moved to
their stock area.

3) Use their audience to build an online photography service directory -
complete with galleries for each photographer represented. Allow customers to
book and rate directly through the site.

~~~
_delirium
They have an attempt to go in that direction, though it's not that
streamlined: <http://www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages/>

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noahc
Is there a business opportunity here? Backup all your crap around the web and
then allow you to reupload it to another service with one click?

EDIT: My point was more to pull in all data flickr, linkedin, facebook,
twitter, myspace, hacker news, reddit, digg etc. Not just a single source, but
all your web data and then upload it a new site if it is applicable.
Obviously, it wouldn't make sense to upload your hacker news data somewhere
else, but it might make sense to go back and pull out something for use
elsewhere.

~~~
jedschmidt
This is already possible with Flickr photos, thanks to flickrtouchr and
Dropbox:

    
    
        git clone https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr.git
        cd flickrtouchr
        python flickrtouchr.py ~/Dropbox/myphotos

~~~
bootload

      # TODO set up sidecar
      # write_sidecar(photoid, photo.getAttribute("secret"), dir)
    

I'll have a look through this - looks like it also allows for metadata capture
and I can see some code not implemented ~
[https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr/blob/master/flickrt...](https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr/blob/master/flickrtouchr.py)
more here ~ <http://hivelogic.com/articles/backing-up-flickr>

------
jchrisa
Linked to <http://unhosted.org> and <http://couchapp.org> in the comments --
glad to see these sorts of concerns becoming more mainstream.

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davi
Pro users want access to a social network that has gotten huge because it's
free. The pro users are nervous because free=fragile.

This brings to mind Fred Wilson's recent call for content shifting tools
(<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/content-shifting.html>,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085455>).

------
ammmir
this reminds me of the geocities shutdown. you can't trust companies enough to
keep data available and around forever. if you get too popular, controversial,
or inactive, you should accept the fact that your data could be removed at any
time.

~~~
pyre
Even when you're paying them for the service?

"Sorry. We know that you were paying us monthly/yearly for the service, but
you've been inactive for too long. We're going to deactivate your account"

That doesn't seem right to me.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> That doesn't seem right to me.

Alas, that doesn't matter - what matters is the contract you agreed to when
paying them.

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hopeless
"If you value your online photos, pay for the hosting and they'll still be
around next year"

That's been Smugmug's matra for years and I truely believe it, which is why
I've been hosting my photos there for about 4 years now. I was burned by the
closure of other free online galleries back in the early 2000's.

It's also helped to shape my strategy when choosing other online services: if
it's important to me and you won't take money for it, I'll assume you'll be
dead soon and avoid your service altogether (the exception is Gmail).

~~~
derobert
Google will happily take your money:
<https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage>

------
jarek
I paid for my Flickr account and hope to continue paying for it, but at the
same time I would feel better if they had explicit export/backup
functionality.

I hope if Yahoo! can't keep on supporting Flickr they will at least be able to
sell it off to someone who will. It does have some revenue.

------
RyanMcGreal
> Here’s a way EmanciPay will help newspapers.

Sigh. [http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-
wont...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-
publishers/)

------
PaulHoule
I'm not so pessimistic about advertising, but I am pessimistic about Yahoo's
stewardship of Flickr. After all, Yahoo deep-sixed geocities, and would have
turned off delicious if they'd been able to get away with it.

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enneff
I wrote this tool to export your photos from Flickr a few years ago. It should
still work: <http://nf.wh3rd.net/flickr-rip.tar.gz>

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jacques_chester
Ah, Emancipay. I reviewed them as part of my work on what is a very similar
idea. My notes say "Academics who have not implemented anything". Hmm.

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rorrr
People should stop posting every single shitty photo they take. What is the
point of that? Follow the links to the author's flick account. It's full of
complete garbage. Not just garbage, but also repetitive garbage. There are
sets of nearly identical tasteless snapshots. Who gives a fuck if you lose
them? Its intrinsic value being displayed on a public photo site is zero. Just
dump them on a hard drive, no need to display your garbage publicly.

~~~
pahu
I'd have to agree. The way that the author uses Flickr is pretty pointless.

