/u/onethumb have a response to this apparent false or at least misleading info?
Hey regisfrost,
I'm the CEO & Chief Geek at SmugMug and Flickr. I'm very sorry about that. We try hard to be very clear in our communications, especially about our partner discounts and deals, and we definitely made a mistake here.
We've updated the page to be more clear about the Adobe discount, which is pretty typical for Adobe (first year discount only). Thanks for the correction, and I'm sorry again for the confusion. Certainly wasn't our intent.
There are more partner deals coming, so keep an eye on that page, but a permanent Adobe discount, alas, isn't one of them.
Thanks again!
I answered some questions here on Reddit in an AMA a few months ago and wanted to come back to answer any more questions that may have come up in the meantime.
I'll be answering questions here from 9am Pacific until 10, and then back again at 3pm Pacific for another hour.
Thanks for participating! :)
EDIT @ 10:18am PDT: Ok, done for the morning. Thanks so much for the great questions & feedback. Back at 3pm Pacific for more!
EDIT @ 3:05pm PDT: Back in the saddle. Posted already, but forgot to update here. On until 4! Thanks for being here.
EDIT @ 4:14pm PDT: And we're out. Thanks so much for all the great questions, I'm sorry I couldn't get to all of them. Hope it was fun for you and you learned a lot. I know I did.
hrm, you know, I think it may be because of my grandfathered perspective. I've been paying $25/yr since... since a long time. Come March, that's a doubling in price for me (and a lot of old pros). I get it. I can swing it. But I also get the "outrage". $25/yr was low enough to be "eh, lets keep hoping" but I think psychologically, $50/yr is like a "wait, what am I paying for now?" (coupled with the new ownership, so that's hard, too).
I can't imagine how the free users feel. I know you said they are small but vocal, but sadly, they can really affect the image (I know, I hate this too).
The biggest challenge I think you have is conveying what it really costs to run Flickr. In the age of unlimited Google Photo storage, it's a hard sell. I'm not sure you're competing with that exactly, but how users/media perceive it.
Thanks for the reply and the context. Makes sense now and I understand where you're coming from. Yahoo announced the $50 price point more than 3 years ago, with a 2-year grandfathered grace period, long before we bought them. That doesn't change the fact that you probably wish it were still $25, though.
For what it's worth, even if Yahoo hadn't already announced and implemented the change to $50, we would have had to anyway. $25/year isn't sustainable for all the things you get with Pro. I hope you find them valuable and worth it, but if not or there's another service that provides better value for $50/year, I'd love to know about it so we can make sure we understand.
Thanks again!
This goes into communications then. Because I certainly wasn't aware of the 2 year grandfathered grace period under Yahoo. I thought we were in it for good (though, in retrospect, should have figured it'd only be "until they're done with offering that").
My other problem is I already also pay for SmugMug. There's a bit of overlap I think, which is partly why I hope there's some combo offer. But I do think $50 will still be rough for a lot of folks. It's not that they aren't "true photographers" but in the face of $50 vs other free alternatives, it may drive away people to a different community.
Yes, we're certainly hearing about customers who are paying for both platforms and might like a simpler bill, a discount, etc. Nothing to announce, but we're listening and thinking. Thanks!
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I always liked flickr's creative commons tagging options. I used it to host pictures I gave out with creative commons attribute license. Would be nice if those wouldn't count to the total.
Stay tuned. https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill/status/1058849546862714880
Disclaimer: I'm the CEO & Chief Geek at SmugMug/Flickr.
I do wish there was some way to deal with that issue without deleting photos, but I honestly can't think of one. And there will always be someone right at that cutoff no matter what cutoff they choose. I'm happy enough to keep renewing my pro account - but I do think the service is worse off for any removal of photos.
They could just do a yearly upload limit for free accounts. Limited to uploading 200 photos per year or something like that. That makes way more sense to me.
That crowd largely left for other platforms (Instagram) eons ago. Right now the mission is to get them back, which is a lot harder than getting them there in the first place.
Thing is though. Flickr is superior to instagram in the sense that photos can be displayed in full resolution. And the groups feature can be used to build a sense of community. That's the only reason why I never moved to instagram.
They could just do a yearly upload limit for free accounts. Limited to uploading 200 photos per year or something like that. That makes way more sense to me.
Alas, this just doesn't work because the Free accounts cost basis just keep climbing over time, making something like this change inevitable.
I suppose if we could accurately predict future storage costs, *maybe* some very low limit on growth would work, but since I don't have a crystal ball... :(
Disclaimer: I'm the CEO & Chief Geek at SmugMug/Flickr.
That's what I think. I think they plan to push Flickr users to smug mug then close Flickr.
Smugmug is a bit more expensive, but feels like a service that's worth paying for.
This is not going to happen. We love Flickr and are heavily investing in its future.
Well I'm glad I saw this post. I wouldn't have known and my photos would just be deleted. I have no problem paying fo the service but I wish Flikr had a way for me to just download my entire collection in one go.
We do! It's right on your Account page, one click. Holler if we can help.
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Hi Reddit!
I'm Don MacAskill, Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek of SmugMug.
We started SmugMug in 2002 because we couldn't find an online service that truly loved and cared about photography. We believed there was a need for a service that kept photos safe, helped them look their best, and focused on the customer - photographers - above all else. So we built one.
15 years later, we operate at large scale with billions of photos and millions of customers and we're still putting them first. On top of our subscription service, we work with 4 different print labs around the world to deliver a wide range of high-quality prints & gifts for photographers and their visitors.
One common misconception about us is that we're only for professionals. In reality, pro photographers make up about a third of our customers, with families, travelers, enthusiasts and more making up the bulk. If you love photography, as far as we're concerned, you're one of us.
Which is why it made such sense for us to buy Flickr when the opportunity came up. Yahoo (now part of Oath, which is owned by Verizon) did a wonderful thing for photographers worldwide when they chose us as Flickr's new home. We've loved the photography community for more than 15 years and we're thrilled to be putting two of the biggest services together.
I'm sure the r/photography community (and the photography community at large!) has many questions for SmugMug and Flickr so I'm here to answer as many as I can.
Please remember that I'm new to running Flickr and that the deal doesn't close for another week, so I'm still learning and haven't actually done anything yet, but I will answer everything I can. :)
Thanks,
Don
P.S. At u/Frostickle's suggestion, this AMA is being posted at 6am Pacific time, but I will be answering questions from 9am Pacific time, to collect more questions & allow voting to happen.
EDIT @ 1:53pm PDT: I'm still answering as many questions as I can, but I have to take a break and run to a meeting until ~3:30pm PDT. I'll be back, keep the comments, questions, and votes coming so I know what to tackle next. And thanks so much for engaging - this is fun and I'm learning a lot.
EDIT @ 3:38pm PDT: I'm back! Sorry I'm a few minutes late, but about to dig in and see what else I can answer. Keep those votes and questions coming. I'll try to hit the highest voted ones first, so please vote for any you find interesting. I'll post here again when I'm finally out of time for the day. Thanks again!
EDIT @ 5:35pm PDT: Ok, I think I'm out of time and, thankfully, mostly out of highly-voted questions. I'm sorry I couldn't get to every single one, but I tried hard. And I promise we'll never stop listening to photographers everywhere and every way we can.
Please do get ahold of us via the usual channels (Twitter, FB, email, etc) if there's anything we can do for you or more questions we can answer. I'm sure some other members of the SmugMug and Flickr teams will wade in here and help answer anything I may have missed. I'm often on Twitter myself so come say hi.
It's been a real pleasure, I had a great time engaging with everyone and learned a lot. Thanks for spending some time with me today. :)
I'm sure this has been asked...but will Creating an account with Flickr still require a Yahoo account. I'm a long time Smugmug user who would be very interested in FLickr as an Instagram alternative. I also have zero interest in setting up a yahoo email account. I would prefer to use my smugmug credentials, and to see an integration between the 2 platforms to make sharing seamless.
Currently it does, but we're working hard to let you bring you own credentials (email, social, etc) and use whatever you like. Big job, hard task, but we're hard at work.
I saw one in Virginia I think. It was late at night, so I could have been tired.
Yep, we have a number of employees with SMUGMUG plates in various states (and some fans!). There is probably one in Virginia. :)
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This just isn't true. We've never been like the roach motel, where your photos check in but they never check out.
You own your photos and you can get them back anytime you'd like. As you pointed out, you can download ZIP files of each gallery pretty easily, but we also have an open API with thousands of developers, many of which write tools that transfer your photos back to your computer or to another cloud service. I've seen a few of those tools linked in this thread.
The only reason SmugMug doesn't write our own bulk downloader is we rarely get asked for it. We build the features & tools our customers ask us for, and that TODO list is years deep. Most of our customers are very happy, as you can see on this thread, and aren't asking for ways to leave.
i just want a site i can easily host uncompressed images in their natural resolution. I've got no problem exporting to jpg, but these usually result in sizes larger than what Imgur supports, and then theres the down-scaling of resolution :/
FWIW, SmugMug does this. We don't touch your originally uploaded file, and you're free to serve it and/or get it back at any time...
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Keybase proof
I hereby claim:
- I am onethumb on reddit.
- I am don on keybase.
- I have a public key whose fingerprint is B604 9E2D B637 CC82 514F 70A6 2ED5 219C F9FB 4656
To claim this, I am signing this object:
{
"body": {
"key": {
"fingerprint": "b6049e2db637cc82514f70a62ed5219cf9fb4656",
"host": "keybase.io",
"key_id": "2ed5219cf9fb4656",
"kid": "010135958e36235925d24203c2c21c6279d02a2deb4d465e0d49e35d18338539c5080a",
"uid": "0bd6898e3df725afee56a96369045300",
"username": "don"
},
"service": {
"name": "reddit",
"username": "onethumb"
},
"type": "web_service_binding",
"version": 1
},
"ctime": 1424816395,
"expire_in": 157680000,
"prev": "eac07a8197d9cc0f1882bc846aed0469f089a724a163cb991f34772a7cb19a2e",
"seqno": 20,
"tag": "signature"
}
with the key from above, yielding:
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: Keybase OpenPGP v2.0.4
Comment: https://keybase.io/crypto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=pOIn
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
Finally, I am proving my reddit account by posting it in /r/KeybaseProofs
woah, he turned that mild-mannered grandma into junkyard dog crazy prison lady.
edit: Thanks so much for my first reddit gold! And to think, just a few weeks ago i had a mere hundred comment karma to my name.
So that's my mom, and the company in question, SmugMug, is my company. And I thought you'd like to know everyone is going to call her Junkyard from now on at the office. :)
Bar's not fake either. I was there, it was real, I'm married to her. She's a badass. See comment above.
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I'm in for at least $111.11. And whatever I can drive from Twitter, FB, etc.
https://twitter.com/#!/DonMacAskill/status/178306599771848704
This wasn't a marketing ploy. This is the way we do business 24/7. Just check our HTTP headers. :)
I'm one of the two founders, CEO, and Chief Geek at SmugMug. As some form of proof, you can see my G+ post about this I just threw up: http://bit.ly/pilI1h
All of our employees are empowered to do whatever it takes to thrill our customers. They don't need to ask management for approval, they don't need to discuss it with anyone else, and they certainly don't need to fear I'll come crashing down on them for giving away the farm. The only way I'll do that is if they don't thrill you.
We're a strange company. The customer comes first, we're private & bootstrapped, very profitable, and we've turned down acquisition offers from everyone you can think of - without even hearing the price. Not because we want some bigger offer - it's because we feel like we've already captured lightning in a bottle and don't want to give it up. We're all having too much fun to let some big corporation ruin the party.
We have a long history of stories like these. We've accepted sheep as payment for accounts (yes, really http://bit.ly/pmgHAX ). We agreed to invest $20K worth of disk storage for a single customer (yes, really http://smu.gs/pZLoFl ). And stories like the one above happen daily - you can see more of them in the comments. To us, they're not remarkable - that's just the way we do business. I wish more companies did, too.
I'm sorry I didn't see the thread until just now - I would have loved to participate yesterday, but I didn't know this was going on. Happy to answer any questions.. Looks like @Tryxia wants me to do an ama, so I'd better get on that...
tl;dr: We don't use the service that failed (EBS).
I almost typed that in my tl;dr, but of course, we do use services at AWS which are based on EBS, so it's not really true. :)
Spreading our work across many AZs was a bigger factor then not using EBS.
That’ll give you a 14MB swap partition that’s actually in RAM, so it’s super-fast.
The whole point of swap is to free up RAM for other processes and virtual memory. There is so much wrong with what he's doing. Notice he says that kswapd stopped running so much, but not that overall system performance improved.
I said "life is back in the fast lane" which I assumed people would understand meant "overall system performance dramatically improved." I guess not?
He's comparing RAID5 on XServe RAID device to S3. That's hardly the cheapest route you can go. Just because he knows how to build a great photo site doesn't mean he's a storage expert.
He could probably beat S3 considerably by using a distributed file system and true commodity disks.
Besides the technical aspects, I would never want to out-source such a critical component of my site to some huge and unmovable company's beta product. Who knows if Amazon will decide to cancel the project when some new random VP takes over that department.
staunch: we use single individual RAW IDE disks now. Your information is out-of-date. :)
And we do, and always have, used a distributed file system. But when you're dealing with >300TB in your filesystem, it can be useful to have some of the chunks be large ones with internal redundancy.
I'm not sure what your definition of "storage expert" is, but I likely qualify. :)
Since I know Jeff Bezos, I'm fairly certain that some "random VP" isn't going to shut down the project, too.
130K for a kitchen, and this idiot expects anyone to feel sorry for him? pah. i'm glad he got screwed.
Obviously you don't know how expensive labor is in Silicon Valley.
12-Year Club
Gilding II
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