2022 Updated Original Post July 2020
Today’s rant is about Flickr. Flickr was a great website until Yahoo bought it and ruined it. Then it was bought by SmugMug. Under SmugMug it went even more downhill.
All I wanted to do was log in my free account and give a few people a few favorites or likes, but I can’t. I think they deleted all the free accounts. So, just be warned if you have Flickr you won’t get likes or acknowledgement. Photographers who pay for Flickr don’t give a fig about other people’s photos. Casual users are willing to give a like, but artists and photographers are too busy with their own art to care about other people’s art. It’s a colony of self-centered people touting their own name and brand (sort of like Instagram is now). I only remember Flickr exists if I find a photo in a Google Search that links to it. Otherwise I would never think about it at all. I had some dolls friends on Flickr, but I can see them on Facebook. 2022 Updated: Many people left Facebook including doll people some of them, I can’t see or find at all. 😦
Looking Back at the History of Flickr USA Today Article Quote From
The mostly free Flickr was founded in 2004 and played a central role in the cultural and social life of the Internet. Friendships were forged on Flickr as people shared photographs and others commented on them.
Stewart Butterfield born in 1973 started Flickr and I really loved it. I had a paid membership and I had met a lot of friends. As soon as Yahoo bought Flickr in only 2005 they ruined it completely. The first thing they did was try to force everyone to create a Yahoo ID to keep your photos. Then SmugMug, a very expensive all paid site (I am recalling a price of 50 dollars per month) wanted people to leave Flickr. They claimed I could migrate my photos into SmugMug, but it did not import any of the little notes I had written about each doll, outfit or plant or flower. It did not include the metadata on the photos. I declined the SmugMug offer. But, then SmugMug bought the Flickr in 2018. It turns out they threatened to delete unpaid account photos but never did because they are holding them hostage. I am sure this is some trick like you “have to pay” if you want to “get your photos back”. I never suggest anyone use public online storage for your photos. Use a private cloud storage.
SmugMug made Flickr even less fun then Yahoo had. Photos appear to be all reduced in size and made into Tiff or Jiff files instead of Jpegs. I don’t know what is up with that. Flickr was a brilliant startup that was ruined by big corporate business, because they wanted to throw their weight around and force everyone to pay up. I deleted all my Flickr Photos and now I just have a plain account with my name so I can log in and look at photos.
Macy Makes Magic 