This week Yahoo! came out with some big news and changes. They announced yesterday that they had purchased Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion, and then yesterday afternoon they unveiled massive changes to their Flickr photosharing service.
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| Hello old chum |
These changes include a new visual style (reminiscent of Pinterest and recent Google+ changes) and a significant alteration to the way they do business. Previously the site had two options: free and Pro. With free you were limited to displaying only your 200 most recent photos, the photos were size limited and even you couldn't access your originals, you had a 300 mb per month upload bandwidth limit, and several features such as image replacement and image statistics were turned off. With a ~$25 per year Pro account, all these restrictions were lifted, you had unlimited space for photo uploads, and you got a neat little "Pro" tag next to your name.
The new Flickr eliminates these categories and replaces them with a plan where every users gets a staggering 1 terabyte (~500,000 photos) for free, with no monthly upload limits, some limits on display size, and access to your originals. The catch? It's ad-supported. For $50 a month you can ditch the ads, display full images, and get site statistics. If for some inconceivable reason 1TB isn't enough space for you, you can get an extra one for $500 along with all the benefits of an ad free account.
I've been using Flickr since 2008. There were a lot of things I really liked about it, but Yahoo! had left it to linger. The site had fallen behind competitors such as 500px in terms of visual presentation, and the interface on the user end needed some work too. When my pro account ended last year, I decided not to renew. I didn't delete my account, but dropping to the free level made it almost unusual for any sort of serious photographer. I elected to instead primarily share through Google+ and create a highly curated library on 500px. I've actually been missing Flickr a lot though, I met a bunch of awesome people there, and I saw a lot of inspiring images. The announcement of these changes have made the idea of using Flickr again very appealing.
So last night I logged in, took one last look through my photostream, and deleted it all. I'm starting fresh, and I do apologize to any groups my images where in or to people who had favorited them. Flickr showcased some of my best work, but it also contained a good deal of experimentation and junk photos as well. I want to create a more curated experience for people browsing my photos.
My current (highly amended) plan is to use both Google+ and Flickr, with them sharing a lot of the same images. Google+ will probably see some of the more off the cuff or shots that didn't work out just right, but were still kinda neat. My Flickr photostream will be reborn in a more curated form, and 500px will continue to be a highly curated repository for my best/most interesting shots.
To that end, if you prefer using Flickr I have already uploaded all the sets featured in this blog. Here are the links:
I've also got another set ready to go, and I'll be making another post later today hopefully. Enjoy!
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