Flickr

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Flickr
Flickr logo
Flickr main page on 2018-07-05
Flickr main page on 2018-07-05
URL https://www.flickr.com/
Status Online!
Archiving status Unknown
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #flickrfckr (on hackint)

Flickr is an image and video hosting website currently owned by SmugMug, formerly owned by Yahoo!. Any data uploaded can be private or public.

Backup Tools

  • Flickr Edit includes Flickr Backup
  • Photo and Metadata Backup for Flickr
  • This blog post documents the flickrtouchr Flickr backup tool. It backs up the full sized versions of your images but it doesn't currently backup metadata.
  • This blog post documents the flickrbackup tool. Based on flickrtouchr, it also backs up flickr metadata, storing it as EXIF tags within the images.
  • https://straup.github.io/parallel-flickr/
  • flickrmirrorer is a small command-line python script that creates a local backup of your Flickr data. It mirrors images, titles, description, tags, albums and collections. It does not backup comments. It also does not preserve order of photos in photostream (though you can emulate it sorting by upload timestamp) and order of albums in collections.
  • flickr-backup backups Flickr photosets, photos, and JSON metadata. Pagination is not handled yet, so if you have any sets with more than 500 photos or comments they won't all be downloaded.
  • backup-all-my-flickr-photos downloads all your Flickr photos and videos.
  • easyflickrbackup backup all your photos from Flickr.
  • If you have your iPhoto connected with your Flickr account, you can back up your pictures on Flickr through iPhoto.
  • flickr2ia: backup photos (not videos) and metadata (not comments). Example.
  • gallery-dl downloads images from many photo galleries, including Flickr, without an API key

Vital Signs

Seems to be stable, can probably change at any time.

May 2013 update: new interface; apparently very overloaded and masses of pro users abandoning the place, deleting their profiles and/or wishing to archive it.

Nov 2014 update: Yahoo's step to sell the CC-licensed pictures upset a lot of users (who obviously did not understand this license) and may now want to delete their accounts (with up to 10k images each).

Dec 2015 update: Yahoo!'s Action Plan in their 2015 shareholder presentation mentions killing Flickr.

May 2018 update: Flickr is bought by SmugMug.

Nov 2018 update: Free accounts with over 1000 pictures got frozen on 2019-01-08 and will be trimmed to the first 1000 pictures on 2019-02-05.[1] See section below for details.

Dec 2019 update: Flickr's still having financial issues and is asking people to subscribe to Pro.[2][3]

2019 free accounts trimming

Flickr 2019 deletion
Status Special case
Archiving status Partially saved
Archiving type Unknown
Project source flickr-grab flickr-items
Project tracker flickr
IRC channel #flickrfckr (on hackint)
Data[how to use] archiveteam_flickr

Free accounts with over 1000 pictures are going to be frozen on 2019-01-08, and trimmed to the first 1000 pictures only on 2019-02-05, with all the remaining pictures to be deleted on that day.[1] Creative Commons is working with SmugMug to preserve the freely licensed (and public domain?) images.[4] Flickr has promised not to delete images that were already uploaded with a Creative Commons license before 2018-11-01.[5][6] On 2019-02-06, USA TODAY reported that the deadline had been shifted to 2019-03-12[7], though no official public announcement on the website is available and the "lookingahead" page still mentions the February 5 date.

It's not clear whether Flickr will send custom notices to users spelling out clearly which of their files will be deleted.

Some users only understood that uploads will be frozen, but not that the extra files will actually vanish. Indeed, https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead[IAWcite.todayMemWeb] only states this clearly in the asterisk footnote at the very end.

Some users had problems completing payments or accessing their accounts, for instance those who are locked out of their Yahoo account since 2013 theft of 3 billion accounts.

Users who logged in and had more than 1000 photos were shown a popup notice warning "Your uploads will be locked soon", which did not clearly mention deletions. Only on 2019-01-09 the warning turned red and stated "Your photos are at risk of deletion soon".

Several email notices were reportedly being sent, often with unclear subjects which did not make users understand the topic and urgency, such as "Important information about your Flickr account".

As of 2019-01-09, "locked" accounts were still able to upload new photos via the app.[8]

2020 pricing and campaign

On 2019-12-20, Flickr sent a letter to all users to encourage more pro subscriptions and announcing a future price increase. The CEO later downplayed.

Dear friends,

Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.

Two years ago, Flickr was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Our company, SmugMug, stepped in to rescue it from being shut down and to save tens of billions of your precious photos from being erased.

Why? We’ve spent 17 years lovingly building our company into a thriving, family-owned and -operated business that cares deeply about photographers. SmugMug has always been the place for photographers to showcase their photography, and we’ve long admired how Flickr has been the community where they connect with each other. We couldn’t stand by and watch Flickr vanish.

So we took a big risk, stepped in, and saved Flickr. Together, we created the world’s largest photographer-focused community: a place where photographers can stand out and fit in.

We’ve been hard at work improving Flickr. We hired an excellent, large staff of Support Heroes who now deliver support with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%. We got rid of Yahoo’s login. We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way. As a result, pages are already 20% faster and photos load 30% more quickly. Platform outages, including Pandas, are way down. Flickr continues to get faster and more stable, and important new features are being built once again.

Our work is never done, but we’ve made tremendous progress.

Now Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough.

We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.

We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.

Flickr is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. It’s the world’s best way to find great photography and connect with amazing photographers. Flickr hosts some of the world’s most iconic, most priceless photos, freely available to the entire world. This community is home to more than 100 million accounts and tens of billions of photos. It serves billions of photos every single day. It’s huge. It’s a priceless treasure for the whole world. And it costs money to operate. Lots of money.

Flickr is not a charity, and we’re not asking you for a donation. Flickr is the best value in photo sharing anywhere in the world. Flickr Pro members get ad-free browsing for themselves and their visitors, advanced stats, unlimited full-quality storage for all their photos, plus premium features and access to the world’s largest photographer-focused community for less than $5 per month.

You likely pay services such as Netflix and Spotify at least $9 per month. I love services like these, and I’m a happy paying customer, but they don’t keep your priceless photos safe and let you share them with the most important people in your world. Flickr does, and a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $1 per week.

Please, help us make Flickr thrive. Help us ensure it has a bright future. Every Flickr Pro subscription goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great new experiences for photographers like you. We are building lots of great things for the Flickr community, but we need your help. We can do this together.

We’re launching our end-of-year Pro subscription campaign on Thursday, December 26, but I want to invite you to subscribe to Flickr Pro today for the same 25% discount.

We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize Flickr for cost savings wherever possible, but the increasing cost of operating this enormous community and continuing to invest in its future will require a small price increase early in the new year, so this is truly the very best time to upgrade your membership to Pro.

If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.

With gratitude,

Don MacAskill Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek

SmugMug + Flickr

2022 Only Pro accounts can create moderate or restricted content

Flickr posted details on their help forum on 17 March. Some extracts:

Today we’re announcing some upcoming changes to our Terms of Service that will help us continue to preserve the art, expression, history, stories, and memories of all Flickr members for the next hundred years. These changes fall into two distinct buckets, and will affect Flickr free members. The first change relates to restricted and moderate content. (You might call it NSFW, or explicit, or other terms, but we’ve gone ahead and defined them for Flickr here.)

...

To support these creators, and ensure that their communities continue to thrive, the ability to share restricted and moderate content will be reserved for Flickr Pro members.

...

The second change relates to non-public photo limits. Flickr is all about sharing photos, giving feedback, finding inspiration, and connecting with your fellow photographers. It’s a lot harder to do any of that with non-public photos. With that in mind, we’re limiting free accounts to 50 non-public photos (e.g. photos marked as private, friends, family, or friends and family.

API

Documentation

Other

It seems a .flickr top-level domain is registered.

See also

References