Originally Posted by paulbrock Every time a photo site updates its interface it makes SM look older. Flickr and Google+ Photos are providing gorgeous, mobile friendly ways of sharing photographs, 500px has had a revamp recently too as well. Yes, Smug doesn't have the resources of Google or Yahoo(Flickr) but they really need to step it up. They're being left behind.

Yep, that is just the point! They (SmugMug ) do not have the resources, but then they do charge x times the amount... I think the competition is getting though also, 500px is gorgeous, and it isn't costly, great mobile viewing (becoming important these days) ... and 500px 75$ / year for unlim storage... (sorry SmugMug for the price mentioning, but hey, just look at how these sites evolved the last year, and compare that with their priceplan...)

Originally Posted by paulbrock Every time a photo site updates its interface it makes SM look older...

Remember the alpha preview, how modern it looked? Those were the days, hey? ;)

Originally Posted by PB775A Yep, that is just the point! They (SmugMug ) do not have the resources, but then they do charge x times the amount... I think the competition is getting though also, 500px is gorgeous, and it isn't costly, great mobile viewing (becoming important these days) ... and 500px 75$ / year for unlim storage... (sorry SmugMug for the price mentioning, but hey, just look at how these sites evolved the last year, and compare that with their priceplan...)

I'm not going to try defending or delving into all the issues with the delays of the new design, but I understand better now (after reading the info Baldy has relayed & other info too). I was for awhile rather impatient too, but now just feeling a little more like "good things come to those who wait"! There are smaller fixes that I've wished for for years now that I'm actually more impatient for. And more than any excellent new displays, I'd like a crop tool that's large & accurate & has a bunch more ratios (especially the obvious ones like 1:2) But anyway, I want to clarify some stuff about these "other sites" or "competition" that are being lumped into the same category with SmugMug, and the wide comparisons I see people trying to make. I've been "on" some of these other sites enough to gather info. And I'm actually a member of 500px, just for an additional "front" for a certain select few of my photos. Let me just say: what the sites mentioned here actually offer, in comparison to SmugMug (even taking into consideration the $$) is very very very minimal. In most cases, I'd say the under-the-hood offerings of these sites can't even hold a candle to SmugMug.

Yes, 500px may have "unlimited storage". But you add ONE display copy (& have to take time to watermark it yourself if you want any protection), you cannot change the order of your photos at all (except in groups), and if you want to offer it for sale, you upload a second, larger file for sale & it will print at one crop size which the site dictates, on canvas only! Any 3:4 ratio photos will get cropped to heck. (Oh, & the customer can't even see the crop!) I don't foresee many actual sales happening there; how many people really want a large canvas as their only choice? This is just a tiny handful of examples of the limited capability of some of "the other sites". I could go on & on with that particular one. It may have one or two uses or benefits for me, but on SmugMug I have a huge gamut of possibilities that simply don't exist there. Cats & sub-cats are way more manageable & visible here, we get more keywords & can order them. Descriptions are non-existent there except on a photo... no category descriptions at all! No uploading of PSDs, TIFFs, videos, etc... just Jpegs. Another irritation is that your photos & thumbs are displayed almost everywhere on that site as squares, and there are areas of the site where squares are really useless when your original is rectangular. Sure, it looks pretty up-front, but when you're shown an "original" thumb of your upload that's for print (for your eyes only), do you really want a square thumb, so that there's nothing to even tell that thumb apart from another similar photo in a different orientation?! It's pretty ridiculous. I could never use that site as my main, sole photo site & be anywhere near happy. As a supplement, it's an OK fling, & yeah, the surface look is slick.. for now.

As far as that other place mentioned (the one starting with "F"), the biggest nasty thing about them is they strip out the photo's data like FB does, from what I understand, & any photo uploaded there is likely to become orphaned very easily. Also, displays are very limited and certainly no prettier than Smug's displays even at their best. SmugMug keeps your file intact, and has all kinds of ways of allowing the use of several file sizes for various purposes. And even though the watermarking is imperfect & needs updating (especially orientation), we have lots more possibilities for watermarking here than most sites have.

Yeah, I've tried other sites now & then just to see what they're like, but I always run into a lot of stuff within a few days that feels so limited compared with what we've got here. I know it all depends what's important to you, but it feels to me like there's very little you absolutely can't do here if you want, & the per-month cost (even now) provides a lot of services that I just can't find elsewhere. SmugVault is a huge bargain too: I pay a few bucks a month for storage of hundreds of huge non-Jpeg files in huge sizes. That few bucks allows me to sleep at night, knowing Smug's storage in several states is guarding my work for me. In conclusion, my main point is--- yeah, you'll see other sites that look slick on the surface, but you really have to ask yourself whether it holds up once you get down through the layers & into the nitty-gritty of photographer and customer / client capability. I think for a lot of us, another $10 to $20 a month more than the other site (the cost of a few lattes!) is well worth it for what we're getting. I do trust that SmugMug is gonna come through with the new design. But I do wish we'd have a new beta -peek or trial version of where it's at now, with new feedback discussions started, because without that it feels like Smug users' input is being disregarded & makes people much more antsy & distrustful. In other words, we don't know what's been heard, what's not, etc. I think a lot of us just want to know that all that feedback we took the time to do before is ongoing and/or being paid attention, & to see that some of those things have already been worked into the new design/s. It's like the whole fruitful discussion just completely stopped, and no one seems to explain why.

Originally Posted by etchedinpixels Thanks for the summary, TBT. I'm pretty new around here. Could you summarize what the lawsuit/patent troll issue is? What are they being sued over?

Oh, boy. They're pretty numerous to enumerate.

Here's an example: we were sued by VPS, who holds three patents with claims about pro photographers selling online. They also sued 5 of our pro photographer subscribers in the Chicago area who use SmugMug. The essence of the patents are if you upload photos, enable a second user (the photographer's customer) to access them and buy prints, you violate their patents.

On that particular case we spent around $2.5 million in attorney fees and a long trial in Chicago where we defended ourselves and our 5 customers. Before the trial came to conclusion, both sides agreed to settle for a sum I can't disclose. My understanding is Pictage made their settlement amount public at $3.9 million, but I don't know if that's accurate. I can say that we own a license for those patents now as a result of the settlement, so our customers shouldn't be sued by VPS. I know Pictage and Shutterfly do too, but I don't know about others. I would imagine all photo sites who get big enough and the customers who use them will be subject to these patents and perhaps that's why Zenfolio felt they had to sell, I have no idea.

That's one of seven patent issues/lawsuits we've faced but I can't talk about what happened with most of the others, I'm sorry to say, nor a big one we're dealing with now that is preventing us from offering a feature most of you want.

Oh, sorry, I didn't think to Google and see that there are several VPS's. Here's the one I was referring to:

http://digital2noise.blogspot.com/20...y-robbery.html

I guess the Fotomedia lawsuit was a matter of public record too:

http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_p...-lawsuits.html

That one ended some photo sharing sites. It was based on us including photos in share emails.