SmugMug acquires Flickr: Two passionate communities together at last.

leftquark

(From our blog)

SmugMug + Flickr together at last.

We are thrilled to announce that SmugMug has acquired Flickr. We couldn’t be more excited to unite two brands that share the same mission, passions, and values.

In a way, our communities existed long before our brands were established. Photographers have always found ways to connect with one another to share their passion, work, and inspiration. Both SmugMug and Flickr were born from a passion for photography and a mission to support the community we were already a part of.

For 15 years, SmugMug has built products that reflect exactly what we believe: that photography is the global language of storytelling. Flickr is the other side of the same coin. Since 2004, they’ve established themselves as a home where photographers can go to inspire and be inspired, to share, learn, meet new friends, and share a piece of the soul that unites us all: storytelling.

Together we are home to the creators, the shutter pressers, the doers and makers. We’re home to you. Home is where you can hang your hat and kick up your feet. It’s also where you can go to work on your passion. Relax. Reload. Refine. Bring your authentic self. Dare to risk and grow.
Join us.

Learn more about the acquisition and our future together here: https://www.smugmug.com/together

Have more questions? We’ve got plenty of answers here: https://www.smugmug.com/together/faq

ivanboden

How will this acquisition affect Flickr users? What changes can we expect to SmugMug and Flickr due to this acquisition? An insight would be helpful! Thank you!

cendrinemedia

I, for one, am very excited to read such news. Flickr needs a revival!

leftquark

@ivanboden said:
How will this acquisition affect Flickr users? What changes can we expect to SmugMug and Flickr due to this acquisition? An insight would be helpful! Thank you!

You can find answers to this on our FAQ here: https://www.smugmug.com/together/faq

For example:

What immediate changes can we expect on Flickr or SmugMug services as a result of the deal?
We don’t have any plans for immediate changes. If we make any changes, we’re going to make sure the changes are for the better. We’ll make sure to involve our loyal customers in the process as we grow both SmugMug and Flickr. Have no worries, Flickr will stay Flickr and SmugMug will stay SmugMug, but together both will get even better.

We look forward to finding opportunities to improve both the SmugMug and Flickr experiences, companies and products. For updates please stand by.

What’s SmugMug’s vision for the combined businesses?
SmugMug and Flickr represent the world’s most influential community of photographers, and there is strength in numbers. We want to provide photographers with both inspiration and the tools they need to tell their stories. We want to bring excitement and energy to inspire more photographers to share their perspective. And we want to be a welcome place for all photographers: hobbyist to archivist to professional.

kygarden

Hopefully this means (on the Flickr side) I can finally get rid of my Yahoo account. I avoid visiting their horrible site like the plague (the Yahoo and Yahoo Mail sites), but occasionally I need to go there to get into the mail for Flickr related things. It will be nice to have my mostly neglected Flickr account linked to SmugMug rather than Yahoo.

Antonio Correia

I am on both platforms. In both I have private photos.
All private photos will be kept as so, needless to ask. Right ?

I quote from your mail:
"...If you want to keep your Flickr account and data from being transferred, you must go to your Flickr account to download the photos and videos you want to keep, then delete your account from your Account Settings by May 25, 2018."
I am missing something here.
So, do I delete the account in Flickr or not if I want to keep it ?
Apparently if I delete the account all would be gone...
I must be doing an erroneous interpretation. (non English native speaker)
Thank you !

leftquark

@kygarden said:
Hopefully this means (on the Flickr side) I can finally get rid of my Yahoo account. I avoid visiting their horrible site like the plague (the Yahoo and Yahoo Mail sites), but occasionally I need to go there to get into the mail for Flickr related things. It will be nice to have my mostly neglected Flickr account linked to SmugMug rather than Yahoo.

For the short term, you'll still login with your Yahoo account but since we have to get Flickr off of Yahoo's infrastructure, improving logging in will be something we'll tackle and make much better!

@Antonio Correia said:
I am on both platforms. In both I have private photos.
All private photos will be kept as so, needless to ask. Right ?

You are correct, they'll stay private and safe!

@Antonio Correia said:
"...If you want to keep your Flickr account and data from being transferred, you must go to your Flickr account to download the photos and videos you want to keep, then delete your account from your Account Settings by May 25, 2018."
I am missing something here.
So, do I delete the account in Flickr or not if I want to keep it ?

Photos on Flickr will remain on Flickr. Flickr will continue to operate exactly as its been, however, we will be transferring the infrastructure to servers in SmugMug's control (the company ... not SmugMug the app/platform), at which point the data will live on our servers using our new Flickr Terms of Service and Privacy Statement. If you do not want your data to be moved into SmugMugs control, then you would want to download/delete your account. If you want your Flickr photos to remain safe and continue operating as they are on Flickr, and are willing to accept the new terms, then there's nothing you need to do.

Does that help?

lancerogers

I wonder if you all are watching the Help Forums or what is going on over at Flickr at the moment. They have been having severe issues for days now and their response time to help inquires is abysmal. Almost 24 hours passed before they acknowledged they had a DB error affecting a limited number of users. Now this morning, near pandemonium as the help forums explode. Really leaving a black eye on flickr leading up to Smug taking it over. I've been a Pro user at flickr for 10 years now and I am seriously considering dumping it all together over this. Not sure what the terms of the acquisition were, but if they had anything to do with paying members, I suspect they are leaving in droves right now. Might be worth looking into what they are required to do until the transition actually occurs.

jemostrom

@lancerogers said:
but if they had anything to do with paying members, I suspect they are leaving in droves right now.

I had cancelled my Pro subscription the week before the announcement ... I'm going to resubscribe. So at least one going in the other direction

Dyun

If only my SmugMug galleries could automatically become my flickr galleries, ensuring that my images can be viewed at their best quality and making it needless to upload photos to two different places. Also the flickr discussion groups are awesome as far as membership, knowledge and discussion goes, but they are not easy to navigate. There's a lot of menu diving that needs to happen in order to access them. They have very limited functionality and options for text. Would be great if these things could be improved.

sallyb

Like quite a few people I was thinking of letting my Flickr! Pro subscription slide this year but I guess I will give it one more year and see what changes come.