FLickr now owned by SmugMug

I got this email from Flickr so thought i’d pass it on since some here trying to find a image hosting website . You might want to read it all . I had a funny feeling Flickr would change this year sometime so earlier this year I pulled all my images off Flickr . If anyone disagrees with SMUGMUG they have until the 25th of May to delete their account . This is from Flickr :

We’re excited to announce thatFlickr has agreed to be acquired by SmugMug, the photographyplatform dedicated to visual storytellers.

SmugMug has a long history of empoweringpeople who love photography and who want to improve theircraft, making them a perfect fit for Flickr and our creativecommunity. With SmugMug, we’ll continue to focus on you,the Flickr members who inspire us all with your work.Nothing will change immediately with regard to yourFlickr account. You will still access Flickr with yourcurrent login credentials and you will have the same Flickrexperience as you do now. We will continue to work to makeyour Flickr experience even better.We think you are going to love Flickr under SmugMugownership, but you can choose to not have your Flickraccount and data transferred to SmugMug until May 25, 2018.If you want to keep your Flickr account and data from beingtransferred, you must go to your Flickraccount to download the photos and videos you want tokeep, then delete your account from your AccountSettings by May 25, 2018.If you do not delete your account by May 25, 2018, yourFlickr account and data will transfer to SmugMug and will begoverned by SmugMug’s Termsand PrivacyPolicy.Read more detailed FAQs about this transition on theFlickr Blog.We’re happy that Flickr is your home for photographyand we look forward to the next chapter in our adventuretogether as we join the SmugMug family.
Thanks,
The FlickrTeam

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I have a free account with FLickr and the big question is whether its called FLickr or SmugMug, whether there will still be an area that remains free. Your email gives better insight than any information I pulled up in a quick overview when I first became aware of the change. Since I don’t sell from online sites, although I’ve thought SmugMug was one of the best, I’m not looking to incur a monthly “rental”. The fact that downloading pictures is mentioned seems to me that it’s pay the fee or lose the exposure. I had joined FLickr when Webshots shut down along with many others who did the same. Initially, the group was run by some very cool people but as changes took place and those people left or passed away, one of the users hogged the site with his own mundane images and it no longer held the same interest. I’m still sitting with the downloaded files from Webshots…no rhyme or reason as to how they had been sorted…easier to find my originals than decipher each photo individually…here we go again.

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Well Flickr was always my choice and I still have the free account . Only reason I took mine off was because when Photo Bucket pulled their stunt and a lot of people got locked out until they paid a required amount and they couldn’t delete their photos . I just didn’t want to take that chance of loosing control of my images in case Flickr and other sites started following suit . Where I work has there own ISP data center and just from knowing how they are always careful with room on there data machines I can understand why large companies that host images for customers like Flickr or PB would start charging a small fee for the consumer to host their images . Actually i’m surprised there are any sites available free anymore and someday I do see them all going away except for pd accounts . Mainly i’m just letting all know that there is a change with Flickr cause a lot of people get surprised when changes are made .

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From what I read later, Flickr would be keeping the free accounts but they do give you the opportunity to download your files. The way they show up, they are pretty much in the same sort as they were online so you do have the opportunity to download them to a similarly labeled folder which Webshots did not. I have almost 2000 pictures up there and I’ve started to download them “in case” but I won’t delete them from the account. I had a bottom rung paid account with Picturetrails because I used more storage space than the free service allowed. When renewal came up, the paid services offered only a fraction of storage of what other services were offering so I did not renew but took everything off that did not fit into their free service.requirements. Most of what was left were banner images for websites that I did not own or control. Since I did not renew, I was locked out even from the “free” storage ability.

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