It has been a month or so since the announcement that Smug Mug had acquired flickr, and I deliberately kept away for making an unresearched comment. I had secretly hoped that it might bring back the community (true social) aspects and culture (to advertising focus profit making). Initially there was little detail other than it will be business as usual, well until May 25th. Not sure what was meant to happen on that day but I did pencil it in my diary.
There where lots of snippets in the photo press and news items that gave nothing away. There is a thread an [Official Thread] and discussion about the aquisistion on flickr, which has a mountain of user reactions (some positive and some very trolly and uninfomed, so like anything on the net these days). I think it is encouraging me, as a long term flickr users not to panic. There is also a very video/story oriented piece Smug Mug & Flickr together that is warm and fuzzy but doesn’t give much away other than it seems to suggest they like photographers, photography and share with like minded folk. All good signs. I’m also not sure why May 25 was mentioned, its this coming friday. Perhaps we’ll all find out then.
I think the best summary of what Smug Mug might bring to Flickr I have read was written on peta pixel by Thomas Hawk a long time serial poster. I’m backing his thoughts.
So why should I be bothered about flickr right now? Well looking at my list of what makes a good photo archive system I realised that dropbox and to some extent OneDrive aren’t really photo centric (eg my first first two important features 1) Photos need to be indexed and catalogued 2) Photo should be easily viewed), Flickr already provides these features and it is free up to 1TB, so I’m adding it to my trial of the free cloud services that could be considered for my photo archive.
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