[scjody]

Smugmug haven't exactly been kind to the Flickr community - they walked back the "free forever" promises made by Marissa Meyer and deleted a lot of photos belonging to anyone who didn't subscribe to a pro plan after the acquisition. I'm not sure how they expect the community to have much goodwill towards them after that move.

[smacktoward]

This was my question as well.

SmugMug presumably did their due diligence before making the acquisition, they should have had a decent idea of what it would cost them to operate Flickr even with the old unlimited-storage model. So I was surprised after they made the acquisition to see them abandon that model and delete tons of images users had uploaded to the service in good faith -- it seemed like the cost of hosting those images was something they should have factored into their planning. But if that's what it takes for them to keep the service up and running, I figured, maybe it's an acceptable sacrifice.

Now they come back a year later and say, whoops, we can't make the math work on this thing even after deleting all those photos. Which makes me wonder if the math ever really worked -- if they ever had a realistic plan for operating this service at all -- or if they just saw it was up for sale cheap one day, and bought it without really working out the business end of the equation. Statements like "[w]e didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow" make me suspect it was the latter.

There's also a weird dissonance in this appeal that gives me pause. If you're writing a message about how you're struggling to break even, you probably shouldn't trumpet how you've moved the whole system onto AWS, a notoriously expensive hosting option for things like static images. And statements like "Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data" come across as vaguely threatening: "nice community you've got here, it'd be shame if we had to monetize it."

[Terretta]

To be fair “free forever” ceases to apply when the business is about to be taken out back and shot dead, and 1,000 photos still free is 1,000 more photos than a dead business. I’d also imagine probabilistic steps towards break even were considered before undertaking breathing new life into it.

Second, one can’t always know “if the math works” because untested models depend on people. While Yahoo/VZ could have run tests to predict uptake, in a transition like this, there may not be the luxury of that level of market research. Entrepreneurs are regularly called on to make calls absent enough data, and have the character to course correct with candor. I think we’re seeing that character play out here.

Last, much larger revenue Internet services than SmugMug/Flickr are all in on “notoriously expensive” AWS/S3 as well, some with budgets that start with a B. What do they know that readers here might be missing about the TCO of ‘things like static images’?

For one, “notoriously expensive for things like static images” may be misunderstanding the value of a single image to its owner. To them, that image may be “priceless”.

When dealing with a set of images as an emotion archive rather than as a static image CDN, losing any single image should not be an option.

Static “image hosting” services lose images on a regular basis. S3 by and large doesn’t lose objects. If I could only have a single copy of something in a single place, I’d want it on S3. In that “you had one job” category, S3 is a game changer at a remarkably reasonable price.

Regardless of one’s opinion of S3, comparing tables of features may be missing critical differences that don’t manifest in that feature table, differences well worth the expense relative to other costs or opportunity costs.

[opportune]

Yeah, I’m guessing moving to AWS is probably destroying their opex due to the egress fees. Not something I would recommend to anybody who serves heavy content potentially hundreds/thousands of times for each object.

[ckdarby]

Can leave everything on AWS but end up building out the CDN in some unmetered datacenters.

95th billing makes this kind of stuff cheap :)

[jxcl]

My photography teachers stressed the importance of "culling" your work and displaying only the best photographs you've taken. I think allowing 1000 free photos is very generous for a fine art photography platform, which is what I want it to be.

I've been taking photography seriously as a hobby for the past three years, and I use Flickr primarily as my portfolio, and right now I have between 100-200 photos on my account. I largely have positive feelings about what SmugMug have been doing with Flickr since their aquisition.

[pacala]

Turns out Marissa made a false promise. Who would have thought it? We live in sad times when we are upset by moves necessary for financial solvency, instead of holding to account bulls__t peddlers that promise "free" stuff while donning their golden parachutes.

[amatecha]

Did they actually delete the photos, or are the photos just inaccessible "until" you subscribe to Pro?