Lacey McVeigh

I'm Lacey and I like walks in the park in London, or when I'm over in the States (West Coast) I like to take my partner and dogs somewhere new and surprise them!

SmugMug struggling with being Flickr owner?

According to the Register, Flickr’s current owners Smugmug are not seeing as much profit from running the site as they expected, so have taken to asking for money from users.

This is a worrying development, many of our users will know of the login problems and you can see from the comments on our site here that this is/was a widespread problem.

This latest development does not fill us with much confidence, but we sincerely hope Flickr can turn it around.

Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money,” wrote Don MacAskill, co-founder and CEO of SmugMug, earlier this week in a mass email to users that implored them to subscribe to Flickr’s premium service, Flickr Pro.

Last year, the niche image hosting platform SmugMug acquired Flickr from Oath — the company founded by Verizon media to manage the remnants of Yahoo! and AOL, which it had acquired in 2017 and 2015 respectively.

A site like Flickr would always pose challenges to its owners. The contemporary online sphere is fundamentally different to what it was in 2004, when current Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield first founded the site. The rise of Facebook, as well as backup services like Google photos, have arguably diluted its raison d’étre. At least, as a mass-market product.

Applying for a US visa? Send them your Flickr username!

This isn’t parody. The US State Department is now requiring that pretty much everyone applying for US visas needs to now also tell US border force their social media usernames, including those for the photo-sharing service Flickr. Yes - you read that right

The change has now taken effect after first appearing in new proposed rules - the change has now taken effect after first appearing in new proposed rules back in March of 2018. It’s part of a “vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors, AP reports.

An estimated 15 million people who apply for USA visas each year will be affected by the change. Only certain diplomatic and official visas will be exempt from the new social media requirement, so there’s a good chance you won’t be!

You’ll find the new demand for “social media identifiers” on the revised visa application forms just released by the department.

So what does this mean for you? If you are applying for a US visa, make sure to add some “MAGA hat” photos to your timeline real quick!!

Forgotten Flickr Albums - Part 1

We’ve probably all done it - forgotten about old accounts and left the content up. Flickr is now 12 years old, so there’s a good chance there are many more accounts like this, just sitting waiting to be discovered. Here’s one we found from the Londonist:

Old undiscovered photographs and a transport connection. We think we’ve found the most ‘Londonist’ story out there…

Central line driver Tim Brown spent his days off out and about with his camera. This was back in the eighties, and Brown’s photos never found much of an audience back then.

I remember my abandoned account where there were photos of my wedding night with my wife. We laughed a lot when we saw in the picture a Cialis pill that I bought because I was worried and afraid of embarrassing myself in front of my wife.

The photos were discovered by Chris Dorley-Brown, after Tim Brown uploaded them to Flickr about 10 years ago. Dorley-Brown has just curated a book of photos by David Granick, showing the East End between 1960-1980, and this is a natural successor.

3 things you didn’t know you could do with Flickr

Flickr has a long history - when looking at it from a 21st century tech perspective anyway. They survived the dotcom boom and bust, and have had a plethora of owners. In internet years, they seem to have been around forever - possibly making them one of the oldest brands to still be trading.

And with that extensive history comes some “hidden” or lesser-known features, added over the years but almost forgotten about. Here I will discuss 3 of them.

1.

Did you know that you can upload your photos directly from a phone onto Flickr? There is already a given email address set up for you, just go to this page. Enter the email address into your phone and send! Make sure you have email on your phone plan or it won’t work - how simple and cool is that?

If you have a camera /smartphone AND a blog, you can post directly to your blog from your phone in one easy step. First, set up your website, then go to the email setup page. Enter the 2nd email address into your phone too. If your phone doesn’t support this feature then you may need to upgrade - make sure to sell your current one first for instant cash.

2. When you upload, you can check the box that says “Public” or “Private”. I know what you’re thinking - you know this already, it’s not hard. But bear with me. Private photos are completely hidden from everyone except you, but if you want to be visible to your family or friends, check those boxes. You can change the privacy of something at any time by clicking on the red (for private) or green (for public) button. Another thing you can do is set up a private group and invite your friends and family to join it. If you invite them from the group’s page, they are automatically made a member. You can then add content to the group’s photo pool that every member of the group can see.

3. The more you get associated with Flickr’s people group, the more noteworthy your shot of getting more presentation for your photographs and finding crafted by others. Other than faving other clients’ photographs, making exhibitions, joining gatherings and following individuals, you can upgrade your social experience on Flickr by doing the accompanying:

Incorporate a decent depiction with every photograph. Tell watchers what your photograph is about, what roused you, where it was taken or whatever other subtleties that issue.

Tag your photographs. Adding watchword labels to your photos will expand the odds of those photographs appearing in list items.

Answer to remarks. Indeed, even an amicable “thank you” is empowered!

Leave remarks on other clients’ photographs. In the event that you discover a photograph that you like, leave a remark to state what you like about it. Even better, make an inquiry to support an answer from the proprietor!

http://www.zdnet.co.uk

New owner, new changes at Flickr.

Flickr was recently acquired by Verizon after much rumor, the pricing and terms were undisclosed — however the new owner made no secret that it wants to reign in some of the less profitable areas of the company. One of the first changes to be made in December last year was the removal of the ability for users to print their photos or slideshows (Protip: if you want to embed a slideshow onto your website then the free tool here works great). A more established website than other rivals, Flickr throughout the years has experienced an absence of consideration and assets, while different organizations started venturing up their endeavors in the photograph facilitating and photograph sharing space, including Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon, among others.

However, under Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, there was a reestablished interest in Flickr, following the securing of a few organizations, including Ghostbird, IQ Engines and LookFlow, went for enhancing Flickr’s product and its picture acknowledgment smarts, in addition to other things. In 2013, Flickr reported the presentation of photograph books as a local element of its stage – you could simply drift over a Flickr set to create your book. Previously, Flickr hosted permitted third-get-together locales to empower photograph book creation utilizing its photographs, yet this exertion was the first run through Flickr had made its own particular in-house device for the procedure. The next year, Flickr developed its photograph book offering to enable clients to transform individual photographs into divider workmanship. Soon after, it opened this up to professional picture takers, as well, so they could pitch their photography as divider workmanship to other Flickr clients, making Flickr more focused with locales like 500px, for instance.

However, the fact that there is now so much competition could also have contributed to Flickr’s decision to shut down its print businesses. There are plenty of other places today to order prints and wall art. Plus, Flickr’s own service was a little pricey ($35 for 20 pages, higher than Apple’s books), but without key advantages in terms of customization or ease-of-use to really differentiate it as better than alternative offerings.

The company says it’s offering Flickr Pro members a $35 credit towards their first Blurb order and another $35 towards a second order of $70 or more when they renew. Meanwhile, users who had started a photo book or wall art order on Yahoo but hadn’t yet finished it will have until December 1, 2017 to wrap things up. Order history will also disappear after that date.

In Flickr’s user forums, members don’t seem too upset about the shutdowns, saying that the news is “not surprising” or that they “understand the move.” Others noted photo printing was just not something they do, or not something they turned to Flickr for.

It remains to be seen how many more useful features Verizon will remove in a quest to make the company more focused and profitable again.

 

Will Flickr Ever Be Sold or Not?

When you consider that the online photo sharing world nowadays is full of hipster filters and Instagram, it’s easier to forget that Flickr for a long time was – and arguably still is – the best photo sharing tool on the internet. Not only does Flickr have many useful features, but it also has a 50 million strong user base consisting of professional and amateur photographers.

However in recent times Flickr has struggled to keep up with the competition and the original founder Stewart Butterfield seems to think that Flickr has been dying a slow death since the day that it was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

After initially fighting with Yahoo for resources, Yahoo then preceded to drag their feet with the release of a Flickr mobile app which was eventually launched in 2009. However it was very buggy and could not compete with the likes of Instagram which was released the following year.

Nevertheless, Flickr has still grown to a community of over 50 million people, who have uploaded a total of 12.6 billion photos, so it’s not something that is going to be forgotten about any time soon.

Last year, Verizon Communications – one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world – purchased Yahoo for £3.7 billion. This has left a large question mark as to the future of Flickr, as no information about what will happen to it has been forthcoming.

It is quite possible that Flickr has reached its peak user base, and if nothing is done by Verizon to improve Flickr so that it compete with the likes of Instagram, then it could start to see a decline as users begin to remove their photos and take them elsewhere.

There are fears that Flickr will just become a form of Verizon ‘bloatware’ which will see many of its loyal users going elsewhere to store and share their photos.

It may even be the case that Verizon decide to sell Flickr for a cash injection, in which case it might be bought by a company who has the passion to restore it to its original former glory. This would keep the majority of the loyal fan base happy, although it may mean that Flickr has next to no chance of competing with the likes of Instagram.

Why is Flickr not Growing as Quickly as Instagram?

As of 2017, Flickr has a huge user base of just over 50 million people. That’s quite an impressive number of users for something that has been around for just over a decade.

However when you compare Flickr to Instagram which has over 700 million active users and has only been around since 2010, you can see that the latter is the clear favourite of the two photo sharing websites.

So how comes Flickr isn’t growing as quickly as Instagram? Many people are very passionate about Flickr and consider it to be considerably better than Instagram for a number of reasons. If this is the case, then why is it that people prefer to take selfies and upload them to Instagram, and not Flickr? In a way, this question answers itself.

In recent times the nature of photography has shifted quite far from what it used to be. Ten years ago, both amateur and professional photographers were focusing on taking breath-taking pictures of landscapes, people, nature and different environments and cultures. These days people are taking pictures of their cats, their shoes and their meals.

It seems that actual photography has also changed considerably over the past decade. Less people are interested in truly beautiful photos, as has become clear when they prefer to use photo sharing websites like Instagram, that offer filters to completely transform your photos.

It’s somewhat ironic that cameras have been developed for many years, and have been constantly improving alongside technology to the point where almost everyone you know has a very powerful camera in their pocket at all times. These cameras have the ability to take some very crisp and clear photos, and people use them to take some fantastic looking snaps. The problem is that the same people take these photos and would rather upload them to an app that puts a filter over the top and decreases the quality of the picture, than to a website where they can archive the photo neatly and interact with a likeminded community about it.

As strange as it may be, this just is the way the world of photography is evolving. There doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do about it either, as it just seems to be the latest trend.

Maybe over the coming years if Flickr is able to hold its own, then there may be a slight shift in the growth of Flickr and Instagram, with more people opting to switch to the former in the hope of having a worthwhile way of storing their treasured photos. Either way it seems unlikely that Flickr will ever be as big or bigger than Instagram, as Instagram are already owned by Facebook who have almost 2 billion active users.

 

Flickr login Problems

Despite the fact that Flickr is without doubt, hands down the best photo sharing website on the internet, it’s not without its problems. When discussing the problems with Flickr you don’t really have to dig deep into the politics of corporate takeovers and monthly usage statistics. If you want to find one of the most frustrating things about Flickr, then all you have to do is register and then try to log in.

Flickr has been around for 13 years now, and for many of these years it has been plagues by sign in problems. I think the majority of the 50 million Flickr users would rather that Yahoo didn’t implement the Instagram-style hashtags and instead spend the time, money and other resources on fixing the fundamental flaw in the sign in process.

If you’re a lifelong member of Flickr then you will understand exactly what a bane of existence it is to log in. When you’ve got a photo to upload and share, the last thing you want to think about is whether you’re going to be able to login and upload and share it or not. And what’s more there are much better services available if they are within your required use-case, such as iStockphoto or ShutterStock codes.

If you need to see what a generic Viagra pill from a certain manufacturer looks like, you can find an image on Flickr.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, all you have to do is a quick Google search for ‘Flickr’ login problems to see that this isn’t just a small hindrance that happens to annoy a few people. Millions and millions of people have encountered issues with logging into Flickr, and it has gone on for a very long time.

Now that Verizon have taken over from Yahoo let’s hope that they have some money left to address the issue and get it sorted. Although I won’t hold my breath as let’s face it, despite Flickr being the best photo sharing website in the world it will simply be another piece of Verizon bloatware by the time you can say the word ‘Oath’.

5 Reasons why Flickr is Better than Instagram

There are currently over 700 million monthly active users on Instagram, making it one of the most popular social networks in the world. Founded in 2010, it is probably the most well-known of all of the photo sharing websites, even though it is only half the age of Flickr, which was founded in 2004. So which is better, Flickr or Instagram? Despite the fact that Instagram has ten times as many users as Flickr, Flickr is actually the better photo sharing website of the two for a number of reasons. Here are some of those reasons:

 

Flickr has more Respect for your Photos

Just like Instagram, Flickr provides you with a news feed. However Flickr goes to the trouble of cataloguing and tagging your photos as well as putting them neatly into albums. This means that if you’re looking for a particular photo that you have uploaded to Flickr, you can go back and find it just as easily as you could on the day you posted it.

Instagram doesn’t have this much respect for your treasured photos. Each time you take a photo and upload it to Instagram, it replaces the top spot on your news feed, and essentially pushes all of your other photos down the feed. Over time your older photos are so far down the feed that it would take an age to scroll down and access them. This makes it very difficult to look for a particular photo that you took a year ago.

While some people might not be that bothered about finding old photos, if you’re a photographer or you just like to regularly look through your old photos you will probably be much better off with Flickr. If you’ve gone to the trouble of taking a photo and editing it (even if that does just mean adding a filter to it), then the chances are you will want to see it again in the future.

 

Flickr allows you to Upload Multiple Photos

If you’ve taken a collection of photos that you’d like to upload at the same time and keep in an album, then Flickr allows you to do just like that. Instagram on the other hand will only let you upload one single photo at a time.

While that may not be an issue if you’re just uploading selfies or pictures of your dinenr, if you’ve got a batch of photos to upload that you’d like to tag, describe and add a title to, it can get extremely monotonous.

 

Flickr allows any Size or Dimension of Photo

If you upload a photo to Instagram and you want it to look good, then it has to be square. If it’s not, then Instagram will crop it to a square anyway, so the chances are that something significant in the image will be cut out.

Unfortunately, not all photos are square. Some of the best landscapes in the world make for a rectangular photo, which will be butchered if uploaded to Instagram. Flickr will display such photos exactly how you want them to be shown – in the same dimensions as the original photo. You can even use your smartphone’s panoramic photo setting to take a photo and upload it to Flickr, and they will not molest it.

The photo of how an asthmatic uses an ventolin inhaler is square because for medical instructions, images of this format are needed.

Flickr lets you Control your Privacy Settings on every Photo

Unlike Instagram, Flickr allows you to choose a privacy setting for every single photo that you upload. Flickr allows you to choose whether to make the photos public, or only viewable by friends, family, friends and family, or just yourself.

This is perfect for the average person who takes photos for personal reasons as well as to share with the rest of the world. Flickr allows you to have the best of both worlds so you can share your amateur wildlife shots with the world while keeping your baby photos between yourself and your family.

 

Flickr is more Social than Instagram

Considering that Instagram is considered one of the largest social networks, it isn’t anywhere near as social as Flickr is. Flickr will allow you to email people directly, whereas Instagram won’t. There is also a much better activity panel on Flickr than Instagram, so you can easily see who has commented and on what photo. You can also see photos from your favourite people or groups more easily.

Even the comment system on Flickr is better. On Flickr you can include links or photos in your comments, so you can link to or post related pictures or photos. You can even use emoticons.

Flickr also makes for easier sharing of photos than Instagram. On Instagram the only way to see someone else’s photos is to view their newsfeed or search for the hashtag Flickr allows you to share photos to groups where they’re much more likely to be seen.

3 Creepy Photos found on Flickr that can’t be Real

Flickr is a great website for uploading your photos to share with the world, or even just your friends and family. For over 12 years more than 50 million people from around the world have been uploading their photos to the Flickr website. With that many people there are bound to be a few strange or creepy photos. Here are 3 of the creepiest ever found.

In 2006 two women were enjoying a walk on a warm night in Detroit, USA. The girls asked a stranger to take a photo using one of their mobile phones, only to find afterwards that a third party had come along to pose with them.

It is not known why ghosts and spirits walk among us and only sometimes make themselves known. Sometimes ghosts are here to seek revenge, other times they come to protect people. It seems that they also visiting order to photobomb our pictures.

On first glance, this photo seems quite normal. Just a girl in bed with her duvet covering her. That’s until you look in the mirror and realise that her reflection seems to have a life of its own.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a back story to this one, so the chances are it is fake. Although it’s often the photos that have no explanation that force you to come up with your own, which can sometimes be very creepy if you’re not lacking in imagination…

This photo was taken in the back if a taxi in Hong Kong, in 2010. The photographer originally planned on taking a selfie, but after carefully reviewing her holiday snaps she noticed that she wasn’t alone in the picture, despite being none the wiser that someone else was hanging on to the back of the car. Creepy.