![]() In the past, ActiveX controls and Firefox extensions provided enhanced web-based upload experiences on Yahoo! Photos, supporting batch uploads, per-file progress, error reporting and so on however, the initial browser-specific download/install requirement was “just another thing in the way” of a successful experience, not to mention one limited to Firefox and Internet Explorer. After some consideration, Flash’s file-handling capabilities combined with the usual HTML/CSS/JS looked to be the winning solution. While useable, Flickr’s form-based upload needed a refresh that would allow for batch selection and other improvements. The leading source for GIF-style images is Giphy, purchased by Facebook for $400 million in 2020.Sometimes when browsers won’t do what you want by themselves, you have to get creative.Īs any developer who’s suffered through form-based uploading will understand, browsers have very limited native support for selecting and uploading files. Those who want to embed images on sites that don't store them (like Reddit was until 2016) use services like Imgur, which doesn't even require a user account. DeviantArt is basically Unsplash for graphical artists. Professional photographers tend to prefer Unsplash, now owned by Getty Images. ![]() Instagram remains the most popular social network based around images. This, combined with Google's resources and integration with Android phones, drove user adoption to the masses, however as of 2021 it now only provides 15 GB of storage for free. For years, it provided unlimited free storage of images up to 16MP, and videos up to 1080p. Today, the most popular image sharing service is Google Photos, known for its ability to recognize people and places in photos and create albums of photos containing them. Unless SmugMug can sell Flickr to a bigger company or come up with a new and revolutionary feature, however, the site's remaining years may be few. It would appear that an old community of professional photographers is keeping the site alive. In 2020, SmugMug increased the fee for a Pro account to $60 per year, saying that the site was still losing money.ĭespite all of those concerning changes, Flickr isn't quite as unpopular as you may think: it's constantly ranked by Alexa among the top 500 sites globally, and among the top 300 in the U.S. User Frank Michel estimated that the site had lost 63% of its images as a result. In 2019, SmugMug started deleting Flickr images of free users, except for the newest 1,000 and Creative Commons images. In 2007, Flickr was ranked as the 19th-largest site on the web by Alexa. Compared to the $1 billion that Facebook paid for Instagram in 2012 (to the amazement of many), it now looks ridiculous.Īt first, it looked like Yahoo!'s resources would help Flickr become one of the largest sites on the web: in 2006, the upload limit was raised to 100MB per month for free accounts, and lifted altogether for Pro accounts. Yahoo! purchased Ludicorp in 2005, for a sum estimated to be around $25 million. albums), the ability to list another user as a friend (or "family" for selective sharing), and the ability to embed photos in a "weblog."įlickr had two account types: free accounts, limited to 20MB of uploads per month, and Pro accounts, with up to 2GB of monthly uploads for $25 per year. The image hosting service became an instant hit for its effective use of features that are considered obvious today, such as tags, favorites, comments, groups, sets (i.e. Flickr was considered a pioneer of the Web 2.0 era, alongside the likes of MySpace, Facebook, Blogger and YouTube, whose content was generated mostly by their users.įlickr was launched in 2004, just like Facebook, by Ludicorp, founded by the married couple, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake. User participation was usually limited to comments on news stories and online forums. In 2004, the most popular sites on the web were Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and other sites that offered news stories and indexes of recommended websites. What could Yahoo!, the site's former owner, have done so poorly in the years in between? How could Instagram have taken the lead so quickly after its launch in 2010? Is Flickr headed toward a virtual grave, or is it still a compelling service for some people? A decade later, in 2018, Flickr was sold to the relatively unknown company SmugMug. ![]() There was no Instagram or Unsplash around, and essentially that's what Flickr could have become. In 2007, Flickr was the most popular dedicated photo-sharing site on the web, and growing exponentially in terms of new images uploaded.
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