posted by wap, platform: iPad
本来是为了线上多人游戏而开发的 Flickr，后来被 Yahoo（现为 Engadget 母公司 Oath 的属下）以超过 2,000 万美元收购后，就逐步发展为相片社交平台。今天，这个拥有约 7,500 万用户的服务要跟我们分道扬镳，Flickr 正式被同类服务公司 SmugMug 并购。在 2002 年成立的 SmugMug 是面向专业人士的相片存储服务，以订阅形式收费运营。

SmugMug 以 together 形容这次并购，表示两个服务都代表了世上最有影响力的摄影师向社群，一同共享视野而非被逼迫。近年 Instagram 等的新兴相片社交平台不断对 Flickr 步步进逼，今天与另一同类服务合并，相信能集结资源，为他们另谋出路。

在与 USA Today 的访谈中，SmugMug 的 CEO Don MacAskill 未有透露收购金额，同时也表示未有把两个服务整合的确实计划。根据 SmugMug 为并购而上线的 FAQ 页面，Flickr 将继续独立运营，MacAskill 则提到他尚未知道未来会怎样，因为对于他来说这是个新模式。说到对于 Facebook 的看法，MacAskill 称他们不会采集客户的相片作为竞投个人信息的商品，亦不会转化至针对式广告活动。

https://cn.engadget.com/2018/04/21/flickr-smugmug-acquisition/

再没用户付费就活不下去了，Flickr 也太惨了吧！
https://www.ifanr.com/1293604

雅虎这个畜生

我也收到这封信了，贴出来给大伙看看233

Dear friends,
Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.

Two years ago, Flickr was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Our company, SmugMug, stepped in to rescue it from being shut down and to save tens of billions of your precious photos from being erased.

Why? We’ve spent 17 years lovingly building our company into a thriving, family-owned and -operated business that cares deeply about photographers. SmugMug has always been the place for photographers to showcase their photography, and we’ve long admired how Flickr has been the community where they connect with each other. We couldn’t stand by and watch Flickr vanish.

So we took a big risk, stepped in, and saved Flickr. Together, we created the world’s largest photographer-focused community: a place where photographers can stand out and fit in.

We’ve been hard at work improving Flickr. We hired an excellent, large staff of Support Heroes who now deliver support with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%. We got rid of Yahoo’s login. We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way. As a result, pages are already 20% faster and photos load 30% more quickly. Platform outages, including Pandas, are way down. Flickr continues to get faster and more stable, and important new features are being built once again.

Our work is never done, but we’ve made tremendous progress.

Now Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough.

We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.

We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.

Flickr is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. It’s the world’s best way to find great photography and connect with amazing photographers. Flickr hosts some of the world’s most iconic, most priceless photos, freely available to the entire world. This community is home to more than 100 million accounts and tens of billions of photos. It serves billions of photos every single day. It’s huge. It’s a priceless treasure for the whole world. And it costs money to operate. Lots of money.

Flickr is not a charity, and we’re not asking you for a donation. Flickr is the best value in photo sharing anywhere in the world. Flickr Pro members get ad-free browsing for themselves and their visitors, advanced stats, unlimited full-quality storage for all their photos, plus premium features and access to the world’s largest photographer-focused community for less than $5 per month.

You likely pay services such as Netflix and Spotify at least $9 per month. I love services like these, and I’m a happy paying customer, but they don’t keep your priceless photos safe and let you share them with the most important people in your world. Flickr does, and a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $1 per week.

Please, help us make Flickr thrive. Help us ensure it has a bright future. Every Flickr Pro subscription goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great new experiences for photographers like you. We are building lots of great things for the Flickr community, but we need your help. We can do this together.

We’re launching our end-of-year Pro subscription campaign on Thursday, December 26, but I want to invite you to subscribe to Flickr Pro today for the same 25% discount.

We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize Flickr for cost savings wherever possible, but the increasing cost of operating this enormous community and continuing to invest in its future will require a small price increase early in the new year, so this is truly the very best time to upgrade your membership to Pro.

If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.

With gratitude,

Don MacAskill
Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek
SmugMug + Flickr