#SMUGMUG PICTURE RESCUE FULL#

HereвЂ™s the full text of Don MacAskillвЂ™s note to its customers:ДЇirst, and above all else: thank you. In the worst-case scenario, it disappears, along with a whole lot of pictures.

#SMUGMUG PICTURE RESCUE UPDATE#

In fact, it threatened to actively delete the photos of users who did not sign up for a subscription if they exceeded that number.Д«eyond its operating costs, SmugMug, like so many other companies, also found itself engulfed in controversy recently when The New York Times reported that millions of Flickr images dating back to its 2005 founding had been sucked into a facial-recognition database called MegaFace to вЂњtrain a new generation of face-identification algorithmsвЂќ and вЂњtrack protesters, surveil terrorists, spot problem gamblers and spy on the public at large.вЂќД«en MacAskill, DonвЂ™s brother and the companyвЂ™s COO, said at the time that the flaw вЂњpotentially impacts a very small number of our members today, and we are actively working to deploy an update as quickly as possible.вЂќ He also noted that the images that had been accessed pre-dated SmugMugвЂ™s involvement with Flickr by several years.Д®ither way, it sounds like the future of Flickr - founded by entrepreneurs Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield in 2004, sold to Yahoo the following year, and later swept into Verizon as part of its 2016 acquisition by Yahoo - is again up in the air.Д®ither more people subscribe to the service, or someone - or some outfit - swoops in to save the day with the capital required to keep it up and running. Just months after SmugMug acquired Flickr, it curbed free use of the platform to 1,000 pictures per account holder. At the same time, no one who uses the service can be terribly surprised by the development.

#SMUGMUG PICTURE RESCUE PRO#

This editor happens to be a Flickr Pro user and shudders to think how many photos will need to be moved if the service shuts down. ItвЂ™s still losing money.вЂќДЄdds MacAskill, in terms that Flickr fans should find worrying, SmugMug вЂњcannot continue to operate it at a loss as weвЂ™ve been doing.вЂќ (To sweeten the deal for new subscribers, SmugMug is offering 25% off a Flickr Pro account for those who visit this link and input the code 25in2019.) In an email tonight to users of Flickr who pay roughly $50 annually for the service, MacAskill has basically asked them if they know anyone else who might be interested in a yearly subscription to Flickr, explaining that it вЂњstill needs your help.

But it seems now that SmugMug may have underestimated its carrying costs. MacAskill didnвЂ™t reveal at the time how much SmugMug - which is itself an independent, family-owned operation - paid for Flickr. When in April of last year, the photo-hosting service SmugMug acquired the photo-hosting service Flickr from VerizonвЂ™s digital media subsidiary, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill said he was committed to breathing new life into the service, calling it вЂњ core to the entire fabric of the Internet.вЂќ

Smugmug picture rescue