If you’ve moved on from Flickr, the platform’s CEO hopes you would reconsider joining as a Pro member to help keep it going.
Flickr may not be as big as it was during its heyday, but we can’t discount the fact that it remains one of the significantly better options out of all the platforms and communities like it. Most photographers may have moved on from it some years ago, but there was a good number who chose to stay as Flickr Pro members in the past two years. Fast-forward to recent times, and Flickr CEO Don MacAskill is calling for more users to upgrade their membership to Pro to help “the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business.”
In a heartfelt letter sent by The Flickr Team to members on December 19th, MacAskill recalled how SmugMug took the risk of stepping in to “rescue” Flickr from being shut down, as it was losing tens of millions of dollars per year. With it came the hard work of improving the platform. Among the most notable of this was removing the Yahoo login, hiring a support staff that came to deliver with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%, modernizing the technology, and moving the platform to Amazon Web Services. Their efforts resulted in a more stable platform, with the pages loading 20% faster, the photos loading 30% faster, and reduced platform outages.
However, despite the support of “Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members” who signed up for a Pro account, the platform is still losing money. “We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive,” MacAskill wrote.
“We didnât buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didnât 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 weâve been doing.”
– MacAskill
In his final appeal, MacAskill reminds us that if we pay at least $9 per month for services like Netflix and Spotify, a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $5 per month. With it, you’ll get unlimited full-quality storage for your photos, ad-free browsing, and premium features.
If that has convinces you to stay with the platform and be part of its community, sign up for a Pro account, as now would be a good time to grab whatever savings are still possible. They will be launching an end-of-year subscription campaign on December 26th, but you can sign up now to get the same 25% discount with the code 25in2019.
