The above was posted by SmugMug on the Flickr Blog on December 19. You can read the entire letter on their site. It outlines a situation that I’ve wondered about for some time — how Flickr pays its bills to pay for what is probably thousands of servers and thousands … if not millions … of terabytes of storage. Clearly, they’ve been having problems, and they’re still having problems, even after being purchased by SmugMug. Nobody can afford to pour water out a flagging-open window forever.
Some fast (and not necessarily authoritative) thoughts —
The concern is not absolutely immediate, but it’s something we users of Flickr need to be aware of, especially if we have photos on the service that we haven’t backed up in recent years. As I’m seeing it, SmugMug has a few options open to them:
Let Flickr eventually go under
Find outside backing
Sell the service to another company
You may see other options I don’t.
We also have choices we can make. The ones I can see at the moment are:
Buy a Pro subscription
Locate to another service — many did when SmugMug changed Flickr’s terms of service, moving to Instagram
Moving our galleries to our own blog spaces
I advocate none of these in particular. I do point out that, whatever choice you as an individual make, you have to do it with your bank account and future purchases in mind. We’re each probably going to end up paying for a service at some point, no matter where we end up if Flickr goes under. We can’t keep on getting something for nothing. (That’s one reason why I eventually bought a premium subscription to Second Life.)
What you decide to do is up to you. I’m probably, since I have a Pro account, going to offer exhibit space to my blog-sisters and -brother again, as I was doing a year or so ago, as I know they can’t or won’t buy a Pro account for various reasons. That’s not a guarantee for the future, though, and we’ll need to discuss this together at some point.
There’s one thing all of us should do, though: back up any photos we don’t have copies of, if we want to save our archive of work. I’m fortunate; I’ve kept an archive of everything since the start of 2013 on an outboard terabyte drive. (Frankly, most of my earlier stuff was trash by current equipment standards, anyway.) The others are so recent (or do so little work in world) that they have their entire archive already safe. Your mileage may vary on what you want to keep; if you do want to preserve all the work you’ve done, whether Flickr survives or not, I’d urge you to get down to it.
And now, as my professors said on the exam papers at the end of an essay question or two, “Discuss.”
If you’ve been to my Flickr stream, you’ll see that I put up most of my photos under Creative Commons sharing allowances. As long as you attribute who took the photo, I’m usually cool with the use. Well, Cajsa Lilliehook added a plurk tonight, talking about some of the…interesting…uses her own photos have been put to. Someone apparently illustrated an article on food spots in Palos Verdes, Calif. with a photo of a kale burrito she took one time.
That made me wonder where my own photos have been to, so I Googled “photo by Harper Ganesvoort”, and this is what I’ve found:
Continuing the Olympic theme, I discovered KymSara Rayna modeling this new dress from Meiling Couture, which will also be available in Real Life at the London Olympics Showcase! Click through to Flickr and see it all, or at KymSara and Sequoia Nightfire’s blog.
UPDATE — 23:11 CDT: KymSara sent me the link to the article, which has a second dress added to it. She tells me that Meiling’s dresses are SL copies of her RL designs, and that they were released in SL 24 hours before the RL show in London — and that the RL show brought down the house! Meiling rocks in both SL and RL!! Congratulations to her, and thanks to KymSara and Sequoia.
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Via Flickr: Model & Photographer – KymSara Rayna
The details:
Gown: Harlequin Romance Gown NEW from Meiling Couture’s “24 Hrs Collection” to debut at London Olympics Showcase
Evion Ember’s blog this morning was talking up the 2nd Vintage Fair Flickr Competition, which opened on July 28 and runs until August 21. There’s better than L$ 100,000 up for you to get a slice of, so go to her story and read the rules, and join the appropriate Flickr group!
Poor, poor, pitiful me. I just bought another year of Flickr Pro.
You have every right to cue the violins, especially the very small ones that are playing just for me. I know that this is basically a whine. The thing is, I have almost no traffic on my pictures on Flickr anymore.
I get lots more traffic — and response — on my Koinup account, which doesn’t give me unlimited space, but which I’ve used only 2% of over some three years. In fact, I get between 60%-98% less traffic on Flickr than I do on Koinup. A f’r instance: a nude picture I did of myself — a nude! — has had over 300 visits on Koinup, but only 8 on Flickr. Now, that could be because it’s set to a tighter visit moderation on Flickr (required under their terms); but other pictures on both services have similar responses.
Why did I renew, then? Because I own several groups on Flickr that will go poof if my account reverts to basic, or at least not be able to access. One of them especially, the Oscar Fashion Contest group, is a fixture of work on this blog every top of the year now. I need to drop the $25 to use the group.
Maybe it’s just because there are so honkin’ many members on Flickr. I’m probably getting drowned out in the noise, even when I add a photo to groups. Or maybe it’s just the phase of the moon. Maybe I’m not shooting the stuff people want to see on there, while the Italian-based Koinup, with more of a European membership base, goes for it. Who knows? But it is frustrating.
Okay, I’ve finished my whine; you guys can eat up the cheese.
Since I was wound up trying to get this computer repaired, and then my photo contest results written up, I forgot clean about this year’s Veterans Day. I usually have this day in mind, as my father served in the Army in World War II, and came out of it with a Purple Heart.
(C) 2010 by Skye Donardson
This year, it’s particularly appropriate, as the Marines are celebrating their 235th anniversary. Born in the European tradition of a seaborne infantry force, the United States Marine Corps has become something else over the years, with strong, powerful traditions and an esprit de corps rarely matched, while still maintaining their association with the Navy. Many great men and women have served in its ranks, and many have died fighting for their country, on soil around the world. Let’s join Skye Donardson in this tribute.
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Anyone who has Second Life-based photographic tributes to veterans from around the world are welcome to submit them to my Flickr group set up for the purpose. No advertising cards, please, no matter how well intended; the group is moderated, and all inappropriate submissions will be turned down. Please read the rules at the link before joining, as this will prevent difficulties before they arise. And thanks much!
Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. All rights to featured images are reserved to the artists under appropriate copyright laws. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr or Koinup page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here), if you have an account on the appropriate service.
Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.
NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.
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Starting with this edition of the column, I’m going to feature at least one photo out of the batch I’m exhibiting each time. I always like at least a little illustration for my articles, and these shots will give even the casual visitor a glimpse of the work being done in various virtual worlds. Hopefully that will encourage you to click on through and drop some comments on these good avatars’ Flickr and Koinup streams…as well as here!
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Fashion and fashion-related is going to be the theme of this column, and I’m starting it off with blackLiquid Tokyoska’s photo of Temperance Moonites set up against a RL background — someplace that resembles a street in old Havana. It’s titles salsa queen, and the title is very appropriate here.
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Wallpaper – 8 by Karro Lean is simply sweet, full of light and serenity. I like the excellent interplay of light and shadow here, especially the glow coming from underneath the model’s hair as contrasted with the slight shadowing of her face. And the flower hair ornaments are perfect!
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The power being summoned by the model in The magic that is liberated from my being is the real focus of this photograph by “zhey,” quite obviously emphasized by the power circle that she’s just summoned up. (And a strong one, too!) The bustier (from the looks of it under her long hair) and tiered skirt add to the romantic sorceress feel of the piece.
The magic that is liberated from my being -- by zhey, (c) 2010
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Porcelain says it all here. This work by Elisiella is one reason why I started a group in Koinup for photographs themed around Japan, China and East Asia.
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Fantasy Alyx is from The Sims, and “GPhoenix” has come up with something intriguing here. I wonder if skins like this are available in Second Life as well…?
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I actually know the costume worn in Goddess Isis by Seiya Perl; it’s an old fan favorite from that wonderful department store of the great look at affordable prices, Bare Rose. It still holds up well after some two years. (You should still be able to get it; I don’t think Bare Rose has ever taken a thing off their shelves, and the store is getting gigantic.)
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That’s all for now. What will come up here for public attention next time? Tune in and find out!
I’ve opened a fresh gallery on Flickr, themed around historical and vintage fashion from Second Life. This is the third gallery I’ve come up with, joining Living the Second Life and Women and the Sea. Unlike the other two, though, Vintage Second Life Fashion will probably be a rotating exhibit, with new works cycling out older ones as I reach the maximum of 18 items.
Want a trick to increase your traffic to blog articles or Flickr and Koinup photos? Use Twitter and TweetMeme. Almost everyone knows about Twitter by now, of course; and many Residents have a Twitter account. (I do myself — Harper_G.) And, if you’re writing a blog on wordpress.com, such as this one, you can set the software to automagically tweet your new articles on publication, complete with a shortlink to the article.
TweetMeme is another popular service. You need a Twitter account to use TweetMeme; once you set it up and link the services together, you can use it to “announce” things such as additions to your photostreams. Koinup includes a handy widget on each photo page to do this; just click the button, and confirm the tweet, and it will be sent off via Twitter. You can also download a bookmark proglet to do the same thing direct from your browser, and can thus tweet any page you like. I use this not only for my own photos, but for others that I like greatly.
How effective is TweetMeme? Well, a photo that had 65 visits before I tweeted it, next came up with over 120 visits just ten minutes later — double the number of visits. That won’t happen all the time; but it sure is a simple, free way to increase throughput and publicize those things (including your own work) that you think should get more visits.
Second Life® with Harper, Conan, Jem, Diana and Morgan
If you like what you read, then please consider linking back. We also link to other Second Life blogs we think are good. You may also retweet any individual article on Twitter, when looking at that article, by clicking on the "Tweet" button just above the Comments section.
Around the Grid is willing to provide unbiased and unreserved reviews of Resident-created and -sold, non-pornographic products, especially fashion and hairstyles, and of Real World books on Second Life. Submissions for review should be sent in world to Harper Ganesvoort.
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