Flickr has been acquired by the Silicon Valley photo-sharing company SmugMug. The CEO of the company told USA TODAY that he is committed to make Flickr the platform it once was. Flickr has been hosting photos and other interactions long before all this became so popular. Flickr will be run by SmugMug as a completely separate identity. The company will maintain Flickr as a standalone community where amateur and professional photographers could find their peace. Flickr has been ignored and neglected the focus it deserves.
The deal:
SmugMug is an independent company which is run by Don MacAskill. He says “Flickr is an amazing community, full of some of the world’s most passionate photographers. It’s a fantastic product and a beloved brand, supplying tens of billions of photos to hundreds of millions of people around the world.” “Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the Internet.”
The service has been suffering a lot of changes after Yahoo was bought by Verizon in a $4.5 billion deal. Flickr had lost its place in the era of Facebook and Instagram. The service, however, survived on the core loyal family of photographers despite everything that has happened in the recent years. The service is obviously getting less traffic, but Flickr still has a family of 75 million photographers. Flickr also has a community of 100 million photographers who post tens of billions of photos.
SmugMug, on the other hand, is a small company, working on the core motive to create a community dedicated to photographers. The company has stuck around even before Flickr came to life. SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill says “We don’t mine our customers’ photos for information to sell to the highest bidder, or to turn into targeted advertising campaigns”.
SmugMug has the potential to make Flickr great again. MacAskill says “I don’t know what the future holds. This is a new model for me”. “We certainly think we need to operate it with an eye to our cash flow and our profitability. We are going to have to take a detailed look at the business and make sure it’s growing and healthy.”
