Flickr Updates – Important User Decisions – Stay and Pay OR Move Your Photos?

I LOVE Flickr!

It’s one of my five go-to websites for photo sharing/back ups.  You can read more about my process for dealing with photos here.

There are a few reasons why Flickr is part of my photo preservation habits –

• It’s free and allows 1 Terabyte of storage.  Uh-oh, that part is changing!
• It allows uploads of large file-sizes.  This is important to me so that I, my family, and distant family members can print a nice-sized image if we choose.  You can download photos at their original size.  This is an awesome feature that most photo storage websites don’t offer.
• One photo can be in multiple albums which is great for accessing special images quickly.
• Photos can be tagged with multiple tags, again this is great for accessing photos quickly.
• Each photo and/or album can have unique privacy settings set by the user.  For example, I have been sharing the photos in my Ellis Photo album this year.  I have an album on Flickr with all of those photos.  If the photo has living people in it, it is only viewable by family members and not searchable.  If everyone in the image is deceased, that photo is publicly viewable and searchable.  This means that extended family members have a better chance of finding photos I work so hard to preserve by simply googling that person’s name.  Multiple layers of privacy settings in one album is AWESOME!

Well, all of those reasons to love Flickr are still true and important to me except for the first.  Flickr is changing its terms in 2019.  When you go to upload an image, you see this:

The new limits mean that IF I DO NOTHING, my photos will begin to be deleted on 4 February 2019 because, as of yesterday at 12:30 pm, I have 28,607 photos on Flickr.  That is way beyond the new 1,000 photo limit for free accounts.

You can read more about the changes here.

So, what is my plan?

Well, for now, I am going to pay for a Flickr Pro account because there is no way I can get 28,607 photos migrated elsewhere before February 4th.  Also, I still really love Flickr!  It meets a lot of my needs as a genealogist and family archivist.

But.

You better believe I am going to be exploring other options.  Because one day, I will die and not be able to continue to pay for my Flickr account.  I also will have no way to know if my descendants would be able/willing to maintain the account after I am gone.

One option I have already been exploring is Forever.  Looks like I need to research it in more depth and visit their booth once again at RootsTech.

But for now, I will be upgrading and I wanted to make sure that you, my dear readers, were aware of this change as I have advocated for using Flickr in the past.  If you followed my advice, please be aware of this upcoming change and how it will affect your precious photos.

Happy Friday, I hope the holidays have been joyous for you and yours.  Now on to 2019 – a year that will hopefully be filled to the brim with amazing genealogy discoveries!!  xoxo