Earlier this year, Smugmug acquired Flickr. As a customer/member of both services, I feel pretty good about the pairing. However, I think we all expected that some things had to change for Flickr to be viable going forward. Earlier this month, Flickr announced it was drastically reducing the amount of storage available for free users, dropping free storage from 1TB down to 1000 photos.

This move has been met with mixed emotions, although a large number of comments I’ve sampled seem very upset at the notion of deleting photos already on the service to get under the 1000 photos cap. I’m still optimistic about Flickr’s potential in the hands of Smugmug. I’ve been on both services since 2006.

Smugmug had a plan of what it wanted Flickr to be as both a community and a revenue source before the deal was made. A private company like Smugmug isn’t acquiring a community like Flickr without vision. Part of that vision has to be monetization. To that end, Smugmug recently posted a San Francisco-based job for Product Manager Monetization and Partnerships at Flickr.   [Read more…]