Month: January 2012

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Former Flickr Staffer Blasts Yahoo/Flickr Over Yesterday’s Layoffs

Twitter was a buzz yesterday with tweets from current and former Flickr staffers regarding a round of layoffs that took place at the popular photo sharing site yesterday. One of the most upset seemed to be former Flickr engineer Nolan Caudill who wrote a scathing post calling Yahoo/Flickr out over the firings.

“Flickr lost several good people today. If you had me name the top 10 Flickr employees that loved the site the most, half of them got handed pink slips today,” wrote Caudill. “Yahoo made a major mistake today and there’s no other way to interpret it. I’m mad and this is my soapbox.”

Equally troubling, Caudill seems to indicate that the layoffs were merely a symptom of a larger problem of Yahoo suits being out of touch with what is one of their most beloved properties by users. “Flickr-the-site will be fine but Flickr-the-culture took a huge hit today and those suits in Sunnyvale balancing some column or doing their thousandth “re-org” are completely to blame. I bet they don’t even know what they’ve done and that’s probably the worst part of the whole thing,” Caudill continued.

It’s interesting that layoffs at Flickr would be one of the first moves made by Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson. I wrote an open letter to Thompson shortly after his appointment as CEO suggesting that Flickr represented one of Yahoo’s best chances for success with social. Flickr has been losing unique visitors (according to compete.com) over the past 6 months as competitors like Google+, Smugmug, Instagram, 500px and even Facebook continue to pull some of the best users away from the site — by the way, facebook is currently in the process of redesigning their photos page (it looks an awful lot like they are copying Google Photos here) and employees have been reaching out to popular photographers, promoting them on their new suggested user list, etc.

After flubbing a new product release (some sort of unusual chat with other users while you doodle on photos thing) that Flickr killed four months after launch, you have to wonder if laying off what are perceived as some of their best Flickr employees really makes the most sense as Flickr Chief Markus Spiering tries to push forward with the promised innovation that he blogged about earlier this month. On the other hand, sometimes in order to effect significant change you need to clear house. Sometimes a culture needs to be broken before it can be rebuilt and maybe this is partly what this is about as well. Perhaps this is more of a rebuilding to allow Flickr to clear the deck so to speak to build something better and stronger.

Still, if Flickr is planning on coming up with something better, it had better move quickly. It seems like post after post on Google+ these days are about how much users LOVE Google+ for photos/community and how many photographers are not renewing their paid Flickr Pro subscriptions due to a superior community culture at Google.

It is telling to me that newly appointed CEO Scott Thompson still does not appear to have even bothered to set up a Flickr account. By not having a Flickr account Thompson is publicly showing how little regard he has for the popular Yahoo property. It takes 2 minutes to tell an administrative assistant to set up a PR oriented public account and post a few old vacation photos on it.

That Thompson can not even be bothered to do that much makes me wonder not only what sort of message this sends to the day to day employees working on Flickr, but if Caudill might just in fact be right about the suits down in Sunnyvale having no possible clue about what they even have with Flickr. Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz never could be bothered to set up a Flickr account either.

By contrast, Google cofounder Sergey Brin is not only sharing his photos on Google+, he even showed up for a hangout that I was on with popular photographer Trey Ratcliff last week to personally talk live about some of his photos and his favorite photos by others. I’m surprised that a billionaire founder of one of the most successful tech companies of all time seems to have to the time to publicly support the photo sharing aspects of his product while the new CEO of Yahoo can’t be bothered.

Update: More comments here.

Ex-Yahoo Jaisen Mathai writes an open letter to flickrenos laid off asking them to consider working on his Open Photo project.

Update #2: BetaBeat’s coverage. Thread on Flickr Central. Graphic made by Flickr employee identifying some of those laid off. Andy Baio suggests Flickr management was blindsided by these layoffs.

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Flickr Raises and Lowers the Cost of a Pro Account

Flickr mucked around with the pricing on their Pro accounts today. The one year option stays the same price at $24.95. They reduced the 2 year option by $1.50 per year from $47.95 to $44.95 and they raised the price of a year of Pro $2.85 per year for those wanting to pay quarterly to $6.95 per quarter ($27.80 per year).

They also announced said that going forward your account would be set up on auto-renewal.

I did think the blog post on the pricing change was a little misleading where it says “We’re also dropping the price of a 2 year subscription to $44.95 (a savings of $10.95 off the 3 months at a time price).” This makes it sound like Flickr reduced their 2 year account by $11 when in fact they really reduced it by $3 from their previous pricing but now compare it with the more expensive quarterly payment option — but I guess that’s marketingspeak for you.

As far as the cost of a Pro account, it is still a screaming good deal for a photographer like me. Where else could I store 67,000+ full high res photos online for $22.48/year (I do the 2 year option)? Plus I’m participating in the Flickr/Getty stock photography deal that paid me over $500 last month so really it’s like Flickr is paying me, not like I’m paying them.

For many photographers though I think Flickr Pro is looking like a worse and worse deal. Google+ will host an unlimited number of photos for you for free now. Flickr’s free account only will let you access your 200 most recent photos and even worse if you don’t reup for a Pro account they hold the rest of your photos hostage on their site until you do renew.

I don’t think today’s pricing really is much of an announcement at all — and I think you’ll continue to see causal photographers letting their Pro accounts at Flickr lapse while they move to other cheaper alternatives like Google+. I also think that the higher end of the photography market is also increasingly moving away to sites like Smugmug (disclosure, they are a sponsor for our Photo Talk Plus show) which are more geared as high end galleries to actually sell your photos. Flickr doesn’t allow you to sell your photos on the site yourself.

Are you on Flickr? And if so will you renew your Pro account when it comes due? And if you do what option would you choose as far as paying for it?

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The Incomplete List of the Top 20 +1ers Who Share the Love on Google+

Yesterday Louis Gray shared an interesting post based on a discussion kicked off by Thomas Morrfew and Thomas Tenkely. The post showed how to find out how many +1s you’ve handed out on Google+. I reshared the post here. So did my good Pal Robert Scoble here.

I thought it would be interesting to go around to the various posts and put together a list of the top 20 people who +1 on Google+. This list is wildly inaccurate in that it only includes the people who responded to these posts, but I thought it would be an interesting list of folks nonetheless.

I love +1ing on G+. It’s like handing out little pieces of candy for everything that I like. Some people have asked for a list of their +1s. Personally I hope that if Google gives us this list that they give us the option of making it public or private. I don’t like my favorites on flickr being stalked by people and would prefer to keep my +1s private.

Anyways, that’s neither here nor there, but here are the top 20 +1ers that I was able to sort of sort together based on these posts. Thanks to everyone who +1’s on Google+ and shares the love!

1. Kev Isabeth, 112,161

2. Dirk Talamasca, 98,240

3. Mark Esguerra, 61,072

4. Kerry Murphy, 56215

5. Billy Wilson, 51,602

6. Lotus Carroll, 46,196

7. Chelsea Leland, 44,823

8. Sandra Parlow, 40,541

9. Daniel Chen, 36,000

10. Louis Gray, 33,000

11. Rachel Blum, 33,000

12. Jaana Nyström, 32,239

13. Kol Tregaskes, 30,592

14. Jenn Kirkland, 25439

15. Lars Clausen, 25,251

16. Turtle Qiu, 24,270

17. Cameron Siguenza, 24,198

18. Celine Chamberlin, 23,184

19. Brian Kemper, 20,650

20. Mihailo Radi?evi?, 20.000

You can find out how many +1’s you’ve handed out by going and checking here. Lots of other interesting Google analytical information here too. I’ve done 45,802! Whew!

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I Love New York

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I thought today would be a good day to post a photo of New York City. I took this photo in the dead of winter while it was raining/snowing in Central Park.

Tonight’s Episode of Photo Talk Plus with my cohost Lotus Carroll will include five New Yorkers talking about photography — our special guest, New York Professional Photographer Daniel Krieger, along with our New Yorker panelists Alan Shapiro Leanne Staples Vivienne Gucwa (this is her first public hangout) and Google’s Titus Winters.

The New York G+ Photo Crew have hosted many photowalks there in NYC now and promise to give us some great tips about shooting in one of the most urban environments in the United States. Don’t miss this great episode tonight at 8PM PST right here in my G+ stream and on Keith Barrett’s Vidcast Network at http://vidcastnetwork.com at 8PM PST.

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Thomas Hawk Original Prints Now Available Through SmugMug

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Over the years I’ve had many people ask me about purchasing prints of my work. With the rare exception I’ve turned down all of these requests. I’m not sure why. It’s probably mostly been that I’ve been too busy shooting and processing to get around to figuring out a good way to handle fulfillment.

Today I’ve begun offering prints of my work for sale for the first time ever. This is a work in progress and it may take me some time to get it right, but SmugMug (disclosure: who sponsor our Photo Talk Plus show on Wed nights) makes it super easy for me to sell my prints and they give the photographer a very generous payout of 85% of the photo markup. It seems like a lot of the photographers that I admire most like Trey Ratcliff and Scott Jarvie and Colby Brown are all using SmugMug to sell their prints. Its something that I should have done a long time ago and I’m glad that I’ve taken the time this past week to finally get this done.

To start with I’m offering about 5,000 of my images for sale for people interested in buying them. We’ll see how this goes and I’d be interested in any input from people about selling prints online. If you have any questions feel free to ask and I’ll try to answer them.

You can find the prints that I’m selling here at:

http://thomashawk.smugmug.com

Thanks to Markham Bennett and Katherine Cheng and their excellent team at +SmugMug for helping me get set up with this.

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Top 10 Places Where I Find Great Photographers On Google+

Are You on Google+ Yet? If So Please Post a Link to Your Google+ URL Here

Earlier today I shared 1,500 kick ass photographers that I follow on G+ and that post got a lot of response. Ken Zuk posted a comment asking how I find the photographers to follow on Google Plus and what my criteria is for following other photographers. I started writing out a long comment as a response, but it felt more like a blog post so I thought I’d write one up here and then share it as a link response to Ken’s question.

The Google+ Photography Community is absolutely the most active, engaged, positive group of photographers I’ve ever seen anywhere on the web. It is rich and vibrant and active and full of amazing art. Over the past 7 months or so I’ve added tons of great photographers who I get to enjoy work by every single day.

So… where do I find these people?

1.) Probably the number one place I find photographers from on Google+ is reshares. Usually when someone reshares a photo it’s a pretty high quality photo. When I see these (if i like the work) I’ll click through to the photographer who was shared and explore more of their work. If I like it and they meet my criteria (see below) I’ll start following them.

2.) Comments — and not just comments on my photos. I’m frequently reading the comments on Google+ — on my photos, but even more on other people’s photos. If I see two active photographers who seem interesting and engaging and who are chatting with each other, I just might check them out. I like following active, engaged photographers and so if I like their stuff I’ll usually add them. Go Wolfpack.

3.) Outside resources. Jarek Klimek’s Photo Extract is AWESOME! Each day he puts up some of the best photographs on Google+ in huge full sized glory. Definitely check out his site and you will be blown away by some of the quality of photos showing up on Google+. GROUP/AS is another fantastic resource to find tons and tons of photographers currently posting to Google+.

4.) Contact diving. I love diving into other people’s contacts. Both who they are circling as well as who are circling them. It’s nice because if you click on that window it already shows you all the people you are already following. So if you are not following someone you can cmd-click on a link to their posting page and check them out to see if you like what they are doing.

5.) #hashtags. There are a lot of special hashtags that people use on Google+. There are different themed photography projects that are curated — #TuesDecay, #MacroMonday, #WeAreParents, #GrassTuesday, the list goes on and on. Frequently I’ll click on these hashtags that Google+ hyperlinks and explore the work of other photographers there. If I like them, then I’ll add them.

6.) Real life contacts. I’ve hosted hundreds of photowalks over the past decade. I’ve also participated in a number of group photography trips. Alot of times through photowalks and trips you end up getting to know people super well.

Some of my best friends today have come through real life photography meetups. I met my good Pal Robert Scoble almost 10 years ago at a meetup that he hosted at Barney’s Burgers in Noe Valley in San Francisco. Other times though the photowalks are short and big and hard to get to know everyone — but I always do try to go back after these walks and trips and check out people’s work (again through hashtags). #Yosemite2011, #DV2011, #FordNAIAS, #SJPhoto2011, etc.

I find alot of the people that I end up following through these walks/trips/walk tags/etc.

7.) Hangouts. I’m pretty active with hangouts — both mine and other people. Hangouts are a great way to meet people and how I’ve gotten to know alot of people better. So many of my great photographer contacts have come from hanging out.

8.) Popular Posts on Google+. It’s harder to find new talent here, but I’ll frequently check out the most popular posts on Google+ in the past hour over at SocialStatistics. Inevitably alot of the most popular posts are great photographs. I’m already following a lot of the people posted there, but every now and again I find someone new who I am not following yet.

9.) Other people’s shared circles. I’m constantly checking out other people’s shared circles. Here is how I manage that process and do it most efficiently. Usually if I trust someone’s opinion I’ll add the entire circle that they shared — but… I *WON’T* mix it in with my other contacts — instead I just keep it labeled as “their” circle.

After I’ve added their circle, I’ll browse through that stream and cherry pick people out of to integrate into *my* other circles that I like. I might do this for an hour. I might just let the circle set there for a week and get to it over time. After I feel like I’ve adequately examined the circle, I’ll just delete it. The best photographers I found in it I’ve integrated into my own and the rest of those who I’m not as crazy about from there get dropped.

10.) Other social networks. I like to spread the good word about G+ so I’ll frequently post about it on other sites — on Flickr, on Twitter, on Facebook. The other day I posted on Flickr asking which of my flickr contacts were on Google+. Alot of people responded with links to their G+ page. When they did I went and checked them out on G+. If I liked their stuff I added them there too. 🙂

So… as you can see I find people to follow on Google+ from a lot of different places.

Now… as far the criteria for what I’m looking for when I follow someone on Google+

1) Non-watermarker/signature photographers. I hate watermarks and signatures. They drive me bonkers. Nothing personal, it’s just a pet peeve of mine. My eye is drawn to the watermark almost every time. I can’t enjoy the photo. I get agitated. They usually look big and ugly and like something a low rent cheap hack wedding photographer would use. The bigger the signature/watermark the worse. Some people hide them so well that I don’t see them. I’m ok with that — but… if I see them…. GAWD! AWK!

Unless I know you really well and am willing to overlook it because I’m in love with you, then I’m probably not going to follow someone that is using watermarks.

2) Photographers who mostly post their own photographs. I want photographers in my circle who mostly post photos. It’s ok if they post other things sparingly — a post here or there about a photographic subject, a shared photo of someone else’s, a circle, a rant about whatever they had for breakfast (sparingly is the key here) — but… if a photographer is mostly posting what I consider noise (bad gifs, too much resharing of texty sort of articles, too much stupid stuff, etc.) then it’s hard for me to want to follow them — at least in my photographers circle. I may follow them in a different circle (like the stupid gif circle) that I never check, but I don’t really want super noisy people in my photographers circle.

Again, there are exceptions to all of these rules if I love you enough.

3) Photographers who are active. If the last time you posted a photograph on Google+ was last November, I probably am not following you. I want to see work by current, active photographers who post every week.

4) Good photography. It sort of goes without saying, but I want to see work that is aesthetically pleasing to me — interesting, creative, inspiring work.

5) Someone who is positive and not a hater/stalker/harasser/etc. Nothing turns me off more than seeing someone who tears apart others. I’m not just talking about my own work here. If I see someone say something awful to someone else, especially someone else that I respect, I’ll probably drop them. If it’s bad enough I might even block them. The online photosharing world unfortunately has a very small minority who are petty, jealous haters — fortunately for us on Google+ there is a very robust block tool which can keep them away from us most of the time. 🙂

You can follow me on Google+ here.

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1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+

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Over the last three days I’ve posted three circles of 500 each of all of the photographers that I’m currently following on Google+. For the most part these are active, engaged photographes on Google+ and represent some of the people that you may want to get to know if you want to participate more in the Photo Community that has emerged on Google+.

The Google+ Photography Community is the most active, engaged, positive group of photographers I’ve ever seen anywhere on the web. I’m constantly blown away and humbled by the quality of the work that people post there day in and day out. More than just the work, the photographers that I’ve met on there, that I’ve hung out with on there, that I’ve hung out in real life with on there (HIRL), are such amazing people that I’ve been so fortunate to have gotten to know.

Alot of people ask me how they might get more involved with Google+. I’d say that you can start with checking out these folks and I think you’ll find most of them are pretty easy to get along with and interact with. You can check out these circles here:

1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ (A-G, Part 1 of 3)
1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ (G-O, Part 2 of 3)
1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ (P-Z, Part 3 of 3)

Thanks to each and every photographer that I’ve gotten to know at Google+!

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Flickr Kills “Photo Session” Four Months After Launch

Flickr Announces Android App and Flickr Photo Session

Back at the end of September I wrote a post critical of Flickr’s latest new feature “Photo Session.” The new feature seemed laughable to me and indicative of a more general trend of flickr just not really getting it when it came to innovation.

The feature allowed you to chat (old skool AOL style) with other users while looking at a photo together. You could also draw little doodles on the photos one at a time. Well apparently nobody is using the thing and as such they are taking it out back behind the barn (with the donkey in it) and putting it down.

Flickr Chief Markus Spiering blogs from the Flickr Blog: “Photo Session is a feature that offered a real-time way to share photos with other people in a browser, with no additional apps to install. The feature had been developed as a technology showcase, but has not seen the user adoption we were hoping for. The feature will be turned-off by March 20…”

In today’s world where we can get on Google+ live with audio and video and use screen share, Photo Session seemed like such an archaic outdated thing to even be launching. I could see a possible application with flickr porn, but because flickr didn’t allow you to share adult oriented content this way it didn’t even have an application there.

Flickr also announced today that they will be ending Picnik as well (which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone now that Google — a Yahoo competitor — acquired the Picnik company).

They are also cleaning house in a few other areas, discontinuing support for old browser versions, etc.

Now, on the plus side Spiering blogs that Flickr is starting out 2012 with a “renewed focus,” and promises that this year is going to be “big” and that we will see “significant updates to Flickr’s user experience, new features and offerings across devices.” This is the first time in years that I remember anyone actually talking about improving flickr’s game, let alone the guy in charge of flickr.

Of course, as they say, talk is cheap, so we’ll see how quickly Flickr begins rolling out these new features for us. For what it’s worth, I absolutely agree with their decision to kill Photo Session. Nobody was using it and it was embarrassingly bad. It’s good to see Flickr recognizing this and cutting that loss early.

So how could Flickr impress me in 2012?

Well, there are lots of things they could do. These are some of the top ways that I think they could improve Flickr for users.

1. More robust blocking and filtering tools. When I block somebody on Flickr they should totally be wiped off the planet of my flickr experience. Why let horrible people continue to harass me when I want nothing to do with them. Make them completely invisible. Do it like Google+ does. When I block someone anything they type anywhere on Flickr should disappear for me. Any comment on any photo. Any comment in any group thread. Anywhere. Nuke them entirely as far as I’m concerned. Make the bad crazy psycho people go away.

Also let me filter out things I don’t want to see. This is especially true with group threads. Let me choose to hide a group thread and never have to see it again. Also let me be able to choose to hide all photos by a certain user. Make these photos now disappear from search and everywhere on the site for me. I hate it when I do a search for “Austin” and have to see the same photographer come up over and over and over again with photos of Utah simply because he’s tagged his photos with Austin.

2. Create a basic group thread reader for mobile. Group threads are the lifeblood of social on Flickr. Make it as easy as possible for people to track their group threads. A simple text reader for group threads should be easy enough to implement.

3. Give me circles for my contacts. Right now Flickr only has two ways I can categorize my contacts friends/family and contacts. I need more buckets. Let me create circles of San Francisco photographers and neon photographers and Super close friends, and people I’ve photowalked with, and all kinds of other ways of organizing these contacts.

4. Let me browse a version of Explore by circle. Why force me to have to look at all of those crappy watermarked photos in Explore today by strangers. I don’t want to see those. Instead what I want to see is the most interesting photos from the past hour/day/week/month by whatever circle I want to browse. I want to interact with photos from my friends more than I want to interact with photos by strangers. Sure, give me an option to browse the section by “everyone,” but also give me the ability to filter it by whatever circle I want.

5. Get rid of the secret Explore blacklist. I was on it for over 2 years before they took me off it. It’s unfair. it makes Flickr feel hostile. I was talking with a user the other day who said that he thought he’d been blacklisted because his stuff was too Christian. Whether that’s true or not, knowing that users can be secretly blacklisted is harmful for community. Not knowing why you were blacklisted or even if you are blacklisted raises all kinds of suspicious worrying and concern.

6. Integrate SuprSetr into Flickr. Building albums by hand is so last decade. Let me build albums by keywords. Have them automatically update. Flickr says they are looking to hire engineers. Hire Jeremy Brooks, the creator of SuprSetr and have him build this tech out for you.

7. Refresh the most recent photos by my contacts page. Flickr’s former designer Timoni West last year called this the most important page on Flickr and it’s in desperate need of an overhaul. Let me customize this page way more. Right now I can view photos 4 ways in this section: the last single photo by my friends and family, the last single photo by my contacts, the last 5 photos by my friends and family or the last 5 photos by my contacts.

This is wayyyy too limiting. Why such arbitrary numbers? Let me decide how many I want to see, the last 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 100, unlimted, whatever. Let me set any number I want here. Also let me filter it not just by my friends/family/contacts. Let me filter it by any flickr circle I want to. “Super Close Friends” “San Francisco Photogs” “Great Google+ Friends Also on Flickr” “Flickr Employees” “Bad ass HDR Shooters” “People Going on my Death Valley Trip” whatever. You get the idea. Let me filter this section by the most recent photos of whatever group of people I want.

Markus, I admire your resolve on making Flickr a better place in 2012. It’s refreshing hearing something like that from the top dog on Flickr. Now let’s see if team flickr can deliver.