On today’s Flickr blog there is an announcement for two big upcoming Flickr photowalks. One is in New York on Saturday February 18th and already has 70 people signed up. The other is in Philadelphia on Sunday February 19th and already has 23 people signed up.

While these numbers are not as big as some of the photowalks that have been taking place over the past year through other sites, it is very interesting to see Flickr begin to get more active in the photowalking scene.

Even more impressive is what appears to be a brand new elegantly designed community page for meetups by Flickr at meetup.com. I played around a bit with the site and was very impressed — it’s much better designed than Yahoo’s own upcoming.com site and likely to attract much bigger participation in walks going forward — especially if promoted on the Flickr blog and through other official Flickr channels.

It’s also interesting to see that Flickr’s Head of Product Markus Spiering himself has organized and will be attending the two upcoming East Coast walks personally. Spiering is the guy who runs Flickr, so having him on the walks is a very visible way to show support for these kind of community events.

In the past I’ve been critical of Flickr for being out of touch with their users and the photo community. Earlier this year Spiering promised a “renewed focus” from Flickr this year and certainly beefing up community events, his own personal involvement, along with a page dedicated to these sorts of events by Flickr is a great way for Flickr to begin better re-engaging the photo community.

As a West Coast dude I won’t be able to attend these walks, but I love seeing this sort of community involvement from Flickr.

Today seems to be the first day that Flickr has blogged about the site — so far 142 flickr people have signed up from 33 different cities. It will be interesting to see what sort of momentum this site can attract.

Yesterday photo hosting site Snapjoy launched what they called a “tongue-in-check” promotional page called Flickraft. The promo page provided a tool that would allow users to transfer their photos from Flickr to Snapjoy directly via the Flickr API. According to Snapjoy, in two hours their users imported over 250,000 photos and then they had their API key disabled by Flickr.

In Snapjoy’s case they likely ran afoul of some of Flick’s basic API Guidelines and Terms of Use. Here it spells out what you can and can’t do with an API key. A few of the things that you *can’t* do according to the API Guidelines and TOU:

“Don’t abuse or overtax the API. This means that if you build an app that excessively strains the Flickr servers, we will expire your key per the API. Don’t Use Flickr APIs for any application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience of Flickr.com. Don’t Display more than 30 Flickr user photos per page in your application or use an unreasonable amount of bandwidth.”

Snapjoy also borrowed from the Flickr branding/logo (which is also prohibited) in crafting a clever marketing message making Flickr look like the Titanic.

I suspect that the API disable wasn’t done manually by anyone at Flickr, but that rather when they transferred over 250,000 photos that they probably tripped some sort of API limits put in place to more generically protect against abuse.

I reached out to Jaisen Mathai who used to work at Yahoo and now is working on a new initiative called Open Photo which would allow users better control over their photos and here is what he had to say:

“API rate limits are a double edged sword. From the provider (Flickr) side it’s required to curb abuse (which Yahoo! gets a crap load of, I was involved in these efforts during my employment). The other side is that things which aren’t exactly abuse often find a nice home under the “abuse” umbrella. This includes “export all of my photos to another site so I can stop using Flickr.”

Still, in the great big world of Yahoo bandwidth, should there really be a limit that prevents another site from transferring more than 250,000 or more photos from Flickr to their site. If this is the case, then many other more successful ventures in the future (like Google Photos or Mathai’s Open Photo) would effectively also end up locked out of the Flickr API.

Personally one of my concerns with regards to Flickr over the years has been functional lockin. While Flickr has given lip service over the years to data portability, in actuality, for the vast majority of flickr users, getting your photos out of the site is anything but easy.

One way to get your photos out of flickr is to use the service Backupify. But in order to use this option you can’t have more than 50GB of photos on Flickr (I have way more than this) and you have to pay them $19.99/month. You can also try some of the free apps that are out there like Bulkr or Downloadr. But these have serious flaws as well. Downloadr is PC only (I’m a Mac guy) and Bulkr limits you to 500 photos at a time (not ideal for someone with almost 68,000 photos on the site like me). I tried Bulkr a while back and found it buggy and not very easy to use. Relying on free apps designed by third party developers in their spare time hardly seems like an ideal solution.

Using the API to directly transfer photos from Flickr to other services is by far the fastest easiest way for users to get their data out of Flickr. A few weeks ago when I decided that I wanted to start selling prints of my photos I transferred about 5,000 of my 67,000 flickr photos from Flickr to SmugMug. I was *blown away* at the speed with which these photos moved over. Getting these photos transferred over to SmugMug was super easy. I used an app called SmuggLr that works as a Firefox extension. [Disclosure, SmugMug is a sponsor of our Photo Talk Plus show, tune in tonight at 8PM PST!]. It was fast, flawless and efficient. The way data portability ought to be.

SmugMug of course is a paid premium site geared more towards higher end photographers who want to sell their prints rather than simply a free photo hosting site like Snapjoy, so Flickr likely considers them less of a direct competitor and so they probably don’t consider them as “replicating or attempting to replace the essential user experience of Flickr.com.”

As a free hosting service, sites like Snapjoy might likely be considered much more direct competitors to Flickr… but then again, so might things like Google Photos or Open Photo.

The still unanswered question is, shouldn’t we as users have the right to move our data around smoothly and freely? After all, these are OUR photos right? Personally I’ve always been a big fan of Google with regards to data portability. Not only have they come out very publicly in supporting data portability with their Data Liberation Front, they actually show you how and have built a tool to make it super easy to export your photos out of Picasa.

As far as Snapjoy the site goes, I set up an account there a few years ago. It’s interesting. They seem to be going after more of timeline sort of thing (like Facebook’s timeline) than a direct community based photo sharing thing. There really is no community or photo sharing there at all. I can’t send you a link to one of my photos as far as I know — it’s more just a personal place for me to look at my photos in archive view. I didn’t really get much out of it so I haven’t used it at all since checking it out initially. I can already look at my photos in archive view on Flickr so I didn’t really see the point.

It is probably worth noting that Snapjoy also does not appear to have an API, Mathai thought that this was their biggest mistake in terms of trying to enable a Flickr to Snapjoy exporter.

“I applaud the SnapJoy team’s effort and am always on the side of startups. Their biggest mistake was not having an API themselves,” said Mathai.

“It might not have any impact on getting their API key whitelisted or reenabled, but it would give them a leg to stand on. The marketing of “get off a sinking ship” conflicts with the fact that they don’t have an API and “coming soon” doesn’t cut it. So in reality, your photos are safer on Flickr than SnapJoy because Flickr at least provides tools (though they may cripple it by rate limiting) to get your photos out. Moving from Flickr to SnapJoy is moving from one silo to another.”

More from TechCrunch, The Next Web.

Update: Michael Dwan, co-founder of Snapjoy, just emailed me back and said that as of this morning, they have not heard back from Flickr.

We’re happy many people got a chance to use the importer and many more are still asking for the functionality to return. We’re also thrilled by the response from people who made it into the beta. We’re working to bring the functionality back and have rewritten the offending code so this isn’t a recurring problem (for Flickr or any other site we integrate with).”

Google+’s Lightbox View

Today for the first time I noticed that Facebook has rolled out a new lightbox view for photos. There were rumors of a new Facebook Lightbox view coming already out in the wild, but this was the first time that I saw it myself.

At first blush it looks like quite a bit of it was copied from inspired by Google Photos. Remember Vincent Mo, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The biggest change is that that comments on Facebook photos have been moved over to the right. Also it’s interesting to me that they seem to have dropped adverts on photos that have enough comments to require scrolling. This probably makes sense as it’s a way to reward high value (i.e. highly commented) photos on Facebook and below the fold adverts (where the adverts go under the comments) probably wouldn’t fetch as much as above the fold adverts anyways.

Also now, when you hover over the photo it gives you the opportunity to “like” or “tag” the photo. This is in addition to the options already to like and tag the photo that are to the right of the photo and always showing. Facebook really must want to drive “likes” and “tags” to their photos, which does actually make a lot of sense as increasing social activity on photos will drive engagement.

Simply clicking off the photo to the empty space around the photo or pressing the escape key will bring you back to the regular page you came from.

Personally I like the new lightbox view by Facebook. It’s better than the old Facebook lightbox. It’s still not as good as Google+’s which still has a larger photo — but along with the new much larger photo thumbnails in the timeline view, it’s a step in the right direction. It also tells me that Facebook has probably noticed the success that Google+ has had with photographers and is looking to try and find ways to make Facebook more attractive to the photography crowd. Facebook’s photos have come a long way since pre-Google+. Back then photo thumbnails were ensy weeny — the size of a postage stamp.

If I were Facebook I’d still make the lightbox view much larger though (like Google+). When it comes to a photo in lightbox view, bigger is definitely better.

Facebook also still needs to give us a way to crop photos in the Timeline view. Right now the imposed square crop doesn’t always best show your photo and the “resize” feature (press the star above your photo in timeline view) weirdly crops just the top half of the photo. Facebook already does have a cropping tool that you can use for your main cover photo in timeline view, so I’d think (and I hear) that better cropping ought to be coming for timeline photos at some point.

What do you think? Do you like the new Facebook lightbox for photos? And which do you think looks better, Facebook’s or Google+’s? Any other thoughts on today’s new Facebook lightbox design?

Update:

Comments on the new change from Google+ users.

Update: Mike Schroepfer from Facebook comments in the comments below: “Thomas and everyone else – thanks for the feedback.

If you have any other comments or suggestions I’d love to hear them.”

Wow, what a show we have in store for you tomorrow night! If you are not yet familiar with the work of Jaime Ibarra, he is not only one of the most followed accounts on Google+ he is one of the most talented working photographers out there shooting today. He works with models to produce super interesting cutting edge work using both in camera and post production techniques. Be sure and check out his work on Deviant Art as well, where he is one of the most popular photographers posting over there.

Join us for this special conversation with Jaime as well as a wrap up on all the best weekly Google+ Photography News.

Along with my cohost Lotus Carroll and myself tomorrow night will be our panelists Sly Vegas, Charli Blake, Cliff Baise, Petra Cross (from Google), Joe Azure, Jackie Freeman and the Vidcast Network’s Keith Barrett.

You can catch the show LIVE at 8PM PST tomorrow night at http://vidcastnetwork.com or at my Google+ stream here. If you are watching be sure and join us in chat as well here.

As a special surprise tomorrow night Jaime also just might tell you where to get the best BBQ in Austin today!

As always thank you, thank you, thank you to our wonderful show sponsors SmugMug and Drobo. Be sure to check them out on the web at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com.

What a BLAST I had interviewing my good Pal Daniel Krieger for Photo Talk Plus Episode 8. For those of you who don’t know Daniel, he is a professional photographer working in New York City. Daniel mostly focuses on wedding and food photography and has shot for many different prestigious publications including the New York Times.

Joining my cohost Lotus Carroll is a stellar line up of mostly New Yorkers including Leanne Staples, Vivienne Gucwa, Titus Winters and Keith Barrett

Thank you as always to our wonderful sponsors SmugMug and Drobo. Check them out at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com.

What is it?

A free 3 day event/photowalk – March 23-25th in Utah

“A photowalk of epic proportions and awesomeness” – Scott Jarvie

I’m super excited to be heading out for the Festival of Colors next month with my good Pal Scott Jarvie.

I’d try to describe exactly what it is but Scott’s blog post does a much better job of that than I can. Check it out and if you’re up for it, post here on Google+ and come on out and join us for this remarkable photography adventure.

“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.

Thanks to our show sponsors SmugMug and Drobo!

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?

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 Radičević, 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!