Well, let's get this out of the way first:
wyk wrote:Member since I first helped Chuck trouble shoot several beta versions in the 90's.
So, basically you're a long standing buddy of his. Good. No issues with your objectivity then. Well, not other than hauling out Internet Argument Cliche 1294 when you hear something that you
think is a slight against him, even though it isn't and was just my analysis of what we know rather than what you assert:
wyk wrote:Your 'piece of mind premium' might be a product in only one mind here.
"*You're* on your own. *I* speak for the everyone". Sure, whatever. However let's deconstruct what you've said anyway.
wyk wrote:The current owner of FLIKR have owned it for just barely two years. PBASE is under the same ownership it has been for over 20 years now.
You say that as if it is (a) good and (b) relevant. It's neither.
First of all the MacAskills founded what would become SmugMug in 2002. They haven't owned Flickr for that length of time but they (or more precisely the company that they founded) have been in the photo web site game for the better part of 20 years meaning that your comparison is irrelevant.
Second, the "same ownership" thing. PBase may nominally be a company but in practical terms it's Slug and Emily. There used to be employees; NoOutlet, the Kirby twins, Cami who breezed in with such enthusiasm (
four years ago) but was gone in a week... but none have been seen in the last few years. It's therefore just a couple running it. People get older. People change over time. Their interests and enthusiasms change. Their priorities change. And 20 years is a long time. This isn't a bad thing, it's human nature. You can
claim (without an objective basis for doing so) that they still "love photography". And who knows, maybe they do. Except... looking at
objective facts, Slug hasn't posted a single photo in his galleries for 7 years. Emily posts more often but still has only about 3400 images on line, which is not a huge number for an 18 year old account. This somewhat at variance with your assertion regarding what will happen "So long as the original owners wish to share and store their photos".
However what they do on their personal accounts pales in comparison to what they do on the site, which isn't much, and it would be impossible to reasonably argue otherwise. A year ago they moved data centres and introduced swiping and the Auto size. A brief wave of enthusiasm as anyone who has been around for a while has seen before and since then... nothing, as anyone who has been around for a while has also seen before. The News subforum is a stark display of this. Swiping in March 2019 (over a year ago), storage cost change in February 2019, new data centre February 2019 (three posts in a month!) but then we have to go back to July 2017 (over 2 years prior), then before that November 2016, then... November 2013 (three years prior) and so on. Most people who are still here have come to accept it for what it is.
Conversely at SmugMug, change is a constant because it's not two people with outside lives, but a professionally run company with employees who can carry on even if the owners become distracted or bored. I've said before that I don't like the way they've chosen to implement their site, and I still don't, but at least they are doing
something and have a team to fall back on.
wyk wrote:Only one of these entities stated in a letter to thousands of people recently(as well as a few times in the past) that it is losing money and wants more - and it wasn't PBASE.
In no small part because the last time we heard from Slug it was via cave paintings in the Chauvet Cave in France. (That's an observation more than a criticism since again, people who have been around long enough know the score and have accepted what it is, me included.) That aside, however, the point is irrelevant because there is one fundamental difference between Flickr and either PBase or SmugMug. Flickr is the only one that has a disproportionate population of freeloaders that it can't easily rid itself of. At SmugMug if you don't pay, you don't play. If you don't continue to pay, your photos go away. That isn't a criticism either, because I believe that there are too many people who expect to be given things for free while still being paid for their own work. Similarly with PBase you are given a trial account, but if you want to upload after that you have to pay. Again, this is as it should be. It stands to PBase's credit that they don't seem to remove defunct accounts, but there is still a cost of admission.
Flickr on the other hand has traditionally had an overwhelming number of completely free accounts. You didn't get some bells and whistles with a free account. You did have to put up with advertising... which hardly anybody with an ad blocker has seen in the last 10 years. That isn't sustainable. Flickr has now put limits on how many photos can be uploaded on a free account. Cue the predictable outrage along the lines of "How DARE they! I DESERVE to get stuff for free, it's my human right!". That limit is still being pretty generous for the sponges and leeches, but in addition to that MacAskill is trying to appeal to the better part of the user base's nature by saying "this isn't free; this service costs money to provide to you. If you want it to continue then could you please chip in?". First, that is more than reasonable IMHO. Second, it hasn't been done by PBase because PBase
already did it, and rightly did it, a long time ago:
PBase FAQ wrote:Is PBase free?
No. Costs are too great to offer unlimited space without bombarding everyone with pop-up ads and banners. However, the cost is low for the features and photo storage you're getting and the support we offer (forums, one-on-one email).
The price you pay helps to cover the disk space, the webservers, the database, backup systems, bandwidth, and support.
wyk wrote:Your 'piece of mind premium' might be a product in only one mind here. PBASE is not a corporation trying to please investors.
If you're going to argue, at least argue consistently. That last sentence is a complete non sequitur. Suppose that a site's servers collapsed catastrophically one morning. Compare the situation between a two person band and a corporation.
In PBase's case the problem would fall on the heads of one couple. They aren't answerable to anyone. It would be entirely possible for them to just throw up their hands and say "Sorry guys, too hard, that's the end, refund cheque's in the mail". Would they do that? I doubt it, not as a first resort or even a second. Slug seems like a good guy and I'm sure that he and Emily would work their backsides off to try to restore the site. But what if, gods forbid, he's sick? There's no team to fall back on. A professionally run corporation, on the other hand, is something that has an existence beyond the individuals in it. There is no single point of failure. If one of the MacAskills (again gods forbid) gets hit by a bus there are another 20, 30 people at SmugMug HQ to step up. And if the servers are down, they have shareholders (I don't know how many outside of the founders since as far as I can see it's a private company, but most likely some) and probably financial backers to answer to. Walking away isn't an option the way it is for an individual.
Also a corporation has a responsibility to be on the ball and professional when it comes to administration. In 2015, conversely, PBase glitched because - and I still can't believe I'm writing this - apparently
the domain name wasn't renewed in a timely fashion. And incidentally, that's ticking down again now, with the renewal
being due on 10 August. Why?? Why would anyone let their domain run that close to the bone? All it takes to renew a domain name for a decade is a mouse click, a credit card, and a relatively piddling amount of money. I keep all of my own domain names with a registration expiry of between 5 and 10 years from now. Flickr's is out in late 2022. You only need to slip on this once and have some professional domain jumper grab your expired domain name (which should be illegal, but that's a different conversation) and offer to sell it back to you for "how much have you got?".
Then there's the issue of finances. We know that the number of photos being uploaded to PBase is falling year after year, and not by a trivial amount. It would be delusional to believe that there hasn't also be a fall in paying members. Nobody except Slug and Emily know (or at least I
hope they know) how their (probably declining) revenue compares to their costs, but if the latter comes to exceed the former then you can't reasonably expect them to dig into their personal pockets to keep this place alive indefinitely. SmugMug Inc on the other hand may have also been founded on enthusiasm (just because I don't like their site doesn't mean that I don't respect what the MacAskills have built OR question their dedication to photography), but it's run as their meal ticket. It's what they work on every day. It's more than just a site, it's the hub of an ecosystem of services to professional photographers that brings in their bread. They therefore have a lot more skin in the game.
So yes, I do indeed think that there is more piece of mind with a professionally run company than a "mom and pop" business, which I say descriptively, not disparagingly. Do I think that Flickr will remain in its current form? That I'm less certain about if SmugMug can't turn it around. I know that if I was in the hot seat at SmugMug I'd probably want to merge the back ends at the very least. The risk with merging the sites as a whole is that it will shed a lot of membership bulk which will be bad for the visibility of the site but probably good financially; it all comes down to whether they can get enough Flickerians to pay their way. But even if they don't, I don't doubt for a minute that the Flickr galleries will continue to exist inside SmugMug because failing to do so would be PR poison. There's no such assurance about PBase.
It will probably last for as long as the owners can run it. Or, "keep it ticking over", anyway. Beyond that, I still maintain that it's an open question. Slug and Emily's intentions aren't the question. The realities of time, money and commerce are.