As you may know, I am a “very-amateur” drummer. I have first learned and played percussion in a classical band. And then, played drums in a pop/blues band. Almost nobody knew us, excepted our friends and family, but hey, we had a lot of fun just to play together.
After a long break we have started to rehearse again together. And it brings a lot of pleasure and fun!
We have launched our rehearsals with some Sade and Womack & Womack tracks :-)
Cool.
As you may know, I have left the Flickr service, where I had a Pro Account, for more than one year (in December 2008). Actually, I haven’t deactivated my Flickr account, it is “just” a normal account now, as I didn’t want to break different links on my photostreams. Some limitations are now appearing on my Flickr, i.e.:
So, it is clear that I cannot use anymore this service. On the other side, it’s free!
So let’s compare a bit more the different services (SmugMug and Flickr).
Disclaimer: this comparison is a mix of facts and my own subjective rating of both services (still as users from both during months).
| CORPORATE | FLICKR | SMUGMUG |
| Overall information | sold to Yahoo! in March 2005, founders left in 2008 | independent, profitable and debt-free |
| Number of employees | around 50 | 50 |
| Number of photos | 4’000 million | 766 million |
| Founding year | 2004 | 2002 |
| STANDARD SERVICE | FLICKR | SMUGMUG |
| monthly upload limit | 100 MB | unlimited |
| limit per photo | 10 MB | 12 MB |
| max. video duration | 90s | not supported in “standard” |
| max. video size | 150 MB | not supported in “standard” |
| shown size (photo) | smaller resized images | no reducing resolution |
| number of photos shown | last 200 | unlimited |
| gallery personalization | no | yes, very nice |
| slideshows | yes, but limited | yes, lots of customization possible |
| costs per year | free, but with ads | $40 |
| PRO SERVICE | FLICKR | SMUGMUG |
| monthly upload limit | unlimited | unlimited |
| limit per photo | 20 MB | 24 MB |
| max. video duration | 90s | 10 mn |
| max. video size | 500 MB | 600 MB |
| HD supported | 720p | 1080p |
| storage limit | unlimited | unlimited |
| bandwidth limit | unlimited | unlimited |
| statistics | yes | yes (far better) |
| customization | no | fully, including hostname |
| batch organization | yes, but limited | yes, extremely powerful |
| costs per year | $25 | $150 (an intermediary “Power” level exists for $60/year) |
I am wondering, based on this tables, if it would not have been better to compare the “Pro” service from Flickr with the “Standard” level of SmugMug…
Anyway, you feel perhaps how far both services are different. Perhaps also not with the same target groups/segmentation of customers.
I have left Flickr for mainly three reasons:
It is clear that the price differences is really huge between both services, but you get something from what you are paying!
First, it was quite easy to migrate from Flickr to SmugMug, as you can find a Firefox extension to automatically migrate all your pictures from your Flickr account to SmugMug. The tool is called “SmuggLr” and it is free.
Secondly, based on my SmugMug Pro Account, I have created a new subdomain called “visuals.didierbeck.com” of my own blog “www.didierbeck.com”. Both are now similar from each others, although I am definitely not finished with the customization. I will perhaps also merge both (blog and visuals) in the coming time. All my pictures and videos are now published under the “visuals” subdomains.
Thirdly, and perhaps the most interesting: the effect of having done these changes had a *huge* impact on the traffic of my pictures! I had about 18’000 views on my Flickr pictures within 2 years. I was many times above 100’000 views per month in 2009 on SmugMug! More data about this just below.
Some data
about 2009 on visuals.didierbeck.com:
Visualization of the traffic during the last 12 months:
What’s the better place to be now, and for the next days?
Still too early for me ;-)
We are extremely lucky to be able to travel to Saint Barth again this year…
Our last visit there was in February 2009. I have the feeling it’s 5 years back!
We were quite lucky last year when we have reserved the villa we will be in in some days (a renovated villa that was just put on the renting market). I think it’s from far the most beautiful villa we have rented. With an absolutely crazy view on the Saint Jean Bay, the Eden Rock hotel, and the airport. Have a look below…
So, in exactly 30 days, we will be on this terrace!
Loic LeMeur, the CEO of Seesmic, announced yesterday that his company has acquired ping.gm. As a “happy-user” of both services, I find this acquisition definitely interesting ;-)
I am using Twhirl as a Windows Twitter client, and the ping.fm service to spread my updates to LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo and FriendFeed.
We’re happy to share with you very big news if you have not heard. We’ve acquired Ping.fm. Get ready to update 50 social networks from Seesmic.
[…] Ping.fm has more than half a million active users who post daily from any device just by sending an email, a text message or chat – simple tools that existed since the early stages of the Internet are available on all connected devices. This is why Ping.fm is extremely easy to use and access -just send an update and it can touch on 50 social networks including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, WordPress, TypePad, Yammer, Status.net and many more. Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which is why it has become so successful among thousands of users.
[…]
Thanks to its powerful and simple API, more than a hundred applications already use Ping.fm to update all the main social networks and Seesmic commits to maintaining and improving the Ping.fm platform. Not only has Twhirl supported Ping.fm for about a year, but we are also preparing to open Seesmic apps with our own plug-in architecture so we understand and care about the developer community. Ping.fm co-founders, Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough, are joining the Seesmic team full time and will keep improving Ping.fm as well as integrating it with our Seesmic applications. The number one request from Ping.fm users is to have more powerful clients support postings to their social networks, so they should be pleased to know Seesmic applications will be adding this functionality.
Seesmic is also welcoming ping.fm angel investors as shareholders and advisors Joi Ito (@joi), Reid Hoffman (@quixotic) who was already a Seesmic shareholder and Mohamed Nanabhay (@mohamed). Seesmic applications on Blackberry, Android, Web, Windows and OSX via Air will all have advanced Ping.fm integration very shortly and therefore will instantly support 50 social networks.
[via Loic’s information mail]
This week-end was quite special. We had first -12°C during the day on Saturday. Then -14°C during the night from Saturday to Sunday.
Sunday was much more warm, about -3°C, but with 15 cm snow and a very strange light.
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF17-40, ISO 3200, post-prod with DxO Optics Pro v6.1)
Some other pictures on visuals.didierbeck.com.
What a strange “object” :-)
Finally the wrap up/poster of my Saint Barth Portfolio 2009.
I have started to publish this portfolio on June 18, 2009 with this post.
The idea was the following:
I will publish 2 pictures from each region of the island per post. Force to choose ;-)
I hope I haven’t bothered you too much with these 16 posts!
I really had to finish, as the countdown is running for our next stay in Saint Barth (February 2010)! About 50 days to go :-)
I have passed the 5’000 pictures uploaded on SmugMug / visuals.didierbeck.com in about one year.
I *really* like SmugMug more and more. Still discovering a lot of very useful functionalities there. So happy to have left Flickr!
It seems that you like it too, as the traffic there is increasing more and more :-) I have now almost the same number of “photos viewed” as “pageviews” on this blog, i.e. more than 100’000 per month for each. Gosh!
Thanks for your interest!