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I have been reading several complaints on Facebook for a few days about Flickr’s choice to introduce a monthly payment for uploading images.
Flickr becomes paid when you want to upload more than 1000 images, having one TB of storage space available.
The complaints I read on Facebook concern payments for all who need uploading more than 1000 images and, above all, for all those need to insert credits in their images descriptions.
This problem concerns, above all, the Fashion bloggers who have seen their images with credits links in the description tab deleted. In particular, Flickr penalized the photos that had a direct link to the Marketplace. In short, for Flickr, it’s okay if the photographer put the link to a blog in the description, the question is whether the credits are directly indicated in the description, especially when they contain direct links to the Marketplace.
The conclusion that inevitably all fashion bloggers have arrived at is that, if they wish to continue carrying out their business as a fashion blogger on Flickr, they need to choose a Pro account.
I believe that the preferred way for the photographer is to evaluate their needs: if for years the fashion blogger carried out and included the credits in their images, it will become challenging to be able to store all his creations inside of a blog. Since the activity would become too long, at this point, I think the preferable way, in this case, is to opt for a Pro account. If in your Flickr account, you have inserted links to a specific blog, the problem does not exist: Flickr will not delete any image since it is not an advertisement. Like told, If you added a link to a Second Life Marketplace item, Flickr requires payments, particularly regards fashion bloggers, who have always included in their description the images’ credits. Some of the fashion bloggers got ready in time and brought their pictures to a blog, doing a great job of transferring photographs and related links. In contrast, others did not do so, even for lack of time, and therefore find themselves having to make a choice: delete their images to be able to stay within the thousands of storage, naturally removing the credits from the descriptions, or switch to a Pro account.
Here is a Facebook post of complaint about Flickr policy:
Many, however, are wondering what the possible alternatives to Flickr are. Looking for other options to Flickr on Google, there are many; however, for the needs of a Second Life user, I have to say that the choice is not very much.
The first competitor of Flickr is 500px. However, this photography social network does not accept images concerning virtual worlds. I made sure of this by asking directly to the 500px support service that guaranteed me that all virtual worlds like Second Life’s pictures cannot be accepted on their platform, and, in the hypothesis that a user uploads it, the account could quietly be banned. So 500px is not a viable alternative. What can we choose as social for the promotion of images?
Update on 24/02/2020: You can consider Instagram, but you know Instagram’s images have a square format, and the picture’s quality is not excellent. So, I don’t think Instagram is a valid alternative to Flickr, but maybe you could think it fits your needs.
Given that I don’t see any other options since the sites that people usually suggested as alternatives to Flickr are not captivating, I believe that the only exciting possibility as photographic Social is DeviantART. It is still free, you can upload all the images you want on DeviantART, and it is also a particularly active community.
Like Flickr, there are groups where you can share your images. Still, it is also true that being a particularly active community, people quickly find the photos they are interested in. Also, you can put a preference on the images you like, in a similar way to Flickr. It is also possible to save the items that interest you so that you can easily find them later. The difference between Flickr and DeviantART is that while Flickr is a photography community, whether real or virtual photography does not matter, DeviantART is not an exclusive photography community. It was born exclusively as a community of artists. Therefore all art forms are promoted within this platform. Among them, there are also prose, drawings, photographic and artistic images of various kinds, etc. On DeviantART, particular stock images are used by the artists themselves for the creation of additional photos through the use of photographic processing software such as the well-known Photoshop.
In conclusion, remaining within the context of free choices that allow unlimited sharing of images, I believe that the best option is DeviantART. All other solutions have significant limits and thus become unattractive to those who share Second Life pictures.
Also, another aspect that we must not underestimate is that those who share images that they have taken within SL, in most cases, expect to have a broad audience, as they had on Flickr. This “stage” becomes impossible within platforms where images of virtual worlds are usually not shared. So the best choice I think is DeviantART, where images of virtual worlds are typically shared and where artists are interested and open to the knowledge of non-traditional art forms, such as those that concern images taken within virtual worlds.
At the end of this article, I leave all the reference links related to Flickr and DeviantART, and I also write the references to all the Communities where you can share the images taken within Second Life or virtual worlds in general. On DeviantART, it is also possible to sell your creations and obtain in this way scores that also allow you to spend in the DeviantART’s selling items. DeviantART encourages the sale of its artistic creations, and this is also a particularly exciting aspect, mainly because DeviantART is free, and you can upload your images in an unlimited way.
