24th
My Flickr, Going Offline
It is with a heavy heart that I write this. Sadly, last night I had to turn off the My Flickr servers & shutdown my My Flickr app which has been my software development baby since I created it 3 and a half years ago using PHP+MySQL when Facebook first opened up apps in Summer 2007.
My Flickr has been a FREE app, totally donation + ad driven; however, it has not been producing enough revenue to pay for the cost of web hosting to serve all you ~450,000 lovely users and ~46,000 fans. Facebook has made many changes over the past year which has made it difficult to monetize applications (e.g. no more profile boxes & tabs).
Why did you start My Flickr? Here’s what I said in my previous post:
I started My Flickr in May 2007 (this blog in 2008) with the intent of sharing my Flickr photos and photosets with friends and family on Facebook. I firmly believe that we, photographers, do not want to upload our photos twice, especially to a place like Facebook where we lose rights to our own photos.
Additionally, as of late, the app had also begun to suffer from scalability issues as it grew well beyond my wildest dreams of a simple new photos notifier & Flickr portfolio wall box on Facebook. When Facebook added profile app Tabs, My Flickr was there with version 3.0. With My Flickr v4.0, I released an ambitious update touting new features which you, the users, suggested such as: view larger Flickr photos, photostream, photosets within Facebook & Facebook photo commenting. While these new features were a hit for us users, it also slammed the server hard, and basic functionality began to be impaired. Time to work on My Flickr dwindled during my last semesters at college (I graduated May 2010. YAY!) forcing me to go back to the basics.
In the future, I do plan to bring back several of My Flickr’s features as well as develop some new ideas “a-brewing” in a simpler, definitely scalable fashion.
I’m sorry for any inconvenience that this causes you, friends, family, fans, or clients.
Thank you for supporting the My Flickr app & my endeavors over the past few years! It has been an exciting, challenging, intriguing, learning, & enjoyable experience developing this app.
Don’t go anywhere! I’ll still be here! Please follow the My Flickr App blog (http://blog.myflickrapp.com) for updates, classy Flickr photos, and tips & tricks about sharing your life through photos on Flickr & Facebook.
Sincerely,
-Kaleb Fulgham
http://kalebdf.com
P.S. - Hint #1: Flickr can be “extended” to automatically post updates directly to your Facebook profile! Link & help here.
