New Nonprofit 'Flickr Foundation' Hopes to Preserve Its Billions of Photos For 100 Years

"Content of every type disappears from the internet all the time..." writes Popular Photography's long-time "gear editor" (for photography equipment).

But someone's doing something about it: the newly-founded Flickr Foundation, which has announced plans "to make sure Flickr will be preserved for future generations." Or, as Popular Photography puts it, to stop photos "from suffering the same ill fate as our MySpace photos" — providing the example of important historical photos.

One particular collection their article notes is The Flickr Commons, "started back in 2008 as a collaborative effort with the Library of Congress to make publicly held photography collections readily available online for people seeking them out." It's a massive, eclectic, fascinating archive that pulls images and content from around the world. This new organization hopes to integrate more partners and ensure that everything remains available and easily accessible.... If you're not already familiar with The Commons, it's a really fascinating online resource. It grants access to everything from historical portraits to scientific images and everything in between. It's easy to get lost in the sheer volume of images available on the site, but Flickr relies on curators in order to bring notable images to the forefront and keep things organized and available.

With the establishment of the new foundation, Flickr hopes that it can keep this archive running to 2122 and beyond. It will doubtlessly add countless more images along the way.
Flickr is currently hiring a new archivist, according to their announcement (which also points out that the Flickr API was one of the first public APIs ever).

Among other things, it says that the foundation hopes to "investigate preservation strategies that could last for the next century,"

Will stragglers like Goat man and Penisbird surviv

[Anonymous Coward]

Penisbird (n): A bird which sits perched up upon a penis.

*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_* [imgur.com]
p_ _ _ ..._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _p [imgur.com]
e_ _ (_.._ `'-.,--,_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ e [imgur.com]
n_ _ _'-._'-._ `a_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ n [imgur.com]
i_ _ _ _ _'._ _.'_(|_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _i [imgur.com]
s_ _ _ _ _ _ 7_ _ ||_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _s [imgur.com]
b_ _ _ _ _ _/_ _.'_|_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _b [imgur.com]
i_ _ _ _ _ /_.-'_ ,J_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _i [imgur.com]
r_ _ _ _ _/_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ r [imgur.com]
d_ _ _ _ ||_ _/_ _ _ ;_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _d [imgur.com]
*_ _ _ _ ||_ |_ _ _ _|_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _* [imgur.com]
p_ _ _ _ `_ [imgur.com]

Flickr is for Photographers to Share Photographs

[theshowmecanuck]

I know people will say it is dated, but that doesn't matter it is still the best photographic site out there. You can upload your photo and it will be stored uncompressed. Store it full sized if you wish. And you can choose what resolution it gets displayed at when someone chooses to view it more closely. Another plus is it doesn't get cropped according to some phone apps arbitrary rules. Best to me, you can store it landscape with any dimensions. In the browser you can see it as large as the uploader wants you to be able to see it, and the phone app will let you rotate your phone to show those landscape shots in, gasp, landscape maximized as large as your phone can show them (and most photos look much better in landscape than portrait which phone users are brainwashed into shooting). It's a site not about bragging how cool you are, but to share your photography in different like minded groups (for whatever kind of photography you like); people trying to create their best photo art and less about selfies, where you aren't forced to use a magnifying glass or jeweler's loupe to actually view the photos in a constrained view on a phone. Flickr kicks that crap out of Instagram and all others. If you are a pro and want to have a personal site with your own portfolio only, that has always been something else and you can use Smugmug, Squarespace, or create your own custom site.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

SHUT UP already. Leave the poor man alone. Krhymer is just trying to make a living with his upstart YouTube channel. People like you are keeping the algorithm from picking up his channel. Maybe you could be nice for once and quit making fun of his food.

Does anyone use Flickr anymore?

[ayesnymous]

It's been years since I visited that site.

Re:

[suss]

I haven't logged in for years, but that's mainly because they kept changing the interface, making it slow, and excluding older browsers from even accessing it...

Hoarding

[fermion]

Fortunately, natural disaster, human error, and time destroys most of history. This allows us to build, rebuild, and escape the tyranny of the past. Imagine if we actually had to protect the general store and pay those inflated prices. It entropy always wins and always pushes us into the future

I am sure that there will be money to insure the random dick pics will survive in perpetuity. I am sure there will be money to provide context. And some pathetic grad student will make a career harvesting these photos for their thesis. But will it be worth it

Don't bet on it

[kmoser]

I'd wager that in 100 years these photos won't be as easily accessible as they are today, if they're even available at all. If you want future generations to be able to find and enjoy your photos, you'd be best off printing a few dozen books of your best shots and distributing them to family members.

Re:Don't bet on it

[pjt33]

It's not quite that simple. I don't think most printers guarantee their colours for 100 years.

Re:

[kmoser]

Commercial photo book companies like Snapfish use high end commercial printers, whose prints are estimated to last over 200 years [your-digital-life.com]. There may be companies that can print them on longer lasting media as well.

Re:

[Askmum]

The problem with keeping something for that long is how do you guarantee the quality? Bit rot gets undetected if noone is looking at the image. And then you make a 3-tier backup and after 3 months you only have backup copies of the corrupt image.
And then a year later someone wants to access it and sees it is garbage.

Flickr loyalist here

[Gavino]

I was an early adopter of Flickr from near inception and stayed loyal right throughout the (rather depressing) Yahoo days to current times. Somewhere near the Yahoo period came Hipstamatic and we all dabbled in "iphoneography" with naff filters. Then along came Instagram which was basically Hipstamatic with less jarring filters and it took over from Hipstamatic for phone pics. It really took off when you could upload photos from the photo library rather than directly from the camera sensor. Then people wou

This civilisation is toast.

[polyp2000]

Who truly believes when they search their heart and look at the global decline that this civilisation will still exist in 100 years time.

Re:

[apoc.famine]

All of us who aren't panicked snowflakes and who have a brain in our heads.

There is no global decline. What the fuck are you even talking about? Did mom switch to store-brand pizza rolls for you?

So many people like you are so short-sitghted. You all think that the events of your current life are the most important and significant events of all history. Why? Because it's happening to you now, and you know about it. That's the only damn reason.

Learn some history, kid. The shit humanity has gone through in the

Get your pictures printed

[Stan92057]

You want to keep those precious moments saved, Get them printed. I have lost hundreds of digital pictures through the first bubble pop or a hard drive crash but Ive never lost a physical photograph or letter.

Re:

[senileoldfart]

I recently had my hot water heater replaced and the plumbers screwed up and flooded my great-room. Days later I found they had flooded bins of original family photos and they were past worth saving. Fortunately, they were all photos for which I had high-quality, high-resolution digital scans. I breathed a sigh and shredded the damaged originals. I will be backing up all my digital family photo images onto USB keys and sending them out to multiple family members. I've seen USB keys go through both wash and d

Re:

[kmoser]

USB drives are estimated to last about 10 years. Even with no write cycles, which will increase their life span, you won't get nearly the lifetime of a photo. So give out all the USB drives you want to family members, but I'd recommend *also* giving them each a couple of books of prints. 100 years from now, I'd bet on at least some of the books surviving longer than *any* of the USB drives.