San Antonio's Rockstar Turned Realtor®: A stern warning (or lack thereof) - Flickr is watching you.

Matt, I had thought about putting subdivision information in to flickr but never got around to it.  I guess I will forget that idea.  It REALLY does suck that they didn't even give you a warning just poof!!  I just checked to make sure my site is still there and it appears I did start to put pictures about subdivisions.  I guess I will nix that idea.

I guess we all can learn we need to read the terms before we click through. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm glad that I never really used my Flickr account for real estate photos. Thanks for the warning.

Matt, so what exactly is the purpose of Flickr?  Is it just a place to show your photos or downsize them or something?  I have heard of it---just never used it.

Marchel - I was using it a lot for subdivision info and I know plenty of others that do.  I may have alerted them by putting in direct links to my IDX for that subdivision and "if you'd like to take a tour contact me" type links.  Regardless, I should have read the TOS, but I do feel there's an odd grey area here.  If I take a photo for my blog (not of a house, but let's say of a flower) and use it on my real estate blog, is that not a "commercial purpose"?  Support didn't have an answer on that one.

Terry - No problem.  I'd love to save anyone the hell I now have to go through.  Ugh.

John - Part of what really irks me about it is that I used it for both.  I would have loved a warning - "take down your real estate photos" so I could have at least saved the rest.  Now I'm out $25 and have to start again with a new username.  Not really cool in my book.

Charles - The idea is to share photos with people around the world.  Most of the photos in my blogs are from Flickr.  If I use a photo for a commercial purpose on my blog does that mean the photo exists for a commercial purpose?  Am I just reading too much into it?  Should you be able to search for photos for commercial use on a website that disallows commercial use?  My head hurts.

Perhaps we just need someone to invent a commercial-use Flickr?  The power of SEO from Flickr was undeniable.  I ranked very highly for several subdivisions thanks to my blogging efforts and Flickr (often occupying the top three spots - above the builders).

Matt,

Thanks for the warning.  I was going to check out flicker for my use -- but now it looks like I won't need to waste the time. 

Currently, I only use my own photos and process them through Picasa or through Photoshop Elements.  I very seldom see any use for photos from someone else.  Any artwork, i can find on a free site or purchase at a reasonable cost through other sites.

Interesting-- know people who use it to get photos to clients and then they do not have to download the photos -- guess that is commercial also.

This is the 2nd time I've hear of this happening to an agent photo stream.  Yep ... Not cool how they handle it.  I *THINK* Picassa is a little more lienient (but don't take my word for it ... read their TOS).  This is why it's better to host your own server space.  No chance of someone else deleting your stuff.

Good to know.  I get email daily from someone wanting me to see something on flickr.  Every time I was to look at it I get solicited.  I don't look anymore.  I really won't now.

Gee Matthew this is horrible. As a Realtor I too post my listings in sets.

I uploaded some photos to it before the listing actually went in the MLS. It still has a high ranking on Google.

Of course you know I have a photo blog. I suppose it is commercial in some sense but I'm really just trying to showcase local businesses around Ann Arbor.

Actually one won an award on Flickr.

I'm dumbfounded.

So have they said they will give you your account back? I know so many Realtors who do this.

Not yet the techno guru that I aspire to be, I had not yet Fliked.  When I do, I now know how not to get the boot.  TY

I have heard this before about flickr and you have to be very careful for sure. Thanks for the alert here for those who do not know this

I guess your flame for flickr has flamed out...I signed up but never used it..Years ago there was a TV show about his..My Friend FlickaFlickr ..You are creative so I know you will find a work around. Good luck. Thanks.

gosh I'd like to see how you were using Flickr... I am not a big picture taker I have NOT UPGRADED to Pro on Flickr.

I was approached by the security manager of a local mall yesterday and told I was breaking the law by taking photos, I just may become less of a photo taker...

I am more of a consumer of others Flickr photos than a contributor...

Thanks for the info on Flickr Matt. That's good to know. 

Matt, this happened to Shane a few months ago. I'm not on Flickr and after reading Shane's experience, I hesitate to join. Would like the Google juice but not having to recreate blogs, etc. So sorry this happened to you.

Sharon

I didn't realize the SEO benefit of Flicker ... now I just have to figure out how I can use it and not get booted off.

I do not use Flickr yet. Thanks for the post . I will read the rules before I join.

Matt, lesson learned. Their TOS seem to be very clear. They don't have to give a warning. Thanks for the heads up.

Matt-well I think this could happen to anyone including me...I'll have to check...I post photo's but do not use others photo's and I admit..I posted a few listings.

Most of my photo's come from deviantart.com and I make sure I am allowed to use them...its a shame in the way it was handled...I will take a look at my account tonight.  Thanks for the heads up

Matt - I have used Flickr for years now and have watermarked/branded my pictures with my website information. I had some people clipping my pictures without giving me credit of course. So my recourse was to brand my shots and use a creative commons license. Never had a problem from Flickr but now I'm a little worried. I don't have a pro account just a freebie.. Thanks for the heads up. Got to go back and read the fine print... I think I'll change the font....lol

Flikr does have a free side where you're allowed to use the photos - at least that's what I heard...

Interesting post. I have never had a problem with flickr, use them for the occasional listing or rental home photoset. I bought a membership, though. I've been happy with them for several years. I also do a lot of non-commercially related photography and link from a personal website www.imallovertown.com so I don't know if it's a violation or not, but they haven't said anything.

Thanks for the heads up!

Rob

Matt -

So sorry to hear of your plight - it sure make me wonder if most agents who use Flick, as well as folks in some other industries, are in vilation, since it is so vague. Does this mean that ANY photo I put on Flickr and subsequently use (or perhaps first use) in a blog article is a violation?

I'm not sure whether it is more annoying that they so vaguely define things or the manner in which they treated you (and others I magine) without providing a reasonable means for resolving the matter through customer support. There are some very well known agents who probably have done the same thing without realizing the problem with the TOS.

Jeff

Matt - well that just bites.I don't have much there, that has always been the project to do next... ~Rita

I'm so glad you warned us about this. And I was going to point out to sellers the advantages of having their houses plastered all over Flickr. Scratch that idea! There are other sites like Picasa and Photobucket which do not have those restrictive terms of service in place (or maybe we should all go back and read them)...

Thanks for the info. I don't use Flickr very often, but I will keep it in mind for the future!

Hi Matt. It's unfortunate that they did not give you a warning so that at least you could save your files.

Matt,

I have borrowed some pictures from Flickr for a blog post and given credit to Flickr and the photographer. Does that fall under what you are talking about?

My mouth is shut!

Wow, looks like a lot of people weren't aware of the TOS and how they handle termination.  It was crushing, because not only did my account suddenly disappear, but it took me about a week to find out if it was just a little glitch or in this case a mass deletion.  I was doing very well in Google thanks to Flickr (the SEO on it is incredible) - #1 or multiple listings on page 1 for topics I photographed and blogged about.  I had even told some agents I knew some of my secrets to success.  (Hope they ignored me.)

Although I understand they have rules, I'm definitely disappointed by their customer service.  Emily was great and emailed me four or five times as I continued to ask questions, but there was no wiggle room - no, "ok, well perhaps we can fix this" or "let me see what I can do."  Just "no."  And a non-warnable termination when I spent money on their site?  That just seems Draconian.  Lucky for me it wasn't $300 a year or something.  I'd be really angry now if that was the case.

Missy - I learned from many of the agents we know in common.  I'm frustrated by that as well.  I'd really like them to define "commercial" a bit better.  Although I don't want your photos deleted, I would certainly say your photo blog has a commercial purpose (in my mind) - it's goal is to make you the local expert and therefore expand your business.  Plus, if you're talking about local businesses, it's double commercial.  But I could say that about almost any photo or use of a photo from Flickr.

They have made it clear that my account is gone.  They will not release my username back to me so I can start again.  They won't refund my money and their TOS gives them all their rights.  I have never had a site that was so strict in their interpretations and implementations of their TOS.  I think ActiveRain even gives you a warning if you get out of line.

For me, it's a giant Flickr fail.  I doubt I'll be reinvesting $25.

Patrick - As long as your using photos from Flickr that are licensed under Creative Commons (for commercial use) and giving attribution in the correct way (most authors want direct attribution, not just to Flickr), you should be good.  You can find those photos by going to the Advanced Search function on the search page.  At the bottom is the section about Creative Commons and what kind of licensing you want to search for (I always use the "Find content to use commercially" checkbox).

Lenn - Please, speak up!

Matt - I have looked at the creative commons license on flickr to make sure I am on target. That is a bummer that your account was deleted.

I rushed over to see if my photos were still there...still there, but now I'm concerned!!! Where did you cross the line? I've been using Flickr for years to post photos, and I have a pro account.

NOPE!  It would sound like I was harping and, while I do harp, on this subject, I've written too much already.

Matt- That is not good. I have a pro flickr account too. I was going to hire my VA to do a lot of stuff in there but now I am going to hold back. I was using it in the same way that other agents have been teaching us how to use it. Katerina

Total bummer Matt!  I have never used Flickr...it was on my list but never got around to it. If I had been using I would have been uploading pictures for "commercial use" and linking them back to my sites as well. I am glad I didn't waste a lot of time with it though, I am sorry that you did and that you lost you user name! That really stinks.

Interesting...I am the same - I don't read TOS much although I probably should :)

Best,
Dan

I was aware of the commercial use of Flickr.  I never post any photos of listings on there. I do have photos of neighborhoods, of local events, and a multitude of personal photos.  None of which have links to my website or blog. Photos from flickr get put on commercial blogs all of the time and hence the reason they have different licenses on there.

I think the issue is that you were linking directly in your photostream. The rules are pretty clear about that.  No commercial links in the photostream itself.  No logos, nothing. Just pure photos.

We have a local photo blogger and they make ad money off their blog.  Often bloggers have AdSense and make money.  So technically their blog is "commercial" since it brings in money.  I don't think this is what flickr is concerned with in regard to their site. 

Posting listing photos is totally inappropriate on Flickr.  I did reread the TOS and they do say that they give people warnings.  It is unfortunate that you did not receive that courtesy.

Matt,

Facebook's Terms of Use is very similar. If you use a FB profile for business use they will disable your account, if their bot catches you. Fan pages and Groups are ok. 

Here's what they told me when they booted me off: "Please keep in mind that we do not allow users to maintain a personal profile for business or promotional purposes."

It went on to say that they determined that a “large group of my friends shared similar physical characteristics”. Since the only common denominator was that most of my friends were Realtors, I assumed that’s what they were referring to.

All I can say is WOW! I use Flickr for a couple of different things and have a few different paid accounts. Looks like I'll be looking for a different place (photobucket anyone?) to host my real estate related pictures...

I've heard of other people that this has happened to as well on Flickr. We've been cautious about posting listings on there and will be even more cautious now. Thanks for sharing what happened with us.

I just signed up for Flickr this weekend.....I wish this blog came out last week!

Matt...

Sorry to hear about this but you just gotta read the terms of use on everything nowadays. Flickr has every right to enforce their TOS. Having said that, I am a bit concerned about the way they handled themselves.

TLW...ROAR!

So sorry, Matt. I have read all the comments hoping someone had an alternative. Anyone? The FB comment got me going too, as Realtors on FB are we breaking the rules on posting opens, etc????

Scared Realtor in Akron Ohio !!!!

Matt-

Thanks for your warning! Are you thinking of employing the power of social media to fight back?

Wow.  So much for customer service.  I can't beleive this.  WHen you mentioned it I assumed it was just a glitch & they would give your account back after they fixed it.  Dang! That is awful to be out the bucks w/nothing to show!  OH, except this featured post! :D

Before I was comfortable with social networking, I tried to see friends pictures in flicker, and I found them hard to use.

Matt - I think the way they handled it sucks.  Maybe (it is a stretch) you can get NAR to team up with Flikr and have them allow NAR members to use it.  This would be a huge endorsement for a lousy...ah...em....photo stream company.  Just a thought.  Thanks for this post.  I will be sure to be more diligent in reading TOS from now on

I'm back.  I forgot to say that you did just what Trevor (the non blogger) would advise me to do...."Just blog about it babe!"

Matt - If I understood this correctly, this is the most asinine thing I have heard all week.  If you paid, you should be allowed to use Flickr in whatever manner you choose.

Jason the photos take up a lot of server space and what you are paying for is more server space. 

Darn . . . I can't stand it when that happens!

I have not really used Flicker

I guess if you are a realtor, and you use a Flickr photo, even for a members only blog, then you've used the photo for commercial purposes. What was that TOS?

Sharon - Creative Commons is not the problem here.  Creative Common is only regarding the use of the photo.  Flickr terminated me because of my use of Flickr, not Creative Commons.

Melina - I would have appreciated the warning.  At least then I could have corrected things.

Jim - I had heard your story recently and just read through the email.  I wonder what would happen if you only socialized with agents (and only agents) in real life.  Could they really still justify it?

TLW - That's why I've tried to very clear...I can easily see why they felt I violated their TOS.  My mistake.  I'm sorry and I wish I hadn't.  My real frustration is that I'm not the only person using it for the exact same purposes and if we could have talked about they would have had a blog post helping agents understand what is right and wrong on Flickr.  Instead they have a blog post with comments by agents who are confused about the rule as I am.  There is no clear determination of what they deemed commercial, so therefore you can't set a rule.  My point is that almost everything on Flickr has a commercial purpose.  You don't put photos on Flickr just for nothing.  You put them out there so people can see your work; so you can advertise yourself, your photos, your business, etc.  There is always a commercial element in there (sorry it's the Ayn Rand in me).  With all those things with commercial purpose (whether big or small, intentional or unintentional), I got called out.  Well, I didn't even get called, I just got "disappeared."  The customer service was sluggish and although Emily took the time to answer my emails, she hardly answered any question and wound up coming off more as "too bad for you."

Ian - It doesn't seem worth the time to fight it other than to make it know what happened.  If it were more than $25 I might consider calling my lawyer in L.A. to see what he could do (he's great at that sort of thing), just because I think it's ridiculous that they can delete you without warning and you just have to write off your money.  The least they could do is refund that or give me my username back - delete the photos, I've got backups of those (even though I dread uploading them all).

Kristin - I thought about that conversation when I decided to write this.

Nevin - I wish I had the time to open up my own company - I'd call it agent photos or something.  You could do whatever you wanted within reason (nothing that would get me landed in jail or anything).  Listings, neighborhoods, fun photos, photos of your kids - anything.  And it would all come with the magically Google powers of Flickr.

Jason - I should at least have a right to be warned or have the "rule-breaking" material removed.  What did the photo of my cat do to anyone?  Or my photos of wildlife in San Antonio?  The Alamo?  Oh no they didn't!  You don't mess with the Alamo here in Texas, that's like telling a guy from Philly his cheesesteaks suck.

Melina - Data storage is a joke these days.  I have a server that gives me unlimited storage.  I have Google that gives me mail space than I know what to do with.  Flickr is powered by Yahoo - they don't need the $25 for storage space.

Andrew - Thaty was part of my point, but not so much because Flickr called it like that, but because their rules are so thin that they are open for interpretation like that if someone wanted to.  It kind of reminds me of NAR's view of Google as a scraper and the interpretation of that.

That really stinks Matt.  I had heard about this happening the other week on the radio show when Ken Cook mentioned something about it.  Sorry for your loss man!

Jeremy - I have a feeling they're cleaning out the system at the moment.  There's a lot of changes going on and I would bet the cleansing will coincide with that.  Like I said earlier, I just wish they would have warned me and told me where I was going wrong - then I could have written a great post for all of us to read and live by.  That's how you do it.

Matt--never used flicker, and now I never will. Thanks for the post. Good luck.

wow thanks for the heads up.  I can't believe they didn't at least call you and give you an option to upgrade to a more expensive account.  it's amazing they don't have that option.

WOW!

I have been very careful to not put ANYTHING in my Flickr stream that sells me or my services.  I don't use words like listing, real estate, for sale, etc.  I almost did... 

Matt,

Just today I was on a webinar and the host told us that we could use flickr as long as we give credit to the photographer and link to their blog. I had just marked a few as favorties. Then I spotted your blog and well, I guess you could say that I will not be using flickr after all. I am disappointed but am sure glad you shared this info so that I did not do a lot of work for nothing. Thanks for taking the time to share! BTW I am new at blogging.

Inga - There is a lot of bad info out there about what you can and can't use on your blog.  My suggestion?  Read up about Creative Commons licensing, especially as it applies to Flickr.  You can use photos from Flickr on your blog with proper attribution, but there's a little more to it than that.  In the case of an agent, you are using the photos on your blog for commercial purposes, so you want to be sure to only use photos that allow commercial use when searching on Flickr (look under "Advanced Search").  Most of the photos on my blog are Flickr photos from other users.

The issue wasn't my use of other's photos, but the photos I hosted and shared (and how I did it) in Flickr.  That was the problem.

Yikes!  I just checked and I still have a Flickr account.  I have photos of my listings...is that commercial use???  I presume it is since I am trying to make money by selling my listings...ruh roh!!!  Thanks for the head's up and congrats on your second gold star this week!

Wow!

I'm so not happy with Flickr right now - and to think I just renewed my Pro Account too

Just google flickr deleted my account. Its happening to thousands of people.

I had it happen to me about 4 months ago. I will never use them again. I had some ass flickr user who had semi-pornographic pictures of some stripper in his own collection next to his wedding photos report me for abuse. Then without any warning my account was permanently deleted. I went through the same steps and it was just a joke. There is no reason we shouldnt be able to use the service. They even said they were going to go through and find any and all real estate agents and delete their accounts too.

What is even more a joke is that they allow professional photographers to market their own photos and then sell them on the side. That is perfectly legal but us labeling a picture as a house for sale means we are soliciting. I was like are you even serious?

The worst thing is that its going to happen. at some point your photos will be deleted. I had it happen to a current listing. All my blog posts went blank that used photos. I barely even had any pictures of houses in my share. I could have deleted just the offending pictures but thats how bad this company is.

Its a very pathetic company. Really BS service and I continue to tell everyone to move to photobucket or any other service.

Although it's annoying (not giving you a warning), a number of high quality video and photo sharing sites are set up the same way.  The basic premise is, don't abuse us by using us for outright commercial gain, and we won't slap you in the face with massive amounts of unsightly advertisements. 

I use Vimeo for a number of videos, because the quality they offer is SO MUCH BETTER than YouTube (especially!) and pretty much everyone else, BUT they strictly forbid the uploading and posting of overtly commercial videos.  No Real Estate videos allowed is kinda what they say.  Too bad, but I know this so I don't do it.  But again, the videos i do have on there, look incredible and I'm not swarmed with advertisements and neither are my videos when I post them on blogs. 

Flickr is very much the same.  They offer a great, simple way to view and share your photos, if you go pro, a ridiculous amount of space to store your photos, and you don't have to deal with massive ad placement.  I would encourage anyone who has ANY pictures they want to share with friends or family or simply the world to understand Flickr and use it for what it is. 

If you are looking for an alternative to flickr that offers unlimited photos (but you will have to deal with advertisements unless you pay) is Zooomr (www.zooomr.com).

OR... as stated above, to be safe, pay for and set up your own server and site and go to town with whatever you want to do with your photos!

A.J.

me on flickr  www.flickr.com/photos/project17

me on my site  www.modrew.com/gallery

Hmmm. While I can understand your feelings, I believe that Flickr has the right to make their own decisions, and I can't help but wonder if realtors aren't the biggest offenders of Flickr's TOS. I happen to like Flickr a lot, and have a Pro account.

One other thing... NEVER count on one site as your be all and end all for your photo needs or storage!!  Use 2 or 3 sites... just have a backup plan in place so that if something like this ever happens to you, you'll be prepared.  Try an awesome app like PixelPipe to upload once to any number of your social media sites.  It's a one click type of thing and your done.

All sites... ALL SITES, have their flaws.  They will never be able to please everyone, they will screw up, but they can be very valuable, inexpensive tools for us all to use.  We just need to use them right... and prepare to get screwed!  Backup and you'll be cool.

A.J.

Jeani - I'd certainly have a back up plan if I were you.  The sudden deletion can wreak havoc.

Mike - We need to invent a new system.  Were can we get the capital to do so?  Perhaps @respres wants to build a new tool for agents?

Shane - So I've heard.  I agree about the photographer thing - how is it that they can advertise their wares, but we can't?  I just feel confused by the whole thing.  I definitely will not be going back - the risk is too great.  Since there aren't hard and fast rules (what one person does gets them terminated while another does it without intervention) that are clearly defined (even they wouldn't answer my questions about is this or that commercial - they just answered with a link that explained little other than "no commercial use"), it's too big of a hit to take without warning.  What if I had been doing this 6 years?  20?  30?  Imagine that.

A.J. - If I had a free account I wouldn't be so bothered.  I had one before (free account) and it (now that I see how they work), I believe, was terminated as well.  I wouldn't know though, because Flickr customer support never answered any single attempt at contact with them (and I made several).  I finally wrote it off, got a new account and upgraded it to PRO.

Matt, I am so sorry for the pain you are going through.  I use Flickr, but more as a SM meeting place than a photo hoster.  I decided a long time ago that I wanted an easy photo hosting solution that I had more control over than what Flickr allows. 

You may want to take a look at the the photo album option available through godaddy- you can add it as a subdomain to one of your existing sites, then link OR embed to albums, slide shows, or individual photos.  I have it tacked on to my blog and don't have to worry about the TOS issues.

Susie - They certainly do have the right to run their company anyway they want, that will never be in question.  They also can have the right to write whatever TOS they'd like.  However, I still feel that the way they behaved over it is wrong (or should I say, the wrong way to do things).  I freely admit I violated the TOS and because of that, I understand their position.  I don't understand their methods - rules or not.

Matt, I think your last post to Susie hit the nail on the head!  The end result would have been the same, but prior warning would have enabled you to get the photos moved, downloaded, or whatever and allowed you to update your listings and such you were using them on.  Why not just go to a place like GoDaddy.com... get a website of your own for nothing more than storage of photos?  Very inexpensive, you control the content, and they can't shut you down as long as you pay the bill!

Michelle and Mark - That's the best part.  I have my own server and have an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth (it pays to use Dreamhost).  I chose to use Flickr because of the obvious SEO benefits and ease of use.  I will be designing a solution over the next few days for myself.

The take-away for this Post: Flickr can't be used as a trusted source for photo storage. There are alot of great suggestions here by members - take away some of those. Love the Rain! Thanks for the heads up Matt.

Let us know what you come up with, I use Host Gator with plenty of room for hosting also, but I like the application through godaddy for organization mostly because it is easier than just hosting them all in raw form and trying to find them.

My two cents !  Why not have one of the AR gurus find a way to work together on this to the benefit of us all ?

Matt that is exactly how i felt. I was just glad I had only been using the service for a few months before termination. What is really ironic is that I was writing a long post on how great flickr was and is good for SEO (because I was labeling pictures using keywords)

Its just really sad that they cant recognize someone purposely labeling pictures for SEO purposes. I even asked them how the hell I could be selling anything? Can someone buy a house by seeing a picture on flickr? Maybe but its a pretty big stretch and obviously that was not my intention.

I just dont trust services that would erase an account without even a warning. And it really ticks me off when I was reported by someone with nudity in their share which is also a violation of the TOS. I am also really sick of the use of TOS on any site. I cant wait until the day that TOS are finally regulated by the government.

Its also really pathetic that they have no problem with commercial photographers selling photos on the site because YES that is what they are doing and YES they are intentionally trying to profit off the site. Whereas what I was doing was simply blogging. It makes no sense since they are the ones benefitting from using my photos for content. Its like any site that advertises it being free to use. Its free because we give them the content and then they turn around and sell advertising. they make money off our content period. So when people say oh its their site they can do what they want. Thats a really poor way of thinking about it. Its free because we are the ones building the site for them and it should remain free because without us the site would be nothing.

anyways flickr sucks dont use it. they dont offer anything else that any other photo sharing site cant offer. image shack or photo bucket even offer more features and its still free. and so far I have never been harrassed and had my account deleted at either one of those sites.

The intention of the no commercial usage is to get rid of spammers and people using the site to directly sell products. I can see the point of having a clause like this to get rid of people like that. But bloggers or real estate agents is really pushing it.

Another point to consider is that if I blog and have adsense on my blog site then I am using it commercially and yet there are many fully commercial blogs who use flickr and yet they dont get their accounts deleted. dumb site.

I never realized agents were using flickr in this manner. I guess it's just as well that I haven't invested the time to learn about it since they don't seem particularly user-friendly toward Realtors and have a strange concept of what customer service is!

Hi Matt,

Scary stuff!

In fact, yesterday at rebarcamp, they talked about an alternate to Flickr...gotta look in my notes to see more. Of course, if you WOULD HAVE MET ME THERE....we could have chatted about it :-)

Just teasing...but you were missed fo sho!

Nice work on the feature, buddy!

ta ta for now,

T

I don't think that I've put any home pictures on there.  Only pics of my area that I've taken, pics of friends and family.  They shouldn't be able to just dump your account like that though without a warning?  That's harsh.

Matt, I use Flickr to share real estate photos in the Photography for Real Estate group for critique, but there aren't any links from them, nor do I identify the property in the photos.  I think I'm safe there.  For commercial purposes, I use www.SmugMug.com - I think it will fit the bill for you.  Not only can you upload any photos you want, you can customize your landing page and how your photos are displayed and basically create a web site.  You can even use your own domain name. My SmugMug gallery can be found here: www.CherryFotos.com.

You want cruel irony?  Use the coupon code "flickr" to get a 50% discount off your first year's subscription to SmugMug :-)

I don't link photos, I down load them (with appropriate copy right acknowledgment) and then upload them to where ever.  Not sure if that is a violation.

Hi Matt. I just stopped by to see if anything else came out of it. It seems as though it is now a non-issue since they deleted your account with no warning and that was that? Am curious if it's been resolved though abruptly.

Still can't believe how much attention this post drew.  I wrote it to vent more than anything (and figured somebody might find it helpful, but not this many people that had little idea that they could be next).  Thanks everyone and I'm glad it's made a few people think about their options for the future.  I'd hate to see this happen to someone else.

Lana - Resolved?  I guess.  The resolution is I'm out a username, a lot of hard work, and $25.  That's their resolution.

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the heads up on Flickr.

Jerry Gray CRB,CRS,GRI / Prudential Carolina Realty / Winston Salem, NC

Shane wrote about this in his posts a few months ago so I knew of the possibility.  I don't really have anything there, I use PhotoBucket.  Maybe I should head over there & read what that says!  Obviously 'commercial' might have broader terms than I might imagine. Yikes you didn't have a backup of your slide shows? 

Matt,

Excellent! Thanks for sharing! I'm glad I saved my $25 bucks!

Kathy Opatka

I have had problems with several sites saying one thing, and then changing.  The old bait and switch i guess

Talk about irony - I just got an email saying that had moved my case up to Level 2 support.  Of course, the "Emily" I keep mentioning is from Level 2 support and they had already moved me there.

Just started using Fickr...Thanks for the warning!!!

Michael - Try and be careful, I'd hate to see it happen to anyone else.  It's a nightmare when all of your photos and slideshows disappear overnight.

Ira - I was unable to get any specifics from Flickr to really nail down what it was that was considered the violation.  I've talked to many agents since this happened and a lot of what I was doing, so were they.  My guess is that someone reported me.

Years ago some of my online photog friends were big on pBase.com, but... I just looked at SmugMug and  and it looks great, but ....

This is a no-no in the SmugMug TOs "Unsolicited promotions, political campaigning, advertising or solicitations;"  

So if a real estate agents posts photos of homes and neighborhoods on SmugMug  ... is that advertising or soliciations???

Cheryl - I guess it's really left optn to their interpretation on the rules.  I have heard good things about SmugMug, but then again everyone raved to me about Flickr too.  I think I'm going self-hosted and just going to work hard to regain my top positions on those keywords.

Back in the early days, I self hosted all of my photos; but then I discovered Flickr and thought the whole friends-and-sharing thing was great ... but...

Anyway, now that I am revisiting self-hosting, I just thought I'd mention I still think Breeze Browser Pro http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/features.htm is a great little program for quickly generating web galleries. 

After you've created the gallery, you simply upload one folder full of images/thumbnails/html pages to your hosting server.  (The number of different galleries you can have is limited only by the available space on your server.  :-)  )

Cheryl - I've downloaded a few options that I'm going to play with.  I have unlimited storage on my site (and unlimited bandwidth - mmmmm), so I'm good there.  I just want something that can still generate some of the SEO benefit of Flickr, which is what I loved about Flickr (and probably what caused me to get noticed).

Matt:  I do not use Flickr, guess I am not going to start now.  I am chiming in here to see what the outcome is going to be.  Does not seem right a few can do it but others can not.