I am a lifetime member of Phanfare (photo hosting site) and I am now VERY DISAPPOINTED.
They just "upgraded" my account and the previous external links to photos got broken. Subscribers to this blog might see a couple of old posts republished today because I had to fix the photo links... and I did so removing the links to Phanfare altogether, which means less "viral" pickup for them.
Also, I can no longer mark an album as public, and all the emails I previously sent people to share photos are broken. This is actually pretty heartbreaking because
a) I have to reshare this information and may forget who sees what
b) I have no idea if they will break it again in the future
All of this is reasonably typical for a dumb tech company, and this is what is wrong with the dumb tech industry. However, I would have thought and hoped this kind of thing would be in the stone-age past, but alas, in a Dilbert-esque way, I feel we will be trapped in this idiocy for a long time.
4 comments:
I too am disappointed with the new move to social networking. I don't want to foist a service on my unsuspecting friends and family.
Phanfare's plan is to get new members to upload photos and then they will have to switch to a pay plan to go over 1 GB. Disgusting!
I'm also a disillusioned Phanfare user. Will you continue with the service, or are you moving? I noticed on the company blog that they (Andrew of Phanfare) actually tells us to move to smugmug, but was wondering if that's the *only* place that doesn't require all this logging in by visitors.
My phanfare account just switched over as well and I want the old 1.0 back. Sometimes simple is better. I don't want tags and comments on my photos. I do want passwords and privacy. The old way was better. Does anyone know of another service besides smugbug?
It has been nearly six months since we made changes to the Phanfare service and since that time have learned our lessons and re-incorporated many of the features that were initially omitted from the 2.0 system. I hope you will consider giving us a try again.
You now can have anonymous viewers (public albums) and share with people using isolated links that give entrance to a single album.
Andrew Erlichson
CEO & Co-founder
Phanfare
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