For Flickr, a pioneer in photo sharing, there's a new owner in the picture.
Flickr has been sold to SmugMug, a Mountain View company that offers paid photo-sharing services for professional photographers, for an undisclosed amount.
The future of Flickr, a favorite of many photo enthusiasts, was up in the air after Yahoo was bought by Verizon. Yahoo owned Flickr for nearly 14 years but failed to do much with it amid the rise of smartphone photos and photo sharing on Facebook and Instagram.
"We're moving to a smaller, more photography-focused family, which we think will be great for Flickr and for you," the Flickr team said in a blog post Friday.
No big changes are planned immediately in terms of user experience, the Flickr team said.
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In SmugMug's FAQ about the acquisition, the privately held company says it will continue to offer a free version of Flickr, which was founded in 2004 and bought by Yahoo in 2005.
"Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the Internet, CEO Don MacAskill told USA Today in an interview in which he vowed to give the photo-sharing service _ which says it has about 100 million unique users _ some TLC. But he added: "We certainly think we need to operate it with an eye to our cash flow and our profitability. We are going to have to take a detailed look at the business and make sure it's growing and healthy."
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, tweeted Friday: "Glad to see that @flickr found a good home at @smugmug! Happy to help if I can Don! :D"
The acquisition closed last week. Flickr emailed users over the weekend to tell them they have till May 25 to delete their accounts if they do not want them to be automatically transferred to SmugMug.
