RMweb Gold john new Posted March 19, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 19, 2011 In various posts above there were comments about Snappy Designs not having applied for any form of bankruptcy or administration proceedings, but would they need to at this stage even if fotopic is running at a loss? They presumably ran something profitable before they acquired fotopic and then offered in addition (a) the paid for fotopic elements and (b ) a free fotopic service. Taking these in reverse order - the free service was just that so presumably they have no liabilities to their free service customers (I'm one) if they turn it off. The paid for fotopic service would have had some contract terms and whatever Snappy Designs did/do outside fotopic would have contract status. However if only the fotopic pay for service is unprofitable wouldn't Snappy be OK to continue without filing any papers until actual filed claims against them for fotopic deficiencies exceeded ability to pay? Just wish whoever is in charge would make a statement as to the cause of the outage. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raffles Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 Is it a light at the end of the tunnel, or just an oncoming train... O/T I know, but... The Hours? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrel Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 i updared my subscrition just before it went offline £45 out of pocket Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Horn Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 i updared my subscrition just before it went offline £45 out of pocket Same here Darrel, I renewed at £45 just before they dissapeared. I will try getting the money back from my credit card company though. No communication has been had from Fotopic, and all e-mails sent to them come back as not known. Cheers Tim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold john new Posted March 20, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 20, 2011 Not sure if this has relevance to the outage circumstances or not as both technical and financial shut-downs seem to happen out of the blue to the guys on the spot. However today a friend for whom I have from time to time done some maintenance work for on his fotopic account forwarded me his temporary suspension notice email (due to 3 months inactivity) and asking me to log on for him and do the reactivation. Reason I raise it here is the email's time stamp - as late as 01:39 on 9th March (i.e. the early hours of the morning of the day the current outage started) fotopic.net was still sending out standard automated messages stating they had a future. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 If you've just renewed don't wait too long before trying to claim, i'm pretty sure that both your credit card company and Paypal will have time limits... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 In various posts above there were comments about Snappy Designs not having applied for any form of bankruptcy or administration proceedings, but would they need to at this stage even if fotopic is running at a loss? They presumably ran something profitable before they acquired fotopic and then offered in addition (a) the paid for fotopic elements and (b ) a free fotopic service. Taking these in reverse order - the free service was just that so presumably they have no liabilities to their free service customers (I'm one) if they turn it off. The paid for fotopic service would have had some contract terms and whatever Snappy Designs did/do outside fotopic would have contract status. However if only the fotopic pay for service is unprofitable wouldn't Snappy be OK to continue without filing any papers until actual filed claims against them for fotopic deficiencies exceeded ability to pay? Just wish whoever is in charge would make a statement as to the cause of the outage. Running a business at a loss is fine providing the business can pay its debts or is reasonably likely to be able to do so. At the point your auditor or accountant says otherwise, or the directors realise otherwise then they have a duty to act, and not doing so can make them personally liable for the debts and other things - so they jump PDQ and at that point companies house and the London Gazette will provide record of the matter, neither of which have so far in this case. All this is on an accounting basis which means costs of providing services versus revenue etc not "do we have enough money to cover any lawsuits" There are situations where this process can take a bit of time, one example being if there is a genuine likelyhood that current negotiations to sell the business will allow the debts to be paid off. If it does go under then the receiver or administrator has the job of getting as much back as possible for the creditors either by selling it on as a going concern or flogging bits of it off. There are advantages to buyers to both parts of the process. The question of ownership and rights to the images may prove important. At this point however there is nothing in the public record to indicate such an event, no doubt as time moves on all will become clearer. I could speculate numerous other explanations, but I don't think any speculation really helps. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Some interesting stuff happening this evening...apparently one of the guys behind Snappy has raised his head above the parapet. No firm news on why the site is off or whether anything can be done, but stay tuned and if I hear anything i'll pass it on! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium John M Upton Posted March 24, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted March 24, 2011 Some interesting stuff happening this evening...apparently one of the guys behind Snappy has raised his head above the parapet. No firm news on why the site is off or whether anything can be done, but stay tuned and if I hear anything i'll pass it on! Even if they do get it back up and running again (which I severely doubt) and assuming that Fotopic/Snappy's management survive the mauling and thrown rotten vegetables from the angry mob of customers hammering on their door demanding answers, the damage has been done, their customers are leaving the sinking (sunk?) ship and going elsewhere. For many if/when Fotopic comes back up, its only remaining use will be for those recovering their own images to move on elsewhere, after that it will be as good as dead. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 John, I agree totally - I didn't say "no firm news on when it will come back" - that was very deliberate! But the things being hinted at may offer a little hope for folk who either really don't want to start from scratch or who might need/want to recover images or captions... If / When I hear something firm i'll pass it on. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozzer models Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Quort from Fotopic users on Google groups http://groups.google.com/group/former-fotopic-users?msg=pending Joel Rowbottom Hi everyone -- Contact's been made with Snappy's directors. If there is a way of sorting this out then I'll help where I can, but for the moment my hands are tied. j x More options Mar 23, 7:07 pm From: Joel Rowbottom < Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:07:57 +0000 Local: Wed, Mar 23 2011 7:07 pm Subject: News Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author Hi everyone -- Contact's been made with Snappy's directors. If there is a way of sorting this out then I'll help where I can, but for the moment my hands are tied. j Tim Rogers This from the railway forum wnxx: Gents, I have just made a visit to Snappy Designs Ltd at their Registered address in London. I spoke to the accountant who gave me the telephone number of the man owns the company a Mr Steve Dyer. He tells me the web site will be back on line soon as they are setting up a new site. I Did tell him there are a lot of un happy people out there as you have failed to tell us what is happening to the Fotopic web site. A man called Joel is at present transferring all the data onto another server ,Mr Dyers is going to call me later today and give me some more information and the down time of the Fotopic web site. More options Mar 23, 5:11 pm From: Tim Rogers Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:11:12 -0700 (PDT) Local: Wed, Mar 23 2011 5:11 pm Subject: Someone paid a visit...... Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author This from the railway forum wnxx: Gents, I have just made a visit to Snappy Designs Ltd at their Registered address in London. I spoke to the accountant who gave me the telephone number of the man owns the company a Mr Steve Dyer. He tells me the web site will be back on line soon as they are setting up a new site. I Did tell him there are a lot of un happy people out there as you have failed to tell us what is happening to the Fotopic web site. A man called Joel is at present transferring all the data onto another server ,Mr Dyers is going to call me later today and give me some more information and the down time of the Fotopic web site. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Depot Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 If this is all true (no reason why it should not be), then what a way to run a business! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Ramblin Rich Posted March 24, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 24, 2011 Tim Rogers This from the railway forum wnxx: Gents, I have just made a visit to Snappy Designs Ltd at their Registered address in London. I spoke to the accountant who gave me the telephone number of the man owns the company a Mr Steve Dyer. He tells me the web site will be back on line soon as they are setting up a new site. I Did tell him there are a lot of un happy people out there as you have failed to tell us what is happening to the Fotopic web site. A man called Joel is at present transferring all the data onto another server ,Mr Dyers is going to call me later today and give me some more information and the down time of the Fotopic web site. More options Mar 23, 5:11 pm A man named Joel - this sounds very strange, is it the same Joel who's setting up pikfu - and says he's got nothing to do with Fotopic any more? The plot is so thick it's beginning to look like custard..... If Fotopic does come back, there will be a lot of traffic as people take copies of favourite images.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 There are further posts floating around which hint further, but what's just happenned here is exactly why I didn't post any more detail yet! this sounds very strange, is it the same Joel who's setting up pikfu Yes. - and says he's got nothing to do with Fotopic any more? Yes. It's complicated, but he (publicly, it's on WNXX if nowhere else) is furious that Snappy have implicated him in that way...from his side he has been trying to contact them to see if he can help...Joel writes on the Google group today: I've been in touch with Snappy's board first thing this morning. There may be a resolution in the offing, which I can't discuss as it's commercially sensitive to them, all I want to do is enable people to get their images/data back out and anything I post at this stage may put that in jeopardy. But as I said up there, I'm going to stop losing sleep over it and get on with Pikfu.com As of right now there are assorted bits of story, hints, implications, accusations, thoughts, idea's and statements floating round, some of which blatantly do not add up. Like I said before - when there is something firm and definate I will post it here. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Ramblin Rich Posted March 24, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 24, 2011 Thanks Martyn - this was bound to cause a rumour mill! If you're sufficiently in the loop to get real info we'll wait on that & stop speculating..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Joel is a contractor so nothing strange in that anyway - he'll copy your photos around if you hire him to do so 8) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Thanks Martyn - this was bound to cause a rumour mill! If you're sufficiently in the loop to get real info we'll wait on that & stop speculating..... No probs Rich, wasn't meaning to get at you or anyone but there's so much rumour & speculation kicking about and it seems to be that Joel is spending more time fending off rumours and accusations (nasty in some places) than working on Pikfu and the other things! FWIW i'm not especially in the loop, I don't know the guy, but I am keeping a fairly close eye on that Google groups site and watching a couple of other places and monitoring them for anything that looks like progress. And whilst I don't think Fotopic will be back permanently I know a lot of folk are looking for an easier solution than starting from scratch, I know a lot of others are looking to see what Pikfu looks like as well before deciding on what to do - and i'm sure there are others in the same boat as me who are starting afresh but importing at least some of what was on Fotopic could speed the process versus starting from scratch. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewartingram Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 Just come across this on another Yahoo Group: The message, below, was posted on Scot-Rail t'other day, having been posted to another group - and many more before that I suspect. (Apologies for any poor formatting of the copied message) I don't know if any of it makes sense to you guys, or whether it also offers any hope of recovery - one way, or the other. "Hi everyone -- OK, I guess you guys aren't reading any of the other forums, so here's a recap: Around mid-2008, myself and Nicky were thoroughly sick of Fotopic, principally thanks to the (mostly free) users and infighting, threats, etc. We took the decision to sell it, and a consortium of several Internet folks I knew from elsewhere formed a company called Snappy Designs Ltd which acquired Fotopic.net. Nicky was rather quickly disposed of but I stopped on as a 'helping hand' to ease any transition. As it was, the transition hardly happened, the company went nowhere and I ended up helping folks as best I could without thanks or anything else right up until last May (2010) when I said 'enough is enough' and left them to it. I have never been a director, shareholder or employee of Snappy. The public statement I made at the time is here: http://blog.joel.co.uk/?itemid=777 Sometime a little later (August-ish? Looks like it - first mention on my blog is 31st August 2010) myself and Nicky had a discussion. Our non-compete clause with Fotopic expired 2 years from the acquisition, so we decided to work through it and do it properly, with web2.0 and all that foo, but only for our friends and family - I take photos too, lots of photos, mostly of concerts/gigs but have been known to stand on a platform at KWVR. I've probably said hello to some of you. That discussion culminated on something called OpenMedia, which eventually formed into Pikfu, a nice non-rushed dev project for me on weekends. Pikfu.com Ltd has been formed, er, since January I think when Nicky and I had a discussion over Xmas that it was probably time we set it going. We were fiddling with scripts for migrating users from other photo services to Pikfu and as a result of that some Fotopic users had their gallery stuff mirrored over via the open API. Lucky them! Now let's fast-forward to March 9th. Fotopic disappears, I have no idea why, the first I hear about it is when I get a pile of emails from irate users.. I'm annoyed as my own galleries had disappeared and I needed to sort some shoots out, I ended up forwarding my own domain to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/c4pnb/) for a few days while I sorted the rest out. We'd intended to switch Pikfu on for vaguely 10-20 users around mid March with a public switch-on around June time, and instead I'm bombarded with requests! Fielding those and the former-fotopic-users lists for the past two weeks has been a bit wearing but there's a lot of positive folks out there too who have been helpful, especially since I've had calls from journalists et al. Doubly frustrating since I know sod all about this. Then today I see that Steve's been putting about regarding Fotopic2. FP2 was the next-gen gallery service in 2008 which never launched, but I suspect he's actually referring to Pikfu: when FP went down, I sent an email to Snappy asking if I could be of any assistance in getting stuff back up, and if not then I might have a way out for the users to at least pull out their galleries or assist in migration *if* the company had actually gone bust. I didn't get a reply... at least not until late afternoon today when finally I managed to get to someone, I suspect the act of someone showing up at the accountant's put the willies up him a bit. As a result of that call, I still don't know why it's offline (before you all ask) but there's a couple of possible solutions I've floated. Snappy still seems to be a 'live' company and not showing in the gazettes or online as being out of business, which is a bit odd I must admit. Ball's in their court, really. My own blog is at http://blog.joel.co.uk - there are entries in there so you can see the timescale correlates. I probably won't post here much as I don't really 'get on' with web forums (I'm a bit old-school like that) however one gentleman has set up a former-fotopic-users Google group where I post if I've heard anything. That's at http://groups.google.com/group/former-fotopic-users and there's plenty of archives going back if you want to dig through. (Incidentally, before we sold-up I wrote a 'backup tool' which was available at http://www.joel.co.uk/fpbackup/ - this was principally to back my own stuff up although others used it.) Some other points from what I can deduce on the records: 1. The address on the company is that of the accountant. I would bet you pounds to pennies that she knows even less about what's going on. 2. If you paid for something at Fotopic in the past 45 days, it is eligible for a Paypal refund, which is the way that I'd go if I qualified. 3. Snappy's address on 'fotopic.net' is the old office - it was vacated last July. I've got the pics when I helped clear it out to save some old stuff from the skip, you can see the photos here: http://photos.jml.net/set1877838/ - bit sad though A final note though: throwing legal threats and abuse at me personally is not really productive. Please don't do it, it really isn't nice. If you don't trust me or want anything to do with Pikfu, that's fine - I'd rather you were happy and went to another portfolio site such as Smugmug or Flickr rather than be miserable! But you should also all know that both myself and Nicky are working hard behind the scenes to try and sort something out. There is also a pikfu-users group at http://groups.google.com/group/pikfu-users in case anyone's interested. Cheers y'all, j x _________________ -- Joel Rowbottom CTO, Pikfu.com " Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold john new Posted March 30, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 30, 2011 Has anyone heard anything official yet as the rumour mill is still spinning? Beginning to think time has come now to say it isn't coming back any-time soon after they have fixed a technical fault but equally don't want to spend time re-inventing the wheel in building replacement album galleries in my own web-space if it is coming back! I will probably give it another week before making my final decision but like many others - any genuine news about whether Snappy Designs have/haven't officially gone bust and filed the formal papers welcomed. Re the latter - I ask here because I'm not an accountant, so wouldn't know where to look for that info' on line, but earlier posters in this thread do appear to have that knowledge. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 John - whatever the cause, fotopic is very unlikely to just reappear - what *might* be possible is an eas(y/ier) transition to a different service if some of the negotiations apparently going on in the background come off - it's folk's own choices as to whether they wait and see or press on with starting again. FWIW Snappy does not appear to have gone bust. The do *appear* to have just stopped providing the Fotopic service (for whatever reason) - but there has been no official announcement either way (which is part of the frustration i'm sure.) I'll still post any news here if I hear it, but it seems this part of it may not be quick... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Some definate information since then - but none of it is good... http://www.amateurph...ews_306605.html Then http://www.amateurph...ews_306612.html Then http://www.amateurph...ews_306622.html Including this little gem: Bleazard estimates that Fotopic.net holds around 30,000 pictures, though he was not able to confirm this figure, nor the total number of customers. Ha - I had 16,000 on there, so they either have no clue (not a good sign) or I was the biggest user of Fotopic? I suspect the first is true unfortunately... And then - from the Google group: Hi all -- I received notice about 10 minutes ago that Snappy Designs Ltd has been put into administration. Will probably take a few days to show on CoHouse database or on London Gazette. Cheers Joel. -- Joel Rowbottom CTO, Pikfu.com Ltd And also... Unfortunately, the WNXX lot are putting the rescue attempt in serious jeopardy now, and I think time's going to get called Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Martin, They seem to have hugely under-estimated their usage. Apart from your site, I would imagine Paul Bartlett's got a comparable, or even greater, number, whilst Anton Kendall's site and 'Wagons Francais' are similar. That would give 40 000+ from just four sites. Looking at my Favourites pages, there's about thirty other Fotopic sites I look at, and that's in one fairly restricted area. I wonder if this under-estimation might be partly to blame for their problems? After all, if you don't know the level of usage, how can you work out what you need to charge and what provision of servers and similar do you need to make? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium spamcan61 Posted March 31, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted March 31, 2011 Martin, They seem to have hugely under-estimated their usage. I wonder if this under-estimation might be partly to blame for their problems? After all, if you don't know the level of usage, how can you work out what you need to charge and what provision of servers and similar do you need to make? Well, I would sincerely hope they had some usage figures when they bought the setup from Joel & Co., giving them a fair idea of what they were letting themselves in for, at least in terms of past usage. Over the last couple of years I'd say the likes of Flickr have become more popular, so I wouldn't expect huge increases in Fotopic usage over that period, which is of course a bad thing if you're reliant on advertising and suchlike as part of your business model. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 They seem to have hugely under-estimated their usage. Apart from your site, I would imagine Paul Bartlett's got a comparable, or even greater, number, whilst Anton Kendall's site and 'Wagons Francais' are similar. That would give 40 000+ from just four sites. Looking at my Favourites pages, there's about thirty other Fotopic sites I look at, and that's in one fairly restricted area. Yep I totally agree, I could add another couple off the top of my head which would probably add another huge lump to that - in fact with those we're probably over the other figure (70,000) quoted there as a possibility for how big the site might be - that's with maybe 6 or 7 sites included! So 30,000 is a bonkers figure. It might be he's confused 30,000 user accounts or maybe 30,000 galleries rather than 30,000 images maybe? I wonder if this under-estimation might be partly to blame for their problems? After all, if you don't know the level of usage, how can you work out what you need to charge and what provision of servers and similar do you need to make? Possibly, it might be that previous outages (and at least perceived related poor customer service) plus withdrawal of some features, plus the lack of apparent development and plenty of competition have just meant less and less folk have renewed - or less and less folk could honestly reccomend it as a service? Or maybe the business model with some regular paying subscribers, some folk paying for "one off" costs for extra space and some "free" customers no longer worked and they didn't notice. You can kinda predict the middle crowd might try and use their existing space more efficiently and not increase it if they are feeling the pinch during the recession for instance - and if less folk were converting from "free" to "paid" packages I guess it adds up. All just speculation... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium spamcan61 Posted March 31, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted March 31, 2011 Surely the total number of images on Fotopic would be in the hundreds of thousands if not millions, 30,000 is indeed a bonkers figure. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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