# Don MacAskill

> Don MacAskill is the co-founder and CEO of SmugMug and CEO of Flickr. A former game developer, he built a paid photography service with his father Chris, adopted Amazon S3 early, and led SmugMug through its 2018 acquisition of Flickr. His public writing connects customer feedback, practical engineering, and the preservation of photographs.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at SmugMug; CEO at Flickr
- **Organizations:** SmugMug, Flickr
- **From:** Salt Lake City, United States
- **Education:** Mountain View High School, Attended; did not graduate, Brigham Young University
- **Known for:** Co-founded a subscription photography business that grew without venture capital., Led SmugMug through the acquisition of Flickr in 2018., Helped establish SmugMug as an early Amazon S3 customer.

## Career timeline

- **1990s** — Hosted the internet launch of Duke Nukem 3D; later worked on SiN.
- **2002** — Launched SmugMug with his father Chris on November 3.
- **2006** — Adopted Amazon S3 for photo storage and publicly defended Flickr as a competitor.
- **2011** — Published a detailed account of SmugMug’s limited disruption during a major AWS outage.
- **2018** — SmugMug acquired Flickr from Verizon’s Oath on April 20; MacAskill became Flickr CEO.
- **2019** — Publicly appealed for Flickr Pro subscriptions, explaining that Flickr still operated at a loss.
- **2022** — SmugMug and Flickr announced the nonprofit Flickr Foundation.
- **2024** — Discussed SmugMug’s S3 relationship at AWS re:Invent.

## Achievements

- Co-founded a subscription photography business that grew without venture capital.
- Led SmugMug through the acquisition of Flickr in 2018.
- Helped establish SmugMug as an early Amazon S3 customer.
- Oversaw Flickr’s move away from Yahoo infrastructure and login.

## Latest updates

- **2025-12** — The crc-fast-rust 1.10.0 release includes MacAskill’s changes raising the Rust baseline to 1.89 and removing the crc dependency.
- **2024-12** — Appeared at AWS re:Invent and reflected on SmugMug’s long relationship with S3.
- **2024-04** — Joined Ben MacAskill and Alex Seville for a Flickr twentieth-birthday interview in San Francisco.

## Links

- Website: https://don.smugmug.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donmacaskill
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill
- GitHub: https://github.com/onethumb
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/don.flickr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/don.macaskill.fans

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/don-macaskill
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-11