The Flickr/Yahoo! Situation
February 7th, 2007As anyone that cares to listen knows, I’m a big Flickr fan.
It’s bothered me that Flickr has decided that all the original members need to update the way they login by merging their accounts with Yahoo! accounts.
Here is a copy of the announcement:
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
We’re making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.
95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don’t.
You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you’ll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page:
http://flickr.com/account/associate/
Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any domain and your screenname will remain the same.
Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here:
http://flickr.com/help/signin/
Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you’re reading this, you’ve been around for a while and that means a lot to us!
Warmest regards,
- The Flickreenos
Obviously in the end I’m going to stay a Flickr user, but I will admit, I did take this opportunity to shop around, just in case there was something else out there that compares. For a hard core flickr fan like myself, that’s a serious statement.
I know I shouldn’t admit that a change in the way I login to Flickr bothers me, but it does. I really don’t like Yahoo! and so I’ll try not to let my hatred of companies that play dirty get in the way of enjoying the world’s best photo sharing site.
Here is the Official Old Skool Merge Topic on Flickr. The backlash has been fierce. I’ve found reading the comments fuels my disappointment, but also the way the Flickr staff has handled it has me feeling good about the long term future of the site.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:58 am
What really bothers me more is all the restrictions they recently implemented (i.e. groups, tags, etc). I find it really odd that they claim they are doing it to save server space, yet the amounts of space these take up is minuscule when compared how much sever space the photos take up.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:01 am
I agree in that I don’t think the server space is the real reason for limiting groups and number of tags. My guess is they are trying to curb people from using too many unrelated tags in order to promote their photos and mass grouping for the same reason.
Their implementation won’t stop people from putting “bad” tags or posting to unrelated groups, but I guess the thought is, at least they can somewhat put the squeeze on it.
Of course, this is at the expense of people that legitimately want to put a lot of related tags on their photos or post it to a lot of related groups. It’s a double-edged sword.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:21 am
It certainly is and I guess that sword is cutting a lot more legitimate suers that not.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Or rather ‘users’.
February 8th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
The ‘limits’ are to prevent spam—contact spam, tag spam, spam of all sorts. If you do a tag search, you should get photos related, at least moderately, to that tag.
The login thing bothers me too. It’s too bad flickr had to sell, but I don’t begrudge them their millions, they made a fantastic product.