Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters 254
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet's Steve O'Hear opens old wounds for Flickr veterans. 'An email dropped into my in-box yesterday from Yahoo. Titled "Flickr: Update for Old Skool members", the message went on to explain that Yahoo was discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign-in system and that from March the 15th, all users will be required to have a Yahoo ID to sign-in to Flickr. It was one of those déjà vu moments when I thought, hang on a minute, haven't we been here before?. And of course we have.' Yahoo tried to pull this stunt almost two years ago, after it first acquired Flickr. So why open up old wounds? Yahoo say it is to make the service easier to manage as they add new features, such as localization. Many users are calling this BS, saying it's all about Yahoo marketing its other properties to Flickr's user-base. Much of the criticism is being lead by a prominent user named Thomas Hawk who also happens to be CEO of Zooomr, a direct competitor to Flickr."
S0? (Score:5, Informative)
Which is within their rights as the owner of said company.
Jeez people, if you don't like it find another place to post pictures of your drunk cat.
Storm in a tea cup (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who posts a comment such as the one I am about launch into is shouted down immediately and called all sorts of nasty names, this is less amusing and simply disturbing.
It's no big deal, the only difference is that people now have to log in through Yahooo rather than Flickr maintaning a separate login system just for them. Nothing else has changed, the Flickr experience is identical from that moment onwards.
Common complaints are
1) Yahoo will log me off all the time
2) I don't want a "silly" Yahoo login name
3) I am genetically incapable of remembering any more logins
4) I will lose my "old skool" status and reputation
5) Yahoo will send me spam all the time
6) Yahoo are evil and I'm so right on I don't support evil
To which the answers are
1) No it won't ( I have a Yahoo login to Flickr and it has stayed logged in for months now )
2) You still keep your flickr screen name, no one will see your Yahoo name
3) You won't have to remember your old Flickr login anymore and thus have more room in your impoverished memory for a new one
4) Since you are the only person who sees how you login this is a stupid claim based on a worrying sense of misplaced elitism
5) I've had Yahoo e-mail since 1999 and can't remember ever getting any spam off them in all that time and if you don't want to use the e-mail you don't even have to sign up for it
6) Yahoo have owned Flickr for over a year now so if you don't support them on moral grounds why are you still using Flickr in the first place ?
This "old skool" thing is simply ridiculous, ok so you discovered Flickr maybe 6 months before other people did - there are no prizes for this and it has no effect whatsoever on your value to society or as a person in general !
Seriously, they really should just shut up and change their login or shut up and find something else which is happy to accept a huge bunch of whining holier than thou nuisances. Either way they should shut up because it's quite unpleasant listening to this caterwauling.
yahoo login works fine - no downside (Score:5, Informative)
SmugMug (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.smugmug.org/ [smugmug.org]
Granted, they don't have the kind of communities that Flickr does, but I find them more than sufficient for my photos...
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
That's almost entirely wrong. You do have to create a new Yahoo ID (if you don't have one already), but you can then merge your old Flickr account with it, so you don't lose any of your settings, photos, etc. You even keep the old e-mail address, so you are not forced to use the Yahoo Mail one.
See:
http://flickr.com/help/signin/ [flickr.com]
Alternatives? (Score:2, Informative)
I am [flickr.com] an old skool member (as Flickr likes to call us) and I'm serriously considering ditching my Flickr account for something else, even though just last week I paid for a 1 year Pro account. I was considering doing this before I saw anything by Thomas Hawk. I have a number [flickr.com] of reasons [flickr.com].
The problem is finding something else.
I've looked at Zooomr [zooomr.com]. I found it a bit slugish and unpolished. I don't mind that, but I wasn't encouraged when I could find no obvious way to contact someone with suggestions or questions, even after creating an account and logging in. One thing is what appears to be somewhat soft IE7 support (notes on photos don't work properly, for example). Whether you like IE or not, it does hold a very large part of the browser market and should be supported on any site that is even thinking about competing with the 800-lb gorillas.
What else is out there? I know Flickr is the biggest, but what other site has the community, ease of navigation and browsing (another thing a bit lacking on Zooomr, but that shouldn't be hard for them to tweak), and quality (I know no one has the quantity) of content that Flickr has?
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that Yahoo! has a nasty habit of deleting accounts for a number of reasons, and there have been several instances of this happening [flickr.com].
I've had my Yahoo! account disappearing, my mails disappearing etc. I guess when you've paid for the service (some of us Pro users) and have put in several years of effort uploading thousands of photographs (a lot of the pro users in Flickr are professional photographers), you are a little worried about your photos disappearing overnight.
I wrote a detailed rant about it, The Flickr Fiasco - Why Yahoo! Should Learn to Listen to Its Customers [metlin.org].
I guess it boils down to the fact that as paying customers, we thought our opinions would have a say in the matter. But it turns out that it does not, and they are going to go ahead and do something that almost the entire Old Skool userbase of Flickr is against. I do not know, I guess maybe I am being naive in some ways.
*shrug*
Re:So? (Score:2, Informative)
You don't get it, do you? It's not just about backup - it is about everything else. The organization, the tags, the categorized way of storing your pictures.
It is not merely the photos, but rather the meta-data. People who like photography put in a lot of work on their photos, and have them categorized and tagged in detail. Not to mention user comments and the like.
They are worried about losing that.
Consider this - you have taken a photograph 5 years ago, and you wrote all about it. Do you think you'd be able to remember anything in detail about it today? Now imagine this for 5,000 photographs. Do you think you'd be able to remember everything about every photograph that you'd categorized and organized?
That is what people are afraid of losing.
Do you think it would be easy to go back and redo all that? I would imagine not.
Not all of us are weeners (Score:5, Informative)
Was there any difference in my Flickr experience after the switch? No.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:3, Informative)
Tour of Photagious [photagious.com]
A slideshow I made [photagious.com]
My photos on Photagious [photagious.com]
Re:It's a drag. (Score:5, Informative)
Tomorrow, if they just decice to call it quits with regard to Flickr or any of the other services they run, their Terms of Service support their just shutting it down entirely without any notice to anyone.
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
Either way, you could be jblow1234@yahoo.com but sign up for Flickr as "JoePhotography" if it's available.
Re:Let me count the ways. (Score:4, Informative)
2. Psychologically, signing up for a "Yahoo ID" seems like a much bigger commitment than "making an account on Flickr."
Huh? Psychologically? Is this a fancy way of saying "has no basis in fact"?
If this is a "psychology" issue, I have a psychology word: crazy. As in, Flickr users are crazy.