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Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Feb 01, 2007 02:20 PM
from the enjoy-the-side-of-the-road-suckers dept.
from the enjoy-the-side-of-the-road-suckers dept.
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."
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Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters
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So? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://phydeauxpets.com/)
Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.gen-tracker.com/Public/Default.aspx | Last Journal: Wednesday December 14 2005, @03:49PM)
It's a drag. (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://kadin.sdf-us.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @01:46PM)
It's just obnoxious; it makes signing up for it into a much bigger deal, than making a one-shot account (like on Slashdot, or any other discrete service). It just makes it feel like more of a commitment.
I can't tell you how many times I've had people ask me how they can comment on my Flickr photos, and I have to tell them that they need a Flickr name, and they look into it, until they realize it's going to mean getting a Yahoo ID, and that's a big turn off. (My entire family falls into this category; none of them want to get a Yahoo ID. Probably because they're confusing it with Yahoo Mail, but it doesn't matter. The point is people don't want one.)
I always wished that I had got on to Flickr before the instituted the Yahoo ID requirement, because I can never remember what my idiotic Yahoo ID is (it's not the same as my Flickr username), and thus I really only ever use Flickr from computers that have it saved/cookied.
Basically: Yahoo ID's are a drag. I don't want to "build a relationship" with Yahoo. I don't want any of their other crummy services. I just want Flickr, and so do a lot of other people. They've shot themselves in the foot with this requirement -- as I said, I personally know quite a few people who've decided not to touch Flickr because of the mandatory Yahoo ID -- and now they're going to make the hole a little bigger.
Re:It's a drag. (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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.
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.metlin.org/ | Last Journal: Friday July 20, @01:58PM)
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:5, Insightful)
(http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @04:34PM)
Wait a minute... are you telling me that there are professional photographers who store their content on Flickr and don't have backup copies? Excuse me, but that doesn't sound very professional. That sounds stupid.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @04:34PM)
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.metlin.org/ | Last Journal: Friday July 20, @01:58PM)
Some do, most don't. You assume that everyone who does photography know technology. There is no particularly easy way to backup all that meta-data, and it becomes harder still if you are not a techie.
And you're earning a living off it to some degree.
Some do, some don't.
Sorry, again, it's not very bright to not have a backup of the data that is critical to your continued success.
Perhaps, I can't say I disagree with that. But like I said, the idea behind being a paying customer is that you hope these situations do not come to pass (I pay you for a service, you provide that service well).
Now, if this were a corporate account, such data loss would be met with lawsuits. Since it is individuals here, there isn't a whole lot people can do about it.
At the end of the day, people are worried about the integrity of their data. Are there alternatives and possibilities for backup? Sure, but it's not something that can happen overnight.
The only bone that people have to pick is that Flickr is moving to a company with a known trackrecord for poor data integrity, poor maintenance and lack of customer support. The reason that they gave us was a stupid one - that they wanted to give all the cool features that Yahoo! had. The point is, those that are interested in those features would have merged anyway, those of us who aren't don't particularly care.
As original users, we were the first to be with Flickr before it became a part of Yahoo!, the first community. When Yahoo! bought Flickr, it wasn't just the service, it was also this community. By doing this, Flickr is essentially telling the community that helped it all along that it does not care for them anymore.
Isn't there a lesson in business and usability about listening to your customers? Or something?
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 23 2005, @04:06PM)
Pretty inflammatory title for a Slashdot article. I got confused when looking at my RSS feeds and thought I was seeing Digg's.
Question (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
S0? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday February 21 2002, @04:37PM)
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.
Zoomr? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://thelifeofbryan.multiply.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 20 2007, @12:20AM)
Re:Zoomr? (Score:4, Funny)
What manner of abomination will be forced upon us next? Plagues of locusts? The earth yielding of its dead? Who knows what will come next when we live in a time when a for profit corporation can make a service available free of charge and then commit such obvious atrocities as trying to get some money back out of it.
I, for one, just did not see this coming. I uploaded thousands of pictures to someone else's server and spent hours and hours and hours typing in metadata. Maybe I paid some kind of monthly fee and maybe I didn't, and maybe I read the User Agreement that stated that at any given time and for any reason, or no reason at all, the company that owns all this stuff I keep sending them can pull the plug on the whole works and all the work I put into it would be vaporized. Regardless, I expected that forever and ever this service would be made available to me, on terms set by me, by virtue of my having spent a lot of my time on it and becoming emotionally invested in its 'community'.
Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.tenthousandpercent.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 09, @10:15AM)
I'm sorry, was this supposed to reinforce the "OMG YAHOO IS EVIL" slant of this
So a guy who's competing with Yahoo says Yahoo sucks?
An anonymous READER? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
Hey, we already have a term for these people, let's call a spade a spade, and a coward a coward.
With that said; if you paid for this service, vote with your dollars, and go pay someone else. If you're using a free account, stop bitching. They're giving it to you for free! If they want you to identify yourself by your high school nickname, you should be grateful... even if they did call you "logger [b3ta.com]".
Conflict of Interest? (Score:4, Funny)
Prominent user, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/)
I'm out (Score:2, Redundant)
(http://z80.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 28 2002, @04:01PM)
Storm in a tea cup (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.joe-bunting.com/club)
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.
"Many users are calling this BS (Score:2)
> "Many users are calling this BS, saying it's all about Yahoo marketing its other properties to Flickr's user-base."
And this is somehow unacceptable? They're a portal with multiple service offerings.
They also gain tremendous synergies from integrating these services, as do all portals.
Why does the OP feel he has the right to be shielded somehow from this integration, or from
Yahoo's other free service offerings?
This is a little OT, but I have to say that personally I think Yahoo is on a tear and no one has
noticed. IMHO Yahoo's mail beta blows huge holes in Gmail, which has a wacky threading
system and an interface that's damn hard to love.
Beware the ides of March (Score:1)
Direct competitor to Flickr ? (Score:2)
Seems like rather an important tid-bit at the end there...
"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."
So, they are further integrating Flickr into Yahoo, what's wrong or surprising about that?
yahoo and big consolidation (Score:2)
Same thing happened (Score:2)
(http://www.leap.cc/ | Last Journal: Monday September 10, @08:19PM)
If I didn't game so much I might have looked into Comcast (which also makes me mad as there are only 2 options for DSL) but i value my low ping/lag.
yahoo login works fine - no downside (Score:5, Informative)
(http://electricrain.com/greg/)
SmugMug (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.dashmaps.com/)
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...
Awe-inspiring (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.electricstate.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 05 2006, @03:08PM)
1. Flickr wants you to signin with a yahoo account.
2. Flickr will limit you to 3000 contacts.
3. Flickr will limit the number of tags on your photos to 75.
That's it. In response:
1. Jesus. Just get a Yahoo ID. Can't find your precious flickr ID on Yahoo (since Yahoo has a mizillion members)? Just take your ID and add "flickr" at the end. It'll probably be available. You can still get email updates at whatever email address you like, and this change doesn't change anything about your nickname on the site! This is LITERALLY a change to the login process, and ONLY the login process.
2. I suspect this measure is probably the first move in Flickr announcing some other social networking features (Friends or some such, some other data type), that will allow you to do much the same thing you do with contacts, allowing contacts to be, you know, PEOPLE YOU FUCKING CONTACT!
3. This move is great. Using the Flickr API can get downright stupid when you attempt to browse a tag and the same damn pictures come up, because some unattractive lady has tagged her picture with a million different keywords. Stop tagspam.
Seriously...what a pathetic display of whining (the vast majority) and opportunism (Mr. Hawk)
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?
Get over it (Score:1, Flamebait)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 27, @08:59PM)
Try Tabloo (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday December 07 2005, @07:15PM)
flickr letter translated (Score:2)
(http://www.plocp.com/)
I thought this was a good translation of the yahoo
http://strange.corante.com/archives/2007/01/31/ya
Not all of us are weeners (Score:5, Informative)
(http://dan100.blogspot.com/)
Was there any difference in my Flickr experience after the switch? No.
More old skool then you (Score:1)
... and? (Score:1)
(http://blogs.bwerp.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 06 2004, @03:58PM)
Please stop with the verb-r (Score:1)
Yahoo Told Everyone About This Back in 2005 (Score:1)
I'm completely missing the point of all this outrage toward Yahoo/Flickr here. These same "early adopters" are whining about the exact same thing they complained about almost 1 1/2 years ago (late August 2005).
This Yahoo account requirement is not new news - they let people know [wired.com] about it a long time ago [bbc.co.uk], and have even extended the drop-dead date from "sometime in 2006" to early 2007.
I'm one of the "old-schoolers" and made the change to the Yahoo account last year - it wasn't a big deal. It's just a frickin' web app...
Two things (Score:2)
But I wanted to say something for a long time - I get spam because of del.icio.us since Yahoo bought it. And I'm sure it's because of them. How do I know? Because I started learning Japanese and for a time the ONLY place I've used kanji was in del.icio.us tags (photographs and interesting - and ). And I immediately started getting spam in japanese on the e-mail which del.icio.us is supposed to keep hidden. It MIGHT be a coincidence, but seems fishy.
I think it's important to note... (Score:2)
So you might want to go into your Yahoo account preferences and opt back out of all the stuff they try to tie you into.
Webring all over again (Score:3, Insightful)
The flickr takeover has actually been far smoother than I had expected, and I'm surprised that they didn't try to yahooify flickr (too much, at least). Still, I hope this change isn't a sign of further changes or "integrations". If I wanted my photo album "integrated" with yahoo services, I would use yahoo photos. Flickr is successful because of what it is right now. Just let it be, and don't try to change that. Yahoo's "better" isn't necessarily our "better". It's always a pity when corporate interests intervene and destroy great ideas.
No big deal (Score:1)
(http://www.macmegasite.com/)
cross marketing (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday February 21 2003, @05:17AM)
Assuming that legacy users don't otherwise use yahoo, that 1/3rd of the legacy users will never use flickr again and that yahoo id users see 2x the adverts, this will be a win. Of course, some stubborn people don't like being overwhelmed by in-your-face space-wasting flashy yahoo advertisements. For them, there is gmail and, well, not flickr.
It's Worse Than You All Realize! (Score:1)
(http://darthservo.blogspot.com/)
The moment I finished the 'merge', my account's photo stream was suddenly held hostage by Yahoo! They said something about a Nigerian operation they were heading up and if I didn't provide them more money from my bank account, 12,000 starving children would die because of my negligence. What's more, my computer then showed I was infected with the "w32.D13SuX0r!!#@!Y@400!pWNedU!!!@!#" virus. Immediately after the message appeared, I rushed to check my photo storage on the computer and was completely distraught when I watched each one of my photos receive a Yahoo! logo stretching across its entire length. Then my hard drive burst into a giant fireball consuming my tower while my speakers replayed an audio clip of Hitler endlessly chanting "Yahoo! Yahoo!". At that point, my wife came home and saw the mess. I told her everything that happened. She said she could never forgive me for merging and that she'd see me and her lawyer in divorce court, and then maced me.
Before Yahoo! remotely formats my phone's ROM, I sit here blurry eyed typing this out on my keypad to warn you all! I am now left without an online medium to publish my photos of family BBQs and my goldfish Steve (who died because of the fire)...all because of merging!
Sorry, but... (Score:2)
(https://openqabal.dev.java.net/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 14 2006, @01:51AM)
Quitcherbitchen (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday November 06 2002, @05:15PM)
Here is a picture of some large nails. Please use them to climb up on the cross and nail yourself to it.
Pls send pix of your dead body.
Sincerely,
Cerv
Seriously, quit yer damn bitchen. Your website got bought out, now some changes are going to happen. They're not resetting everything, they're not forcing you to participate in any of their other services... they're just saying your signin name has to change. Fracking deal with it.
Yahoo bought out Rocketmail sometime in the late 90s. They merged Rocketmail into their userbase. I got a Yahoo ID to use... but my @rocketmail.com address still works! I'd be surprised if there were only a few hundred Rocketmail users left (probably less), but Yahoo keeps that extra domain going, forwarding those emails... and now I've had the same email addy for 10 years. Hell, I still have emails in my inbox from my original Rocketmail account, that were painlessly migrated over.
None of that crap with Hotmail (log in every month or we'll perma-delete you!)... I have gmail, ISP email, etc etc... but I still prefer my Rocketmail/Yahoo. I don't bother with many of their other services, I don't care, and neither do they.
Yahoo gets ubermegabonus points for keeping my rocketmail going all these years. So I say unto you, you whiny little Flickr users...
quitcherbitchen.
What's the problem? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
It is annoying to change your username. (Score:2)
(http://smatch.sf.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 17 2005, @04:19PM)
And online how else are people going to knew who you are?
Why is it so hard to understand? (Score:3, Interesting)
I use flickr (I have a Yahoo login) and basically I try to pretend that Yahoo doesn't own it (I stopped bothering geotagging after about 5 photos when I realised how crap Yahoo maps are and how slow the tagging was).
I can understand why people are pissed - because they don't want to associate themselves with Yahoo. It doesn't matter that Flickr is owned by Yahoo, that's just an unhappy side effect. I for one would be happy to keep as far away from yahoo as possible. I would rather not even have my username present in the Yahoo system.
I feel the same way about google buying blogspot - I have a crappy blog I hope noone reads, but there is no way I want to merge it with my google account - (sure it's pretty easy to link the two given they have the _same username_) but like some posts above, I'd like to keep some semblance of anominity on the internet - I don't want every fucking account linked together. Sure anyone who is interested can search for my username on some other random site and see if I ahve an account, but I cringe at the thought of the day when you can't even make an account somewhere like flickr without every single other one of your internet presences being linked to it.
The three changes (Score:2)
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/gullevek/)
- only whines will care. The rest just merges and moves on
2) only 3000 contacts
- if you have so many, you are anyway like myspace and thats useless. Seriously, what meaning has it to have 3000 contacts if you don't do anything with it. How do you want to follow up on pictures or anything.
3) only 75 tags
- again, who needs so many tags. It is just no real limitation.
So overall it is just something people who love to whine, can whine about.
We have seen this *before* before! (Score:2)
They also pulled the exact same "stunt" years ago when they acquired GeoCities in 1999 [wikipedia.org].
Because I didn't "convert" a couple of my GeoCities accounts into new-fangled Yahoo accounts, the two very first websites I ever made, in 1995, are lost forever. Yahoo!
I'll give them on thing.... (Score:1)
Re:Maybe I missed something here, but... (Score:2)
But I digress... this is all really childish. The only thing these people have to do is a) create a free throw-away Yahoo! account, b) log in using this free throw-away account, c) tell flickr to use their preferred account (ie, their original account used when signing up) for all communications and, the hardest of all, d) stop pretending like they have more than 3000 people that they keep in regular touch with.
I think those flipping out over this are making mountains out of molehills here.
Re:Maybe I missed something here, but... (Score:2)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
As an interesting aside, I had to merge a Yahoo ID with my Flickr account before it would let me sign in to delete my Flickr account over the issue of forcing me to merge a Yahoo ID with my Flickr account. Fun!
Re:Get a Picasa account (Score:1)
Flickr's coolness comes from its Interestingness algorithm, something Picasa lacks.
Re:Reason #7 (Score:2)
Re:Hell NO to Picasa (Score:3, Interesting)
At least they are not going to modify your content. Now check this out from Yahoo:
8. PUBLIC CONTENT POSTED TO YAHOO!
(b) With respect to Content you elect to post for inclusion in publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Groups or that consists of photos or other graphics you elect to post to any other publicly accessible area of the Service, you grant Yahoo! a world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish such Content on the Service solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted, or, in the case of photos or graphics, solely for the purpose for which such photo or graphic was submitted to the Service. This licence exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and shall be terminated at the time you delete such Content from the Service.
(c) With respect to all other Content you elect to post to other publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sub-licensable right and licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed.