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Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters
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."
I wouldn't call this "abandoning" anybody. They're asking users to use a (free) Yahoo login. It's not what I'd call a big deal. Yahoo did this when they acquired Launch (launch.com). Why would this bother anybody other than the tinfoil-hat types? What am I missing?
I don't respond to AC's.
How does "require a different sign on method" equate to "abandon"?
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
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.
/. post?
... ? ... Anyone else see a possible problem in his motivation for saying something like this?
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?
Latewire
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".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't get it. What's stopping you from making a yahoo account and only using flickr?
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
The change may be small, but it is significant. This brings back bad memories of yahoo's takeover of webring.org nearly a decade ago. Their first step was also to integrate yahoo IDs. I don't know if anyone here remembers or even used webring, but back then it was a cool concept. I had a ring there with several thousand members, and I could not secure a single new member after the takeover. Soon they began to push for a "migration" to yahoo accounts and servers, but it was riddled with problems, and I ended up losing control of the ring. They eventually backed out of webring, but it was never the same again. That was actually when I started hating yahoo. They just came along, took a beautiful idea, and totally ruined it. It was brutal.
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.
Well, I'm 29. So now you have seen someone else say it, and now you need to stop claiming that no one over 15 ever complained about ageism. Although frankly, I'm quite sure that many others over the age of 15 have complained to you, and you're simply a liar.
Point the first: s/peolpe/people/, s/puperty/puberty/
Point the second: Intelligence typically does not change much throughout one's life, although experience and thus ability do. This is exceptionally unfortunate for you, as you cannot look forward to any significant improvement that might bring you up to the level, say, of an orangutan.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How is this any different from every other website in existence?
1. They are a pain in the ass to sign up for.
They have annoying CAPTCHAs, and their UI makes me want to stab people. The login name you'll probably end up with itself is long (since they have so many accounts, you generally can't get a compact username; you're stuck with JohnDoe48529), and unless you want an equally crappy Flickr username, your Flickr name and your Yahoo ID won't be the same (i.e. Flickr: JohnDoe, Yahoo: JohnDoe48529), which is confusing. It's just one more barrier to entry that keeps non-geeks like my family, who would otherwise be interested in something like Flickr, away.
2. Psychologically, signing up for a "Yahoo ID" seems like a much bigger commitment than "making an account on Flickr." It introduces an extra layer of confusion, when you're trying to get people to sign up for the service. Like I said in my other comment, when people have expressed an interest in getting on Flickr, 90% of them just give up as soon as they figure out that they need to make an account on "another site," i.e. Yahoo, because it's a PITA and seems like a lot of work.
Some of these problems are technical, others are due to Yahoo's implementation; they could have just let you use the same sign-in fields and use a Flickr ID or a Yahoo ID, and then rolled all the Flickr IDs over into Yahoo ID's silently (like eBay did when they bought Half.com -- one day, all the Half.com people got told, 'by the way, your Half.com name is also an eBay account, congratulations'). This would have been fine. But they didn't do that. They make a huge fucking deal about signing in with your Yahoo ID, as if this is something people actually want, and it's not. That's perhaps the most aggravating part of the whole thing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."