Slashdot Mirror
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’ve been a fan of Mike Hawk’s photography for a while now, but man, Zoomr couldn’t really be a more blatant clone of Flickr if it tried.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
One of my biggest problems with Flickr is that it requires a Yahoo ID.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The gnashing of teeth over these decisions is simply awe-inspiring. Basically, the points of contention boil down to:
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)
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
OK, you invested all this time in creating metadata and didn't back it up.
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?
Face it, people just hate Yahoo.
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.
Oh yeah???
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.