Damn Youhoo, flickr!!

Merge This!Well, it seems like the time is nearly upon ‘old skool’ flickr users like myself where we will be FORCED to ‘merge’ our accounts over to a Yahoo! account.

I expect this story to hit TechMeme later today – looking forward to seeing what others have to say about it, beyond the 500 700 or so responses to this news so far on the flickr help forum. It’s times like this that TechMeme is so invaluable.

UPDATE: BBC News now has a story on this

STILL NO SIGN of it on TechMeme, which I find very odd at this time of day

Judging by the responses to this, people are not too happy at all. And can you blame us? We PAY for this service. If I merge my account, will I still be subjected to the constant onslaught of advertising banners which Yahoo! riddle their systems with? Fair enough, these ads make them money, but we are PAYING customers. Do ‘regular’ Yahoo! Photos users have to pay for their hosting?

I think this a BIG BIG mistake.

I have had a Yahoo! ID for years, but rarely, if ever use the messenger etc these days. So many better systems have emerged since. I have a very old ICQ account somewhere too.

Not that long ago, when Yahoo! introduced the ‘360’ blogs, they placed links on those ‘old skool’ Yahoo! profile page, trying to get you to create one of these ‘blogs’. The trouble is, they don’t tell you that once you have done that, you will not be able to see your ‘old’ profile page ever again. It’s gone. Then, you can’t revert and change your mind. You’re stuck with it.

Usually I really like what Yahoo! do for users, but this completely sucks.

I think it’s time I wrote a script to pull all my photos out from my flickr account soon. Who knows, it could prove to be quite popular.

PS: If there’s anyone out there who runs a server hosting facility, please do get in touch – We can build a system pretty quickly to ‘merge’ OUR PHOTOS to a new system – Hell, I could even let you use your flickr usernames and passwords if you like. Same url structures, widgets (to a degree) – just a different domain.We can build it to be what users want. It’s not that hard to do – in fact I’d say their Flash based Organization features are the most complicated bit. The only way I could do this, is by working with a web-server hosting farm ‘guru’ with the hosting infrastructure already in place. (Hey Libsyn! Fancy getting into the photo hosting game? 😉 )

PPS: Kris from Zooomr should be very excited around about now. There’s an opportunity screaming at him right about now.

PPPS: Here is link to a Google search for flickrbackup. Some useful stuff here.

– I nearly have a system working here to download all my photos 😉 Now, the question is, where and how to move them – apart from back home here, on my hard disk.

Word from the Blogosphere (seeing as Techmeme still hasn’t woken up to this yet)

http://ipadventures.com/?p=1591
http://grahamcase.com/?p=120
http://flickrville.com/2007/01/31/reactions-to-flickrs-announcement/

UPDATE: Techmeme now has a thread on the subject, after Thomas Hawk, the CEO of Zooomr weighs in about it 😉

9 comments

  • I’m reading all the posts about people going ballistic, and I guess I get it on the “It’s the principle of it, dammit” level, but Flickr has been a part of Yahoo! for over a year now, and everyone has known this was coming.

    You’re going to spend the time and energy exporting hundreds, potentially thousands of pictures, moving and uploading them somewhere else (most likely creating a new login elsewhere), and helping to create a Flickr clone because the login system has changed?

    Furthermore, I don’t get why this is that big of an issue. I’m sure it’s a logistical pain in the ass for the Flickr folks to manage two login systems, especially when if they switch to the Yahoo! one, they’ll likely not have to manage the details of it in the future (it’s a single sign on system that’s likely managed by a different group), leaving them more time to focus on the core photo management and community features.

    Aside from replacing your email address and password with your Yahoo username and password (which you’ve mentioned *you already have*), nothing else is going to change. All your URLs are the same, you can use whatever email address you want (you set it in your Yahoo! account settings). If anything, you’ve now reduced your overall number of internet logins by one, or at the worst case for many users, they’ve had a net gain of internet accounts of ZERO (new Yahoo! account, loss of a Flickr login). And what ads are you talking about? I’m a Flickr Pro member with a Yahoo! login and don’t recall seeing any ads anywhere…

    Color me confused as to why this is such a huge issue (aside from the aforementioned “Principle”)…

  • It’s saf that this has happened..but like Chris said..it was always bound to happen and it’s today.

    I guess some flickr clones out there will start making some money now 🙂

  • Pingback: Anonymous

  • If yahoo would just embrace openID this would not be an issue. There are NO good usernames left for yahoo. My email address should be able to work as a login for Any Service on the net. Yahoo no longer has mojo.

  • I’m totally confused by the animosity here. Like Chris, I can’t see that it makes any material difference whatesoever. What gives kosso?

  • Pingback: Anonymous

  • It certainly sucks that you have to convert your old-skool account over to a yahoo account, especially when you’re a paying for your Flickr account.Its surprising that they are doing this to Flickr users (Pro) who pay for the service. I guess it comes down to the cost of pleasing pro old skool users (probably smaller than you think) versus pleasing the big giant partner called yahoo. Unfortunately, the loyalty of old skool users isn’t factored into the equation. Before Yahoo was in the picture, it was Flickr old skool users that made the site popular & brought it to the attention of Yahoo. The least Flickr could do is respect the wishes of such loyal users to keep their account info separate from Yahoo.

    Even though this doesn’t influence me (not an old skool user), I empathize with having your trust broken as a paying loyal customer. As a pro user, you are not paying money for changes in account information & a forced sign up with Yahoo. You’re right once that kind of trust is broken, it makes it easier for people to consider trying out alternative photo sharing sites that actually listen to its users or consider generating user directed clone like services. In addition to the forced Yahoo registration, Flickr has also recently introduced limits on contacts, tags, and group postings which provide more reasons for Flickr pro users to consider alternative clone Flickr services that have no such limits. If Flickr can force its pro users to register for Yahoo accounts and enforce limits on various services, then what is going to stop them from fulfilling Yahoo’s demand to add annoying yahoo ads into Flickr pro accounts too.

    It is blatently clear that Flickr is not taking advantage of this niche market of Flickr pro users by satisfying their needs & this will probably be a major loss for Flickr in the long run if the competition decides to swoop into this market.

  • its surprising that they’re doing this to flickr pro users.
    anyways – i’m off to 23hq.com and zooomr