flickr off, yahoo
—from Poo-tee-weet? – (?)
Sometime 2004 – flickr launches. YAY!
Sometime 2005 – Yahoo buys flickr. Boo!
Sometime 2005 – Yahoo says it will not meddle or interfere with flickr. Oh, ok then. YAY!
Now, 2007 – Old flickr ids phased out, Yahoo signin compulsory on flickr. WTF? This is bad news!
(So, what follows will be unmitigated-ly boring a rant. Move on.)
There was a reason I signed up for flickr. It was small, cool, and it had a great community. I signed up early in flickr’s career – when it was still a Ludicorp company. Which meant, in flickr’s own terms – I was Old Skool. And therefore, Cool!
When I signed up and tried passing off my rather inane stuff as art, there were people to tell me I sucked at photography, and they said it rather nicely. And then, there were people like Caterina and Stewart, who, you know, were the top brass on flickr. They started the place up, and they kept it lively and fun with their banter, comments, and by their friendly hellos when people joined the party. (Caterina was one of my first contacts on flickr. She added me. I felt like I belonged)
So, along comes Yahoo, with a large cheque. And flickr changed hands. But, we were told the old guard wouldn’t die. We’d still be Old Skool and fun and respected. More importantly, it said we needn’t shift over to a Yahoo account to use flickr. Things were ok.
flickr 2.0 happened – with better features, some revamping and stuff.
And then, this morning, the bomb landed. This is the end of flickr as I see it. *
If you thought I was the only guy ranting – check this out.
Update: BBC picks it up.
Tags: flickr, flickr off
*Yes, I know it’s a tad early, and exaggerated to say that. But watch out.
RSS/XML
January 31st, 2007 at 6:57 pm
It is indeed exaggerated to say that this will be the end of Flickr. But there are other things that have been annoying me, like eg. the fact that anyone who posts their pics in enough “favorite/comment me” pools will end up with interestingness unlimited. That destroys the whole concept of interestingness and leaves me looking mostly at my contacts’ photos. And for social networking, Zooomr is much better, so I guess I’ll make the switch.
February 1st, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I happened to catch some live action when some passionate entrepreneurs bombarded a Yahoo guy with queries on Flickr at a networking event.
In reponse to some of the policy decisions that back-fired especially the restricted number of pictures for free membership etc, he said they(Yahoo) were experimenting..
In any case i suffer from the ‘fear of the big MNC taking over the world’ syndrome..i smell evil/forced homogenization/dehumanizing rut and so forth
February 1st, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I had the bomb dropped too. With a very heavy heart I associated my flickr id with the defunct yahoo id.
Very annoyed.
February 5th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
What else can one expect from Yahoo. Yahoo is a company which do not appreciate simplicity.
They are probably suffering from NIH (not invented here) syndrome.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Isn’t this over reacting based on the stupid reactions of some dumb americans? Grow up… got a problem with Flickr, find another solution or better yet, build your own since you seem to think you know more than you do.
June 16th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
[...] On the other hand, Yahoo seems oblivious to the number of people it turns off, as it continues to squeeze flickr’s balls. In yet another case of Censorship, it’s filtering out “offensive content” in Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, and North Korea. [...]