Flickr-Yahoo Nonsense Wednesday February 14, 2007

Flickr.com is one of my favorite sites on the net. It’s a great example of the whole Social Software concept. It’s a perfect site that started out so humbly and has now grown into its own internet phenomena. Which each passing day there is always some really cool API, add-on or plug-in that just makes the site that much better. You can spend hours on it exploring different locals, getting a different view point of a current event or exploring someone’s portfolio. Anyways because of the raw potential of the site it was gobbled up by Yahoo! a couple of years ago.

Yahoo!Flickr

Despite being bought out by Yahoo! 18 months ago Flickr has been able to maintain it’s street cred. No major evil corporation incidents. No major privacy violations and for the most part my user experience hasn’t been affected at all. Because of that there hasn’t been a big backlash of users against the site, until recently. When it was announced the Old Skool users would finally have to merge their original Flickr accounts into a Yahoo account. That’s right over 25 pages worth of complaints and one of the site founders has offered to refund the disgruntled out of her own pocket.

This debate has been referenced on a bunch of websites and I am in the camp that thinks this is nothing more than stupid internet nonsense. Some people really need to relax and just accept change. Yes, this is an inconvenience, but it was announced that this would happen 18 months ago. If it’s really that bothersome to login via Yahoo just walk away! There are far more critical world issues to get all worked up about…

Like fast moving zombies…

Categories: , , The Soapbox, The Urban, The World

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I would agree – except that I couldn’t remember if I had a certain Yahoo account name and asked Flickr to check for me. Today I got a new password for the name in question – I signed in only to find it’s not my account at all… doesn’t say much for Yahoo’s security does it.

Melissa · Feb 14, 06:27 PM · #permalink

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18 months…maybe this is the slow-moving zombies’ way of getting back on top?

They might not run fast, but their corporate agenda is worth taking notice of.

Corporate agenda…fast-moving zombie complex…T-shirt appearances…you ARE a slow moving zombie!!!

hobo4hire · Feb 14, 06:39 PM · #permalink

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The user name/account change was blown a little out of proportion. You may want to keep an eye on Yahoo!‘s terms of service though. In particular the sections about them reserving the right to change the terms and the sections about them having a royalty free license to use whatever you upload to promote the service however they feel.

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html

I’m not sure how they would use a zombie Turner photo to promote Flickr though…

goates · Feb 14, 08:51 PM · #permalink

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Melissa, that’s a good point. Pretty sloppy on Yahoo’s part and they should fix that as soon as possible. That seems like a really shitty error.

But on the whole the entire Flickr-Yahoo! merger hasn’t been the end of the entire site. With most mergers of this type, the content and feel of the site usual starts to deteriorate rapidly and instantaneously. In my experience, it seems that flickr has done a great job of separating itself from Yahoo! Despite the big pay check it seems to be keeping its little guy identity. Which I think is amazing. Throughout everything the site’s staff have been honest outgoing and very open. They’ve done a great job of keeping Flickr such a great site. To me that’s why I can’t understand the epic amount of backlash towards the site. It’s an annoying inconvenience, I’ll admit that, but it doesn’t warrant this sort of hostility.

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Wow!, I can’t believe I was called a zombie. Sure I’m slow, pale, dim-witted and I usually spend my days mumbling about my apartment searching for brains! Still, in no way do those qualities qualify me as a zombie.

cto · Feb 15, 09:49 AM · #permalink

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