Digital Common Sense

Plain and simple. And I’m not alone. Here’s the driver -

From:FlickrHQ
Subject: Update for Old Skool members

Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We’re making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at Yahoo! Go.

95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don’t.

You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you’ll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, go to Merge a Flickr and Yahoo! account.

Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any domain and your screenname will remain the same.

Complete details and answers to most common questions are in our FAQ: Yahoo! IDs, signing in and screen names.

Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you’re reading this, you’ve been around for a while and that means a lot to us!

Warmest regards,

- The Flickreenos

I don’t like this. I have multiple Yahoo IDs. They are disposable, in part, because Yahoo is disposable. My loyalty to Yahoo is non-existent. Their email sucks. The IM client is a bloated pig given years of creeping featurism with continual incorporation of crap the doesn’t work and users don’t want. In short, I’m not a Yahooligan.

It so happens that my Flickr ID could be the same as my Yahoo ID except I’ve forgotten that password information and not used it since 1997. Yeah, you can see I’m a big Yahoo user. But their password reset crap doesn’t work for that (and other) IDs that are actually me. And they never time out a dead user, so even though it’s me and I haven’t used it for years, I need yet another Yahoo Flickr ID.

It makes sense, Yahoo wants to leverage their Flickr purchase into Yahoo users. In my case, the reverse is far more likely. It’s highly likely I will delete all my photos from Flickr and go back to just hosting locally and not sharing. Sort of devalues the Nokia N-series and some other tools too.

I’m not alone in dissatisfaction at Yahoo fucking over bulk moving Old Skool users. We’re the ones who made Flikr so valuable Yahoo bought it. They don’t owe us anything. Then again, if we all leave, Flickr becomes pretty worthless.

Anyway, I don’t use Yahoo photos. I’m not interested in being a Yahoo member for any particular reason. They don’t excite me.Actually, Yahoo bores me to tears (sorry Jeff). I may be the lone dissenter who packs his bags and leaves. Or not. Not sure what I’ll do about this, but I am not pleased at all.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Flickr, forgetting users, dance wit the one who brung ya

Filed by Ken at 10:34 am under General