Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

So I received an email today from Flickr telling me I would need to merge my Yahoo! account with my Flickr username, and that they have set a deadline for doing this. Apparently, if I did not, I will lose my Flickr account.

Now, Flickr is a great service. It rocks. It has a ton of cool features that people love and more importantly, it has a wonderful community. And I signed up for Flickr before they were a part of Yahoo!, so I have what’s called an “Old Skool” address.

But here is the problem – I am not a big fan of Yahoo!’s UI and nor am I a big fan of Yahoo!’s customer support. Secondly, my Yahoo! account tends to get a lot of spam, and sometimes I wonder if they even have a spam-blocker in place.

Ever since Yahoo! acquired Flickr, I knew that this was going to happen eventually. However, I just kept hoping that it would not, or that they would let the older members keep their accounts the way they are.

Sadly, that was not the case. Quite honestly, I am a little annoyed and upset at this incident. And as it turns out, so are the majority of “Old Skool” Flickr users.

Problems with merging accounts

So, as a Flickr (and an occasional Yahoo!) user, the following are a list of problems that I see with merging the two.

• Usability and convenience issues: You see, you are asking your original user-base (those that made you popular and and helped you become big) to do something that a large majority do not want to. This is like saying, “Oh thank you for being the first guys to help us out. To show our thanks, here, jump through a hoop, out of a plane and put these chains around your neck.”

• Signing up for a Yahoo! account: You see, a lot of Flickr users do not have a Yahoo! account. So, when you try merging without a Yahoo! account, you are asked to register for a new account. Not only that, it is usually hard to find a username that matches your Flickr name. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a Yahoo! username that you’d like because almost all of them are taken. So, you end up with an obscure Yahoo! username. And today, it is yet another username/password combination you will have to remember, one that you never asked for (and probably a complicated one at that, considering how hard it is to get a Yahoo! username of your choice).

• What if you have anothe Flickr account associated with your Yahoo! account?: If you have two Flickr accounts, one associated with your Yahoo! account and one from before, you cannot merge the two. So, I ended up deleting the Flickr account that was associated with my Yahoo! account and merged my regular one with the Yahoo! one. Now imagine if I had a few gigs of photographs — this would have been hell.

• Personal Information: As a lot of Flickr members have indicated, signing up for Yahoo! requires personal information. Sure, you can lie about it, but that’s not the point. Why are you being asked for something that you did not want to do in the first place? The way I see it, you are asking your existing customers to do something that is very clearly distasteful to them.

• Alienating a userbase: The userbase of Old Skool Flickr is from folks who have been using it for a while, the guys who helped make Flickr big. And this is the core group that Yahoo! is alienating with this move.

• Sharing of accounts: With Flickr, you could share your account with someone else, say a friend. But what if you had an existing Yahoo! account? Giving the keys to your Flickr account is one thing, giving the keys to your email account is something else.

User feedback — Listening to your users is important

Ideally, Flickr/Yahoo! should have consulted its userbase before this move. But that did not happen — a quick look at the forums and some of the messages there sums up the situation quite well.

“That’s really dumb. I don’t like yahoo and I don’t like my yahoo account. I don’t like anything about yahoo. I didn’t like it that yahoo bought flickr but I was fine with it as long as they didn’t mess with it. Well, now they have. They’re going to slowly destroy what makes this website great, just you wait. Flickr, why did you sell out to such capitalistic pigs? I take pride in being an old skool member. Furthermore, if it’s only 5% of us who still use our old logins then why not let us! If we really want to use yahoo mobile whatever then we’d have switched over by now! Now I have to create a yahoo account with all kinds of numbers because my name is already taken. Thanks!” — JPhilpson

“We signed up early on cause we believed in what Flickr was offering at the time, and the direction it was going in… There are many many other photo services out there, that we chose not to join cause we believed in the community of Flickr…

When Flickr ’sold out’ to Yahoo, they basically turned their backs on those of us that believed in them enough from the beginning to give them money to start/keep going…

The reason we are the minority around here is simple, Flickr forgot about those of us that have supported it from the beginning long ago and have been forcing Y!ID for new members ever since…It’s offensive to be told that we, the ones that helped support this site for so long, are now the reason everyone’s experience is getting worse…

Same rules apply on the Internet as do in real life… ‘Never forget where you came from…’ “– justj

“I’ve seen this before, with LaunchCast and mailing lists, which were great before Yahoo took over and they became unusable.

I’ve invested too much time in Flickr to risk all my work being lost by having to muck about with Yahoo mail.

I don’t want to worry about all my photos being deleted or losing my Flickr friends and all their photos. ” — jovike

(Ed: Incidentally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that happens — I know several people (with paid Yahoo! e-mail accounts) whose mailboxes were empty one fine morning.)

“It’s pastures new for me. I’ll be letting all my accounts expire rather than put up with more Yahoo-based nonsense. Flickr is the new Starbucks.

Flickr is not the adventure playground it once was. The experimental, alternative vibe it had in the days before Yahoo is long gone. After the buyout was announced there was some question as to whether the new owners would kill the golden goose. It’s been a slow death, one accomplished through a thousand cuts. As jovike says above, the focus should be on the subscribers. But it isn’t. It’s because Yahoo have never had a good grasp of customer service.

My existing photos could live on in cyberspace, marooned but visible to anyone who wants to visit the museum. But the new Flickr would rather reclaim the trivial amount of server space that requires. So my legacy and those of other old timers will just disappear.

So much for posterity and cyber-heritage. And there’s still that old human rights record. And the censorship, both deliberate and accidental. The new Flickr is arbitrary about what it allows, and bumble-footed about fixing mistakes.

So it’s on to pastures new. Someone else will be doing interesting, user-focused photo projects. I can give a startup the benefit of the doubt. But when a company so big gets it so wrong, it’s time to put aside lingering affections and move on. Thanks for the good times. Thanks for the fish. Long Live Flickr.” — flickrthrope

“My wife and I currently share our flickr account. Can we each use our own ID to access our flickr account? Or will we have to share 1 yahoo ID?” — xftwitch

“How are they going to be processing our refunds? I have read enough bad things about them in this forum that I can’t in all good conscience stay with Yahoo. I honestly didn’t know alot of the privacy issues that were raised here. I’m not going to make any useless remarks about yahoo. I just want my money back. How do I do this?” — ceriess

“Having to translate an email/password page is a weak attempt at an excuse. It would be better to at least be honest and say hey, Yahoo bought us, they want this community linked in to their other services. They own us and that’s just the way it is. The sugar coating and fabrication of excuses is even worse than having to actually merge.” –Thomas Hawk

I could go on, but of all the posts, I was able to see very few (if any) that were even vaguely in favour of the switch.

One of the first lessons in usability, business or technology is that you should listen to your users. Yet, Flickr/Yahoo! very clearly did not. In fact, they went ahead and did something that was explicitly distasteful to their users, to the point that some of the pro users want to know if they can get a refund from their account. And others are linking to things such as “A Brief History of Yahoo! Acquisitions“.

And one wonders why Yahoo! is faltering.

It’s a mistake only when you refuse to correct it

Flickr has given its users a deadline, however there still is time for Yahoo! to stop and correct this, particularly considering the amount of negative user feedback that is being generated.

Flickr/Yahoo! still have the time to go back on this, but I doubt if they will. Given Yahoo!’s track record in such things, I really doubt anything will change. Some will stay, some will move on but Flickr has already made the first move of screwing over its users.

That cannot be a good thing. Secondly, lot of the Flickr users that are complaining are Pro members — this means that they are not just users, but they are customers.

Customer is King, and the King is not happy

Dear Yahoo! and Flickr,

The customer is king. Despite everything that you may believe, the customer determines whether or not you stay in business. And nobody is more important than those that helped you get where you are today. The least you can do is listen to them.

Go on, go on to the Flickr forums and read the posts. If you still do not care for what your users have to say, it is more than a tad unfortunate.

There is another company I know that actually listens to its users.