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Flickr Users Cry Over new Yahoo ID requirement
I just read abou this over on wired news.
It appears that a faction of Flickr users have decided to protest
against the sites new owner, Yahoo!. The uprising comes about
because now that yahoo ownes Flickr these users are going to be
required to set up a yahoo id to continue using their beloved service.
Honestly
I have no sympathy in this situation. I keep going over this in
my head and can’t seem to find a way to agree with them. Now I
guess I have already been desensitized to this because I once was a
rocketmail user, which got aquired by geocities, and then by
yahoo. So you have to get a yahoo ID to continue using your
photo’s, SO WHAT!!!!!
I mean realistically all of us that have
flickr accounts signed up for the site as a beta. As a beta I
think the site had just as much chance of being shut down completly and
the photos used in it lost forever, but we flocked to post our photos
anyway. These users are threatening to close down their accounts
in protest. As if yahoo is going to care if it doesnt have to host
those files anymore? Yahoo wants the flickr technology to enhance
is yahoo360 offering, not to gain the support of the flickr die-hards.
Obviously
I am ranting, and if any of these die-hards are in the MM community I
will get flamed for my lack of support. But really… this has to
go on the top of my stupid things to protest list.
29 Aug 2005 Simeon
I think this is an excellent example of a non-story being blown out of proportion.
At present, there’s about 700 members in the Flickr forum protesting about the Yahoo! ID situation. That’s 700 from a pool of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of users. Hardly a sigificant proportion.
It’s pretty standard for a level of concern to be expressed during any large acqisition or meger (Adobe+Macromedia, anyone?), and there will always be a very small group of people who resist entirely and move on to somewhere new.
The relatively small size and independance is what drew some members to Flickr in the first place, so it’s only to be expected that they will consider moving on now that Yahoo! are in the picture.
I suspect what they’re really upset about is the fact that yet another popular, independant web site has been absorbed into the commercial mainstream by an internet giant. I assuem the Yahoo! ID is just a focal point, rather than the real issue, for these people.
As the article you link to points out, the numbers involved in the Flickr protest are pretty insignificant, but it illustrates an interesting point about the degree of importance that people ascribe to their online identity.
I was at a Flickr workshop recently. And Cal Henderson (lead developer at Flickr) told there that they have about 1 million users. So 700 out of 1M is 0.07%.
You have to remember that there is a faction of people on the web that really, REALLY dislike Yahoo! Getting them to use anything Y! produces is like trying to get your 15 year old to play with playschool toys. It’s just not going to happen. Yahoo! on the other hand just adds fuel to the fire by persuing a strategy of trying to buy their way onto your system. They are just short of being spyware.
Take the example of the FlashPlayer/Yahoo toolbar incident that happened a few months ago with Macromedia. Instead of doing the smart thing and distribute the flash player as part of the toolbar download (and write the toolbar in flash), they cut a deal to drop the toolbar on somebody downloading the flash player. Pretty heavy handed and certainly not what the person looking to get the flash player was interested in.
In general, I think marketing departments should never be allowed to make strategic deals. Their interests are generally at odds with their customer base.