I’ve been a Flickr user for many years, and was a Flickr Pro user for most of them (although I did let my Pro account lapse for a while).
Flickr is a terrific image uploading, hosting, sharing service and community, and was for a long time the prime place for my Photos of the Day (although I tried hosting that on 500px and iCloud for a while). I let my Flickr Pro account lapse because of the seeming lack of focus on Flickr by its parent Yahoo!, and the various issues that ensued from there. I also admit that Yahoo!’s subscription and payment system also made it difficult to actually sign up for the service!
It really looked like Yahoo! had killed Flickr. Thomas Hawk summed up the issues nicely:
For me, most of my frustration was around three key issues.
- It felt like Flickr simply refused to innovate.
- It felt like the people who managed Flickr and worked for Flickr simply didn’t care about the users or the product.
- My data didn’t feel safe and I worried about the community management team irrevocably and permanently deleting accounts without warning to users.
I reinstated my Flickr Pro a few months back, but to be honest I’ve not been too active there yet. But I can see that Flickr, under the direction of Yahoo!’s new CEO Marissa Mayer has been making a number of right steps, not the least of which is the widespread applause surrounding the release of Flickr’s new iPhone App.
The timing of the release of the Flickr iPhone App couldn’t have been better. Not only did it include Instagram inspired features like filters, but it happened right before Instagram (a service I don’t use) changed its terms of service and subsequently rolled back some controversial sections after fierce user backlash.
So Yahoo! has launched a one-two punch at Instagram by offering existing and new users three month free Flickr Pro usage – either as a trial for new users, or as an automatic extension for existing users.
The response to the Flickr Pro 3 month offer has been spectacularly enthusiastic.
I’ll be reinvigorating my Flickr usage, and heartily recommend that everyone try out Flickr Pro by taking advantage of the three month free offer. I’ve switched my Photo of the Day album back to my Flickr Photostream. Now I just have get back to uploading some regular photos.