As for customer service, you’ve got a point. If Yahoo had simply absorbed the old Flickr like Smigs says about eGroups, none of this would be happening. So it seems that Flickr has been a victim of paying too much attention to its users. How ironic.

1) That’s why you need to make an ethical decision one way or the other. True, there ain’t anything like Flickr out there when it comes to community. I doubt I would have gotten what I’ve got though blogging my photos or joining something like DeviantArt. So, for me, it’s worth the trade off.

2) While not on the scale of, say, YouTube, Flickr is now a very broad church. The original members are a minority and those that are kicking up a fuss are, I’d imagine, way less than the 5% who hadn’t gotten around to switching. I’d say they’ve been dealt with very well. They’ve been given two years to decide whether they want to stay (during which time the moaners have renewed their Pro accounts) and are now being offered a refund, not to mention tying up the time and energies of the Flickr team for days. For a multinational corporation this is astoundingly good customer service given to a tiny proportion of their customers. Also I haven’t seen anyone bitching about this in the communities I’m involved with, just on that thread.

“a breakdown in trust” which, you’ll note, occured in 2005 when they announced this was going to happen. And it wasn’t a quiet burried announcement – there was a hell of a stink kicked up. To cry foul now is…

My patience has run out with these people. They can fuck off now.

These guys should consider themselves lucky – flickr still exists as a different brand name. A few years ago, it would’ve been changed into ‘Yahoo! Photos’, just like eGroups.com became (decades ago in internet time) Yahoo! Groups. A vocal minority made the same kind of protest back then, but yahoo doesn’t really care – the integration opens the service up to more users than they’ll lose.

The key things to keep in mind are that

1. Flickr is more about social networks than photographs. There are basketloads of photo sites out there. Flickr sets itself apart through its social networking features.

2. Quality of customer service is a subjective thing largely based on the customer’s mindset. In other words, even if Flickr users were a vain, tetchy lot, then anything that gets their backs up should be a bona fide ‘problem’ to be addressed. If 5% of Flickr users are ‘proud’ of their old skool status, then they deserve to be taken seriously on that basis.

A significant group of people feel they’ve been treated in a shabby manner. Take them at their word. They don’t have to explain or justify themselves. It isn’t about the login per se. It’s about feeling valued as a customer, about a ‘social’ investment in building up trust and relationships. Flickr and Yahoo are devaluing some people’s social capital.

I’ve decided, partly out of solidarity, that I’m going to let my accounts lapse. I don’t need any Flickr accounts, don’t use the Web 2.0 features, have a paid account at Zoto that meets my needs. So it’s not a pride or investment issue for me. I’m also a member of several Yahoo groups, so I’m not driven by pure hatred of Yahoo. But I do think Flickr and Yahoo are negligent towards their users in some ways. So I’m minimising my use of their services.

Hope that makes some sense of the ‘opposing’ perspective.

Anyway, your general point is good. I use Myspace quite a lot and of course it’s a load of festering commercial toss. But if Murdoch’s providing something useful and free, I don’t mind loads of stupid ads for products I will never buy (and a decent browser will block most of them anyway).