Flickr is dying

I have held back from commenting on what Yahoo has done to Flickr until I get used to the changes, but now some three weeks have passed, here goes.

On the 21st May, I like many other Flickr members got a mail from Yahoo: "Hi Jelltex,

Amazing things are happening at Flickr. We've made a lot of important upgrades to your service that we wanted you to know about."

Once you got onto the site, their blog went on to describe lots of awesomeness and more to come. Little did we know that this would soon be described as a threat. In short the changes are simple, photos now have to be viewed in 'justified' mode. This means that as you are looking at larger versions of shots, this saps bandwidth and for those with limits this is not good.



The site slowed to a crawl, the viewing experience, the browsing experience got so bad that most stopped using the site. Or using it as much as they did. Staff opened a feedback thread, if you could find it, and the complaints piled up. And the staff did nothing. Or they did not interact. And this made the situation even worse.



This is the best description of what has happened:

"Have you ever been stuck on a train? The lights go out, the train grinds to a halt and you are left in the dark wondering what the heck is going on

AndMakeItSnappy: Suddenly an announcement comes through the intercom. The delay is caused by a signal failure. Someone is working on it.

The problem is that we have been sitting on the train since 5/20 and the train is still not moving.

The real reasons for the train is not moving is that many extra coaches and freight wagons have suddenly been coupled on to the end, the engine is now totally underpowered for the extra weight; and if that weren't enough, the brakes have seized on.

However, the train guard and driver are telling us that it is moving, despite the fact that the view out of the windows tells us the opposite. Meanwhile, the design and decorating staff are busy painting the outside of the coaches, refreshing the logo, and thinking about adding nice curtains to the windows.

What a way to run a railway!"

Flickr has ignored it's core paying customers and has said things will not go back. Traffic has slowed to a crawl on mine and others photostream. At a stroke we have changed to become the product rather than the customer with the advertisers being the customers. I have gotten used to most of the changes, and i will continue to use the site as it is where I host the shots for this blog, closing my Fickr account down would require me to embed thousands of shots in 5 years of blogs. However, if Yahoo changes its T&C to reflect Facebook's in that they reserve the right to use my shots as they see fit them I will close my account down with no notice as my shots are mine, I won the copyright.

The endless scrolling, and uploading of picture eats away at my spare time and reduces the fun of surfing Flickr into something more akin to work. Please change it back, Yahoo. although I know mine and thousands of other members please have, and will continue to be ignored.