I think it was about a year ago when Yahoo tried to sweet talk everyone who used Flickr into upgrading to a Yahoo ID. Old Skool flickr members revolted and staged a large protest. Well its happening again, I wonder if there will be a large protest again? I just received this email from Yahoo.
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
We're making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It's easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don't.
You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you'll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page:
http://flickr.com/account/associate/
Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any domain and your screenname will remain the same.
Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here: http://flickr.com/help/signin/
Thanks for your patience and understanding – and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you're reading this, you've been around for a while and that means a lot to us!
Warmest regards,
– The Flickreenos
So as Neil and others have pointed out, the Yahoo/Flickr protest is back and this time Yahoo don't seem to be rolling over. So whats my beef with Yahoo? Well let me tell you in a couple of points.
- I bloody paid for 2 years of Flickr not Yahoo.
- My Yahoo ID is something completely different and getting ianforrester or anything close is going to impossible (trust me I tried)
- I don't want my non-commercial licensed photos involved in Yahoo's promotional warez.
- Sorry but I preferred to have my own ID not linked to Yahoo, simple.
- Why on earth does Yahoo want to know Birthday and Postcode? Is this needed just to share pictures?
