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August 30, 2005
Heat from Flickr purists
Meredith Farkas recently asked me to write an article for WebJunction about how libraries can use Flickr, which I was happy to write and gladly submitted last Friday. Then yesterday I was reading Wired.com Monday and came upon this bit:
Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!
[Wired.come 29 aug '05]
Wow, some of the Flickr folks are *pissed*. Now granted, it's never a fun thing when a super keen service needs to submit to the man with the money in order to not only continue to provide wonderful service, but to be able to improve and expand upon the service as it exists. But really, given all the reasons and communications from the Flickreenies about why they did what they did, and remembering my own experience as a dotcommer, I really do see it from their point of view. Honestly, there were much worse things that Flickr could have done. And I don't anticipate anything getting too crazy, but hey, you never know.
Overall, I do think Yahoo knows it's onto a really good thing. The merging of accounts is a necessary evil of server housekeeping, and a sign of the true adoption and absorption of the service.
All this after I wrote an article extolling the easy fun of Flickr. I don't think it'll become less fun, I think it might just be a little messy and confusing in the transition.
It'll be interesting to see how the service will change, and whether or not Yahoo will pull a GeoCities in spite of the Flickr crew's best efforts.
It's also really interesting to see how users are really tied to the idea of the online persona. I can understand it, I try to get the same screen name everywhere, because it's my screen name (and, well, it's easy to remember my screen name if it's the same everywhere). On the other hand, I see Flickr as a tool, not as an online community venue, while many users see the opportunity to share as a de facto method of creating community, so they want to protect that from the Yahoo! man.
For now I think everything will be OK, outside of the flick_off band of very angry users. I tend to be an optimist who generally likes to watch and see what direction things go in, so I'm not prone to panic in the matters.
August 30, 2005 1:06 PM