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Flickr Old Skoolers Having a Fit: A Response From a Yahoo

In Thoughts and Rants on 1 February 2007. Tagged , .

Disclaimer: I work at Yahoo!, but not on Flickr. These are simply opinions of mine.

Three things happened in quick succession this past week:

- Flickr limited number of tags to 75 and number of contacts to 3,000
- They also announced a date when the users who aren’t using Yahoo! accounts would have to merge their accounts with a Yahoo! ID
- Yahoo! launched a branded Wii site which includes a Flickr stream of all photos tagged Wii.

And what a reaction there was. People in an uproar over so many things it’s hard to enumerate. But as someone who is an old skooler and am inside Yahoo!, I really gotta say a few things to the whiners:

- Flickr has the best interest of the users in mind but it can’t make every last individual happy. Seriously, I know a lot of the people in there and they give a shit. You on the other hand, don’t seem to care enough to give the benefit of the doubt any time something doesn’t go EXACTLY your way.
- Get a grip. There is no conspiracy. You guys have talked about the doom and gloom and how Flickr was going to suck since the acquisition TWO YEARS AGO and guess what? It just kept getting better. Geo-tagging, guest passes, machine tags, printing of photos, half priced subscription … what the heck do you need as proof that Flickr is doing fine while in Yahoo!?
- Grow up. Tag bombing the Wii site by putting up “Yahoo! is Poo” images? Yahoo!, and many many many other sites, have been using tag streams of Flickr photos well before the Wii branded site. Sorry you were too clueless to notice that and it’s not because of Yahoo!’s Terms of Service vs. Flickr’s. Remember that whole Web 2.0 thing you guys love to be a part of? This is what it’s about. They’re public photos with creative commons license.
- There’s no point in lying about technological challenges. Flickr has some really smart people working on that plumbing and hey, when you build for millions of users and more photos than just about every other photo site out there, with real time ties in relationships, THEN say, “unlimited contacts should be easy.” Scalability is a hard problem. I don’t presume to know how you do your job.
- Does anyone actually know/remember 19,000 people? That’s not social networking. That’s playing MySpace Pokemon.
- Have they actually given you a reason to distrust them? Aside from “well I hate all things Yahoo!” which is completely irrational and devoid of logic, I mean. Yes, few of us are blind to the fact that Yahoo! has done some pretty crappy things with Geocities and numerous other things and we all know there’s a reputation issue but there aren’t many people around now that were around 5+ years ago. Leaving without even seeing it through seems kind of premature.
- Flickr has an API for you to go elsewhere. If that’s not a sign of caring about your data, I don’t know what is.
- Yahoo!’s sign in sucks. The namespace is polluted and it’s hard to get a good ID. The registration sucks. We know these things. We’re working on it. Having said that, the Yahoo! ID you use isn’t exposed on Flickr so having an unpretty name is actually not that relevant.
- Oh and, Thomas Hawk. Love your photos. Hate the way you continually troll Flickr forums while running a clone with a bad name (were two o’s and no e taken?) and an interface so similar it took me awhile to realize I wasn’t in Flickr.

There’s no question that there are problems with Yahoo! and a lot of the products. Flickr is not one of them and that hasn’t changed just because your sign-in is different. If you old skoolers find something better, let me know. I’m gonna bet you don’t.


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9 Comments

Can we have integration with Google maps instead of Yahoo! maps? I mean, seriously, in the interests of the user, Google maps would be so much better. For one, on Google maps London has more than 3 roads in it and I would actually be able to use these amazing new mapping and geo-tagging features that Yahoo! has rolled out in the interests of the user. And you know, as you yourself put it, “Remember that whole Web 2.0 thing you guys love to be a part of? This is what it’s about.”

Posted by eviltwin on 1 February 2007 @ 8am

And can I specifically answer one of your questions?
Q: “Have they actually given you a reason to distrust them?”
A: Yes. I went through the profile merge procedure yesterday morning and explicitly selected the option not to receive a new Yahoo! email address. I also explicitly chose not to have my details sold on to “partners”. At the end of the sign up procedure I got a happy little message telling me what my new Yahoo! email address is. Did it also ignore my request not to have my details sold on? Who knows.

Posted by eviltwin on 1 February 2007 @ 8am

I agree with most of your points even if the tone is a little hostile.

One thing I would emphasize is that neither flickr, nor yahoo own the photos – the photographer does. Even though the photos are displayed in a public forum on flickr, they are displayed in the public forum the photographer has chosen. This doesn’t mean the photographer has consented to them being displayed in ANY public forum.

Your statement that the photos which were displayed were classed as ‘creative commons’ is incorrect. Initially they were displaying photos which photographers had labeled as ‘all rights reserved’. The builders of the wii site either made a judgment or programming error that they quickly corrected when the issue was pointed out to them (kudos to them).

Posted by Steve on 1 February 2007 @ 11am

eviltwin:

First, I’ve added a disclaimer that I’m not a staff on Flickr. So take what I say as you will.

Yes, Web 2.0 is about sharing and openness. Which exactly is what Flickr does. If someone created a mashup using Google Maps and Flickr’s geo-data, that’s great. Having Google Maps integrated with Flickr is not just problematic for the obvious reasons, Flickr’s traffic would also require a specific deal since it overloads the request limits imposed by Google’s API. Not to mention, when you integrate an external product into something that core, you’re susceptible to any changes they make, including any advertising they may decide to put on it.

I’m not sure why you got that message about the Yahoo! mail. When I merged a year or so ago, I never once accessed my Yahoo! mail on that account. When I went yesterday for the first time, it gave me a sign up and the only mail I had on it was “welcome to Yahoo! mail”.

Posted by Kevin Cheng on 1 February 2007 @ 11am

the main problem with Yahoo is that all this time it’s they who should have been learning lessons from Flickr… things like how to have a clean easy-to-navigate interface, be friendly, listen to it’s users, be ethical not swamp the place with adverts, generate a community spirit, and so on.

It looks like Yahoo is a very slow learner.

Posted by groc on 1 February 2007 @ 12pm

Steve:

Apologies for the hostile tone, it was late and I was frustrated with sifting through even less civil responses that had little grounding on reason.

You’re absolutely correct with regards to the ownership of the photos. Although that also should be pointed out as a plus. One of the biggest mistakes Yahoo! made in its history was when it made all Geocities content the property of Yahoo!. Flickr lets the photographers keep the rights, as it should.

I can totally see someone messing up on the tag stream and getting the non-CC licensed photos. Alas, these kinds of oversights are kind of par for the course in these kind of roll outs, not just at Yahoo!, but pretty much across the web. I’m glad they fixed it quickly and responsively.

Posted by Kevin Cheng on 1 February 2007 @ 12pm

groc,

Totally agree with you that the learning is Yahoo! learning from Flickr. I’d say there’ve been huge strides in this department from the much touted maps API and Yahoo! developer network to the open hack day and in general, an openness to a lot of our data. Can it be better? Yes. Wayyyyyyyy better. Can it be faster? Most definitely.

It _is_ like moving a battleship sometimes and is rather frustrating but on the other hand, I at least know that some of us inside are working to change things.

Posted by Kevin Cheng on 1 February 2007 @ 1pm

WTF is Old Skool? The way it’s being used, it sounds like people are treating it like some sorta badge of honor (i.e. silly elitism over absolutely nothing of consequence). But whatever.

Me, I already had a Yahoo! ID and had merged it immediately, since I saw no reason not to. I have no dog in the Yahoo! vs. Google thing, since I know folks from both. Neither company is good nor evil. In fact, I think anthropomorphizing corporations is silly and misguided (all you Apple fanatics are freaks).

Posted by fling93 on 1 February 2007 @ 2pm

Oh and, Thomas Hawk. Love your photos.

Hey, thanks man!

I’ll add you as a contact and check some of your stuff out as well as soon as Yahoo lets me start adding contacts again.

Posted by Thomas Hawk on 1 February 2007 @ 3pm

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About

Kevin Cheng is a global nomad who's settled in San Francisco after calling Vancouver, Hong Kong, Austin and London his homes. Founder of Off Panel Productions and OK/Cancel. Product manager at Twitter, former Director of User Experience at Raptr, a social network for gamers, and former designer of Pipes and Bravonation at Yahoo!. Presenter on numerous design subjects. Reachable at kc -at- this domain.

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