I agree, very much like Netflix and you know how that turned out with Reed Hastings apologizing and reverting back. Maybe Mayer will get a clue. I’m kind of doubting it.

Daniel: I’ve been a pro user for so long I’ve never seen ads. I went pro before Yahoo bought flickr so I’ve never had ads on flickr. You might try the Adblock plugin which should take care of them.

I suggest we let things settle out for a while and see what happens. I’ve been commenting in the help forums and in Marrisa Mayer’s personal flickr account as much as I can. Trying to keep calm and give useable feedback.

But, the bottom line is that for long time users like us, the new site will take a lot of getting used to. What a shame.

Are you sure that you turning off ads on your account turned them off for non-pro users viewing your account? I don’t think that’s the way it worked. When you bought a pro account you saw no ads anywhere on flickr (like I have now) no matter who’s account you were viewing. Others with no pro accounts saw ads everywhere, including on your account.

I don’t think that will change now, a pro account turns off ads. But, the fact that everyone is given the same amount of space and the same service except for the ads is a slap in the face to those of us who are using flickr more seriously. And, charging $500 for their high end accounts, they have to be crazy.

The entire thing is so poorly rolled out it staggers the imagination. Had they done it incrementally and gotten feedback all along the way they would not have made so many users unhappy, even if they ended up with about what they have now. This is a failure of leadership and I hold Marissa Mayer personally responsible for this. Seriously, the process is the product and in this case, the process sucks and makes the product, which also sucks suck harder.

It will be interesting to see how Yahoo spins this over time, no doubt the press is picking all of this up and will make great hay with it.

Two things really annoy me. Firstly, I carefully curate the home page, using it much like a blog. All the meta-information around the photographs is now hidden, so it is just a stream of ‘pretty pictures’ rather than a narrative. All that effort is now wasted.

Secondly, I pay for a ‘pro’ account with Flickr precisely because I do not want adverts associated with my images. Now I understand that my payment is just going to be for me not to see adverts – not for other people that see the stream.

Quite depressing, and unless Yahoo responds sensibly we will probably take down our images and close the account.

Amazing, Marissa Mayer said today that she promised not to screw up tumbler but I guess she didn’t say as much about flickr.

What bothers me as much as the bad design and poor terms for long term loyal users who stuck with flickr over many years is the way they did this: they did it overnight without so much as a notice. Nothing. One day it has one look and functionality, the next day a different look and different functionality.

This is not good management. It’s led to a huge backlash online:

http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/page56/

My comment is on page 55. Fucking 55 pages of almost 100% negative, hateful comments.

The more I think about this the more depressed I get. Do you know how many images from flickr I have embedded in this and other sites? A shitload.

They’ve really blown it.

I don’t like many aspects of the new design. It feels obviously incomplete and buggy, two things that I as an application designer abhor. It does not have to be finished, but make it look purposeful and by all means make it stable and don’t let obvious bugs go out the door.

Yahoo is amlost trying too hard now – change for change sake.