Flickr Selling Out its Original Members

[Peench]

I got this email today:

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

I am more than a little disappointed that Yahoo (since their purchase) is obligating everyone to sign up for their service; even more so since I paid for a pro account. Regardless of whether the yahoo service is free or not free, I don't agree with doing away with my existing login name and password to simplify the login process for everyone who signed up after I did. I don't find the current process for logging in difficult, nor do I care for them to simplify it for me.

What are everyone else's thoughts? Am I being unreasonable?

[Wondermonkey]

I already signed in with a yahoo ID. I didn't have an email account with them but somehow my screename was registered with them when I signed up. That does suck though, yahoo is going to own everything.

[laxgod]

I'm not suprised by this at all. I knew that this was bound to happen since it always made you click for old school members to a seperate login. To me it's not really a big deal. I might even have a yahoo account, who knows. As long as they don't do anything to kill the product it won't matter to me.

[KEEZY]

Didn't affect me, as I was new school AND I already have a Yahoo! ID. I could see where it would be bothersome... especially if your online alias is already taken on Yahoo.

I still love Flickr though. *Kisses*

[Serren]

Seems like progress Mr. Peench....

[Peench]

Screw progress!

Maybe I'm just bitter since some assclown already has peench@yahoo. Oh well, time to search him/her out and take it from them.

It kinda peeves me since I've been logging in with the same UN and PW for quite some time at Flickr and now I'll have to come up with something else and then try to remember that. Damn changes!

[ZoomZoom71]

They were just trying to make a buck or two by purchasing that email address. Kinda like the people who got PS3sucks@yahoo.com and tried to sell it on ebay. Guess you'll be buying that one from them, right?

[Peench]

Not buying anything! I'll be taking it with brute force!

Seems like I'm not alone in my thoughts. There are more than a few discussions on Flickr about the change and quite a few people not happy about it. Looks like Twango will have an influx of people soon!