stuart test blog

Flickr have just notified all users that they must merge their “old skool” Flickr accounts with a Yahoo! ID by the 15th of March or else they won’t be able to log in. Lots of Flickr users (including me) are not happy with this and the blogosphere is making this known (also the mainstream news sites like BBC.) Yahoo! are also forcing a couple of other limits on their pro accounts which weren’t there previously: you are now only allowed 3000 contacts, and a maximum of 75 tags per photo. This doesn’t affect me at all, but long time, hardcore Flickr users are affected and these super-Flickr-fans are now slating the company and encouraging users to leave.

My take on the login system is that it’s much easier to associate a seperate login for each website I visit. That way I can manage password resets, email notifications, display names, etc, all seperately. That’s why I never liked Microsoft’s Passport system, and this is also why I don’t want to switch over to a Yahoo! ID. I already have a Yahoo! ID that I set up to check out their new webmail system but I never use it and don’t care about it – i.e. it is disposable. The other problem with getting a new Yahoo! ID for those that don’t already have one, is that it’s nearly impossible to get one that even closely resembles what you really want. The reason for this is that Yahoo! has a huge user base, and all of the good names are taken – so you’ll end up seeing users having to get a Yahoo! ID that looks like this: john.smith.74588394

So what to do next… Well I guess I’ll end up merging my Flickr account into my Yahoo! ID if I have absolutely no choice, but at the same time I will lose all loyalty I have towards Flickr and will start looking else where. The closest thing to Flickr at the moment is Zooomr, and thanks to a bloggers promotion I have a pro account set up there too. Unfortunately Zooomr has an even more complicated login process than Flickr – they force you into signing up for an OpenID, which is reminiscent of Microsoft’s failed Passport system. You can also, somehow, log in using your Google ID which is no better as I have to get a password emailed to me everytime I log in. So it would seem hypocritical to switch to Zooomr because of Yahoo!’s login system, when Zooomr’s is just as bad (if not worse!)