Flickr's main feature is being a service that prioritizes photography as a portfolio, rather than photos as a visual social blogfeed. Limiting free users to 1,000 photos effectively kills the ability to use it as a clunkier Instagram. As long as there's enough revenue from ads and the pro accounts, this may be the best way forward for Flickr as a long-term service.

I've been a pro user for awhile. I guess the downside of this is that I now feel locked in, having well over 1,000 photos. I think previously, had I downgraded to the free version, I'd be able to keep all my photos but no longer provide them as full-size downloads. I don't have a particular complaint with Flickr as a service, it's just I don't do a lot of photography other than casual uploading to Instagram these days. That said, that Smugmug is committed to taking a different, coherent direction provides me with a lot more confidence than the years of Yahoo doing virtually nothing.

edit: maybe I'm grandfathered in for unlimited photos, if I were to downgrade to Free? The wording in the announcement is unclear.