Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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Amusingly, in the Yahoo/Tumblr acquisition thread, I complained about how little Yahoo has improved on Flickr...but otherwise, I was a happy paying customer.

Currently, I pay $25 for a year's worth of unlimited photo storage and being ad-free. With this new plan, I have to pay twice as much for what I have now...because even as a 3+ year (almost 4 now) member, I haven't uploaded enough to fill a terabyte. Kind of a bummer, though allowing more than 200 photos (which was the Free offering until now) is absolutely critical for Flickr to be a success.

edit: one of the things I complained about was how the horizontal-masonry that was implemented months (if not a year) ago had been limited to just parts of the site...and how the default logged in userpage was dull and photoless...with the new redesign, both of these complaints are wiped out. Nicely done Yahoo, I will complain more on HN in the future.

edit2: Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see a "let me see the old version for now" button...Which I think underscores my opinion of how outdated the old site design was.

From what I'm reading, existing Pro users will be grandfathered and have the ability to continue with their existing subscription.

I am a pro user, but I don't have a recurring subscription, I just rebuy it every 2 years, now I'm going to have to pay double for no ads, seems like I got screwed most of all.

Help is at hand:

http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633549071436/

"But we are working on a plan to let non-recurring Pro member sign up for recurring Pro subscription. We will post more details when they become available."

I feel a betrayed, too. I really don't understand why the plan went up in price and has less features. I have the attitude that I want to store (indefinitely), search and link my photos without being visually distracted with ads or pagination limits. In 7 years of using Flickr, I've only uploaded about 30GB of photos mostly just for archival use. Only a small group of Flickr users curate more than 20k photos. Most of the high interestingness (and ostensibly talented) Flickr members store less than 5000 photos and in very small file weights so their photos aren't reproduced in print. So why did they go for storage instead of pumping the features with premium subscriptions. I can't see myself paying more for Flickr without some kind of incentive. Hopefully they don't kill off their fairly loyal subscriber base, but stranger things have happened.

> So why did they go for storage instead of pumping the features with premium subscriptions

1TB is a meaningless promise. No one will use a full terabyte for a long time to come. I have about 1,400 photos on Flickr today, almost all of which were shot with a DSLR. Even if you were to consider file size of my current camera in RAW, that would come out to about 31GB total; Jpeg will be a lot smaller.

So, they jettison features that are hard or costly, offer something that no one will actually use for a long time to come, and...profit, I suppose.

I think the time might have come for me to move entirely onto 500px, which kind of bums me out. I love 500px, but I've also been a Flickr user for over eight years.

Agreed on the issue of 1TB. It's curious to see how many people remain concerned they might inadvertently hit that ceiling.

Myself, I'll likely remain primarily on Flickr, simply for the community aspect - that's something which seems to remain imperceptible to the likes of Marissa Mayer, sad to say. I'm also on 500px, but there's no atmosphere there.

I'm pretty sure I have at least a TB on Flickr. I use Flickr to store high res copies of all of my photos. I have a lot of photos.

Offering a huge amount of storage is a great way to grab people's attention, but then most people won't actually use anywhere near that amount of space, so marketing wise it's a big win without actually requiring much technical change. Adding new features requires designing and implementing those features which is hard work.

So why did they go for storage instead of pumping the features with premium subscriptions.

It's more impressive. Storage is easy to add and increase. Just throw more harddisk at it. This not not the case with features (how do you reliably double your features?)

and how do you double them without making the app harder, heavier, more complex.

this!

I'm a premium user, have been for the past 5 years, I don't see what being pro gives me any more and I'm paid up until may 2014! I feel like I'm being screwed over!

is there still a 200 photo limit on free accounts?

are they secretly pushing people back into free accounts so they can kill flickr more easily because there aren't so many poeple paying?

new design is good though, horay for FINALLY being able to middle click the nav now! can't wait till they fix the organizr!

It's worth noting that if you cancel your Pro account (I just did), Flickr pledges to return the balance of your membership fee (prorated).

I'm in the same boat. Also, the narcissist in me will miss the stats feature.

Hell, I've made thousands of dollars from stats. You'd be surprised how many image thieves at big companies throw a link back to your stolen images, as if that makes everything all better.

I still have stats. Does something say they are being deleted?

You have it as long as you have a grandfathered Pro account. If you switch to one of the new plans (or you don't have autorenewal on your Pro account and it lapses) you lose it.

They are only part of Pro

Adblock doesn't eliminate the ads for you?

If ads are good I actually love looking at them. Occasionally I click too and if they actually catch my fancy, I buy. But this (the last part) is extremely rare.

Lol, your comment was the first thing I thought about when I saw the title of this article over on reddit.

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