New Flickr

I like it more.

 

Simpler design.

 

Only thing doesn't work is my stat.

I actually think the gallery parts looks kind of good.

I do not like what they did to the home screen though.

It's way too cluttered.

And I can agree that it is a bit laggy and hard to find stuff.

Uploading photos is the same as before though.

They did this huge redo and forced it on us without even bothering to ask the users if they even WANTED a change.

 

They actually DID ask the users, at least the ones that were supposed to test the layout (like it's done on DevArt, people with subscription can test new functions and write a review about it).

 

The actual problem is that they didn't care about the opinions of these testers, a lot of them told them the new design is horrible and has too many problems, but they changed the look and layout of the whole website anyway :/

I don't really see the use of such testers when they are ignored anyway.

 

However, I'm not a big fan of the website either.

I like that it's trying to focus everything on the "looking at pictures" aspect of Flickr, with bigger thumbnails and less "distracting" (?!) text, but endless scrolling and pretty much no information on where what is now just turns everything into a picture heavy mess.

I agree with the "it works on phones" comment, with Windows 8 and more sites moving to such a design it's supposed to copy the look you have on a smartphone (or mobile versions of a site), but it just doesn't work on a big screen.

Less stuff on smartphone = good

Not enough stuff on big screen = bad, because you HAVE the space but fill it with nothing, instead you sacrifice important informations and eye-catchers for your users.

That's not how it works :/

Finally found how to send messages, thanks to another member's help.

But I still totally dislike that imposed justified view. And now the option button is totally disabled

I don't think the change was necessary... Old flickr worked just fine and was simple and easy to navigate, I used it like a gallery to showcase my photos... Now it's a mess like some mutant child of pintrest, tumbr and facebook and just I don't know what I'm doing any more.

 

It's like walking back into your house and seeing some cheesy home-deco show has ripped out your carpet and thrown away your furniture and replaced everything with annoying 'modern' look, and ugly sofas. And they're like "SURPRISE!!" And you've got this horrified look on your face thinking "WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE'S MY STUFF?!" ಠ________ಠ

 

I'm sure I'll get used to it... and I can see there are a few nice things... but I wish there was an option to have 'Classic' flickr back.

This thread certainly reminded me of one thing

 

"Omg why did Facebook layout change again? What is this horrible timeline sh*t??!!!"

 

And in the end, everyone still get used to it.

This thread certainly reminded me of one thing

 

"Omg why did Facebook layout change again? What is this horrible timeline sh*t??!!!"

 

And in the end, everyone still get used to it.

Same thing happens every time deviantArt decides they need a new website update too.

Everyone complains and says how much they will leave the site unless they change it back, some weeks later, people have gotten used to it.

This thread certainly reminded me of one thing

 

"Omg why did Facebook layout change again? What is this horrible timeline sh*t??!!!"

 

And in the end, everyone still get used to it.

Same thing happens every time deviantArt decides they need a new website update too.

Everyone complains and says how much they will leave the site unless they change it back, some weeks later, people have gotten used to it.

 

it's a fact that people hate change but that doesn't make change an automatically good thing. if you pay for 7 cookies a week and then suddenly the cookie company calls you in the middle of the day and says "hey, we're still giving you cookies, but now we've just ground them into crumbs for you and if you try this new flavor of coke you can eat as many crumbs as you like...."

 

umm, that would be a bit weird. but yeah. "New Coke" anybody...?

 

i actually like some of the changes to flickr (or at least am okay with them), the problem is they were implemented

1) suddenly without informing a loyal userbase

2) by force without letting people opt out (if there's one thing that people hate more than change, it's being FORCED to change) and

3) that they had the audacity to speak to and for thousands of their users and tell them that it was "awesome" (people hate it when you put words in their mouth - just like they hate it when you put New Coke in their mouth).

 

oh yeah, and they were beta testing this build of flickr for months, apparently received negative feedback from their QA constantly, ignored QA, and now flickr is filled with all sorts of crappy bugs and errors. "if it's not broken, don't fix it...?"

 

to me, the update to flickr could have been a positive thing with better features that built upon flickr's strong points, but for the most part it has just made the site annoying, visually cluttered, laggy (and my internet doesn't suck), but worst of all people who are not as patient or jaded as me that i like to follow on flickr have deleted their photos, canceled their accounts, and gone to other websites.

 

flickr always had an emphasis on a certain community feeling and by dividing the userbase and driving so many people away, they're breaking up and ruining huge chunks of their community.

 

oh yeah, and the new layout also serves as a distraction from the fact that their new business model is incredibly shady if you compare it to the old one and a little "too good to be true" sounding.

 

the new business model combined with the visual revamp and the coincidental purchase of tumblr probably indicates that flickr want to start attracting young users in the teen/early 20s demographic (the facebook/smartphone generation). there have always been young users on flickr but the majority of their user demographic has probably been closer to people in their late 20s-60s.

 

yahoo probably sees the teen/YA demographic as being a profitable business opportunity worth a lot more than their "loyal" and slightly older customer base so they're going to try and market flickr to that age demographic, which is working already: the majority of positive comments i've seen about new flickr are from people who don't even use flickr or have never used flickr due to not wanting to pay for pro, but are now suddenly interested in making accounts there... and most of these comments come from people who are teenagers or young adults.

 

so, it's already working. yahoo wants young people to use flickr and then it wants to market to them. i'm pretty sure they will integrate flickr with tumblr in some way at some point since the just paid 1.1bn for tumblr, a non profit website whose only valuable asset is the userbase ) (i'm not even sure if the average tumblr user is over 18 any more)

 

bonus article if you're interested: even the guy who was a founding member of flickr, personal friends with the people who started it, and who was married to flickr's community director for five years thinks the change is bad: http://www.techhive.com/article/2039414/the-new-flickr-goodbye-customers-hello-ads.html

 

i totally agree that it's natural for people to hate change and that it's also natural for people to adjust. scientifically speaking we go through very similar stages of emotion when something we like changes as we do when we grieve for someone who died (there's an interesting study about that...)

 

it still doesn't make change a positive thing in every case, in this case the change may turn out to be positive financially for Yahoo but for most people who've been using it for years it is not...

the new business model combined with the visual revamp and the coincidental purchase of tumblr probably indicates that flickr want to start attracting young users in the teen/early 20s demographic (the facebook/smartphone generation). there have always been young users on flickr but the majority of their user demographic has probably been closer to people in their late 20s-60s.

 

yahoo probably sees the teen/YA demographic as being a profitable business opportunity worth a lot more than their "loyal" and slightly older customer base so they're going to try and market flickr to that age demographic, which is working already: the majority of positive comments i've seen about new flickr are from people who don't even use flickr or have never used flickr due to not wanting to pay for pro, but are now suddenly interested in making accounts there... and most of these comments come from people who are teenagers or young adults.

 

so, it's already working. yahoo wants young people to use flickr and then it wants to market to them. i'm pretty sure they will integrate flickr with tumblr in some way at some point since the just paid 1.1bn for tumblr, a non profit website whose only valuable asset is the userbase ) (i'm not even sure if the average tumblr user is over 18 any more)

This is actually something I reacted to too.

The fact that they mentioned smartphones a lot.

I may not have been that active on Flickr, but I've always noticed that most photos of Flickr has actually been quite good quality.

If you compared the photos usually uploaded on dA and those on Flickr, there's always been a huge difference in quality, in which Flickr has always been the better.

 

And I never said change always was a good thing.

I'm just saying all the complaining usually passes by quite fast.

But honestly, even though I doubt it, I hope they can come up with some way for people to switch back to the old or a simpler design.

And I really wish they'd fix the damn home page.

This thread certainly reminded me of one thing

 

"Omg why did Facebook layout change again? What is this horrible timeline sh*t??!!!"

 

And in the end, everyone still get used to it.

 

Honestly, I still hate the changes Facebook made... a lot.

 

I haven't gotten used to it, I just use it a lot less... and if they'd ever given the option to change back to the old format, I would, in a heartbeat.

 

As for Flickr... I'm confused... everything about my Pro account still says it's going to automatically renew... is this true? Will existing Pro accounts still just renew automatically... at the same price? Or is this just something they haven't updated? (My Pro account is through June of 2014, so I've still got over a year left on it... )

Honestly I don't think it is only a "get used to" thing. I can get used to it but still prefer the old one a lot.

I don't like the justified view, and pictures on the new site have a bad organization. You can't have collections on your main page anymore. It is okay if you have only a few photos, but if you have a lot, it can be hard for visitors to find things in the gallery now.

 

The way things have been done is no respect for users, especially users who paid for the service. And the lack of replies from flickr is also not a great thing, IMO.

I think pro accounts is not the goal of flickr anymore, they want money from ad, young people with smartphones, and that's all. That's sad for a lot of people.

 

 

As for Flickr... I'm confused... everything about my Pro account still says it's going to automatically renew... is this true? Will existing Pro accounts still just renew automatically... at the same price? Or is this just something they haven't updated? (My Pro account is through June of 2014, so I've still got over a year left on it... )

 

There is a page explaining that point. You can find it here, but I can't link it directly because my page is in french.

http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633531669359/page10/

From what I understood, pro can be renew. If you renew it, it would still be 25 USD /year for now (!), with no ad and unlimited pictures.

If it expires and you don't renew it, it will become a free account, with 1To and ad. If you want no ad after that, you can't renew your pro anymore, and have to switch to another account that costs 50 USD/year.

Hope that helps. But I am perhaps wrong.

This thread certainly reminded me of one thing

 

"Omg why did Facebook layout change again? What is this horrible timeline sh*t??!!!"

 

And in the end, everyone still get used to it.

 

Funny, when Facebook first started up those ass changes couple years back, after reading my wall being nothing but whining from people, I just quit. Walked away and never looked back. Just imagine, still being on LJ and using emails works fine!

 

so no, not everyone gets used to it. Some say screw this and leave. We just forget to make a long "thats it, I'm outta here!" post to take over feeds before we go

 

But back to Flickr - their plan seems to be a bit of an oxymoron. They want to focus on quality photos by alienating people who use cameras and focus more on the iPhone/tablet photo takers? Really??

Last I checked phones do have some lovely high-res photo taking capabilities, but a pro-camera (and most importantly, the person taking the photo knowing what the hell they're doing!) outweighs the Instagram/Tumblr crowd anyday

 

whatever... Got my Pro account refunded & am ready to bail. I'll give this a few weeks to settle, see if maybe they'll roll back some old layout features or improve the current to be usable. If not *shrug* this wasn't the only place thats useful for photo hosting

... and focus more on the iPhone/tablet photo takers? Really??

Last I checked phones do have some lovely high-res photo taking capabilities, but a pro-camera (and most importantly, the person taking the photo knowing what the hell they're doing!) outweighs the Instagram/Tumblr crowd anyday

 

if you read my post above, that's exactly what they want. professional photographers aren't generating them the money that the instagram/tumblr crowd will generate with advertising revenue (or so they believe) - why do you think they just purchased tumblr!? < / rhetoric >

 

also, here's a quote directly from Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo responsible for all this crud (ironically on instagram and twitter... but that's how i found it...) -

 

http://instagram.com/p/Zj1zNSGopR/#

 

whatever... Got my Pro account refunded & am ready to bail.

 

canceling your Pro account is what flickr WANTS you to do though...i've seen so many people immediately cancel Pro in "pro-test" (see what i did there....ugh) but that's playing into exactly what flickr wants the userbase to do. flickr does not want to only get $25/month from you because that is apparently not enough money for them. there is a "good" (by which i mean self serving...) reason that they're removing new Pro accounts completely and only recurring ones can maintain status.

 

with the new business model, flickr either

a) makes way more than $25 per month from you because you will have an account with tons of ads on it that generate way more revenue for the website than a subscription would

b) gets $50 a month from you - a 50% increase in profits per paid user

c) gets $500 from insane people who buy that 2 terabyte account thing

 

so yeah, i am not canceling my pro until such time as i have absolutely no desire to use flickr (i.e if everyone whose photos i enjoy looking at leaves and it becomes a social wasteland of teenagers taking blurry selcas - no insult meant to the teenage photographers out there who are actually super talented, but they ARE trying to replace the age demographic of flickr)

 

blegh, sorry, today is ranting morning.

Yawp, it was the Marissa quote that pretty much outlined the oxymoron for me

 

canceling your Pro account is what flickr WANTS you to do though...

 

well, at this point what Flickr wants is irrelevant to me, since they pretty much told the majority of their users to piss off. So taking my money away from them is what I want to do.

 

Whatever services have paid for in the past are now available in the Free option, so why waste the cash.

And don't wanna take the chance of them suddenly announcing next week "oops, sorry, no more refunds from today onwards, we're spent!"

Seeing how I'm not exactly wanting Yahoo to generate their Ad Revenue from my photos... when (well depends on their addressing customer complaints skills in next couple weeks) leave for good will just delete the whole thing

well, at this point what Flickr wants is irrelevant to me, since they pretty much told the majority of their users to piss off. So taking my money away from them is what I want to do.

 

yeah, that's totally fair, i actually made a point of it because if you "just" cancel your pro account and leave your flickr/yahoo account up with all your photos, it will automatically revert to an advertising revenue account. so unless you completely delete everything, your page can still potentially make them $$$ even if you never update it again or actively pay them another cent, because as long as your content is on their website people will find it and it will generate ad revenue.

 

so, people canceling accounts that actually want to not let yahoo make money off them should be aware of that and i wasn't sure if you or anyone else reading had thought that far or not ...

 

btw! assuming that ipernity (where a lot of people migrated to) turns out to not suck, they are going to release a feature very soon that will let you mass-import all your flickr account photos complete with their tags, titles, dates, data, etc. you can already do this on a 1-by-1 basis on ipernity, they're just working on finishing the mass-transfer function.

 

so if you're thinking about switching photo sites, maybe hold off deleting all your flickr sets and import them all on to ipernity?

 

i also have a feeling that other websites may see this as an opportunity to cash in on flickr's mass exodus of users and offer a similar feature so... it may be worth keeping your pics up for a little longer possibly.

 

also, the whole thing is depressing and stupid but i'm just too jaded to leave flickr permanently until they really really start stepping on my toes and making me drink New Coke. though i will be mirroring all or most of my pics on ipernity and possibly other sites like 500px from now on which i made a post about on my flickr, of course.

 

oh yeah, and the Marissa Mayer quote basically makes me want to punch her through the internet, metaphorically-but-not-really speaking.

I feel if I stopped doing things because it benefited others more than myself, I'm doing things for the wrong reason. I simply stopped my subscription because I don't need it anymore with the new amount of free storage. However, I'm not going to quit because Flickr has a new business model because it simply does not affect me outside of the fact that I'm getting more space for free.

 

Sure, they're making money off ad revenue when people search for out photos, but how does that affect you really? Every business makes their money somehow, it's how this world goes 'round. They're not even forcing new rates on current Pro members which I give major kudos for.

I looked at my pro account and it still seems to be $25 a year just like before - don't really see a reason to unsubscribe.

 

The layout itself I do like, though it is a little heavy on my old computer. I don't mind this new "tiles" trend at all - the site's about looking at pictures and this way most of the screen estate is taken up by pictures so I'm cool with that. However, when I want to do something else than just looking at pictures it does get a bit complicated, for example finding the button to tweet a picture with was a bit of a search since everything's unlabelled.. but then again, you only need to find the features you use frequently once, after that you know where they are.

 

So I guess I'm in the minority that actually doesn't mind the update, ha!

I don't really mind this update either ^ ^;; I also don't mind them getting cash because people just view my photos, I mean, isn't it good enough that they're allowing me to show the world my photos for free? Why would I mind if they get money out of it, I don't get it. I mean, if they went bankcrupt because they offered everything for free without getting even one cent back, they'd probably have to close down all their services anyway haha (that wouldn't be very nice since I use yahoo mail ;;;; )

I don't really mind this update either ^ ^;; I also don't mind them getting cash because people just view my photos, I mean, isn't it good enough that they're allowing me to show the world my photos for free? Why would I mind if they get money out of it, I don't get it. I mean, if they went bankcrupt because they offered everything for free without getting even one cent back, they'd probably have to close down all their services anyway haha (that wouldn't be very nice since I use yahoo mail ;;;; )

I feel if I stopped doing things because it benefited others more than myself, I'm doing things for the wrong reason. I simply stopped my subscription because I don't need it anymore with the new amount of free storage. However, I'm not going to quit because Flickr has a new business model because it simply does not affect me outside of the fact that I'm getting more space for free.

 

Sure, they're making money off ad revenue when people search for out photos, but how does that affect you really? Every business makes their money somehow, it's how this world goes 'round. They're not even forcing new rates on current Pro members which I give major kudos for.

 

I agree. I see no reason to be angry or leave as of yet.

The whole thing feels really half-baked. They did 3 free months of pro for everyone, I assumed as a way to market the benefits of pro accounts. And right after that... they get rid of pro accounts. Then they redesigned the site to look like Tumblr... immediately after Yahoo acquired Tumblr. It's really baffling!

 

I'm a fan of infinite canvas sites and the loading doesn't seem to be an issue for me. In fact, I'm noticing some photos I would have skipped over in the old layout due to being hard to read at thumbnail size. But the overall site has a lot of legacy code and serious usability issues. I can't imagine they have done any eye-tracking studies or actually asked any photographers for input. The black backgrounds with white comments below is just plain bad.

I can't seem to see close-ups of photos now :/ There are no size options when I click on a photo unless its mine. Does it work for anyone else?

I can't seem to see close-ups of photos now :/ There are no size options when I click on a photo unless its mine. Does it work for anyone else?

 

Right clicking over a photo in the lightboxmode should bring up the view all sizes menu.

I can't seem to see close-ups of photos now :/ There are no size options when I click on a photo unless its mine. Does it work for anyone else?

 

Right clicking over a photo in the lightboxmode should bring up the view all sizes menu.

It's not working for me since I tried yesterday

 

 

... Ugh! I tried clicking one of the buttons along the bottom of the lightbox mode, and it lead to the all sizes page. Looks like they are still changing/messing around with things.