Flickr slickr, usrs sickr

Had to write this when I thought of the headline....Flickr, they of the Interestingness patent, have done something rather more interesting today and p*ssed of loads of their users - not only have they reduced the load on their metadatabase by limiting each users to the number of friends they have (only 3,000 - sheesh, pared down to my inner circle only ) and tags per picture - a mere 75 - but they have said that from now on users have to log on via a Yahoo ID.

Its this latter that is twisting everyone's knickr's off...see here and here (by a competitor, well he would )and here and here and why not even here or digg deeper here, on the Beeb here - though nothing as yet of its Fate here

And, more equinamously (is that a word?) here and here and nicely served mashed here

For those old enough to recall Web 1.0, the same happened with eGroups.....(in Web 1.0 we used email as our social network media don't y'know, and we even used to hyperlink on our websites ) and it got Yahooooo'd and...well, we survived. The sun kept on shining etc etc.

However, the interesting thing is this - one of the strong hypotheses about why Flickr beat Yahoo Photos, YouTube beat Google Video, and Mobile Internet continually fails to take off is that users like 1-click, simple, personalised services (iirc Yahoo even noted that when they bought Flickr)

So the change is (I assume) knowingly being done, not to serve the users but (probably) to increase the levels of user analysis possible, and mayhap therefore to increase Marketing and Ad Values. Yahoo argues non, its just good old back-end integration.

The Flickr Old Skool are the worst hit, with those early users who made Flickr (and get original Flickr ID's) now being broken by it - don't understand why though, when Yahoo and BT Internet merged we all kept our BT Internet addresses.

Whether that results in a better service that retains customers in the long term remains to be seen. The issue of Trust, I predicted, would be a Big Thing in 2007. This is one of those moments when one's trust in something one loved has been shown to be sadly in error.

(Disclosure....don't use Flickr, have a Yahoo ID, thus not bothered - but will watch fallout lessons with interest)

Postscript - good 10 pointer of What made Flickr Great is over at A VC.......bak to Skool I fink.

Postpostscript...a most genteel rant is here