Flickr is one of those great services that began as an independent initiative and then was purchased by one of the larger “players” (Yahoo in this case). I have always assumed this was a business model – become popular, get purchased – because how the original Flickr folks expected to cover their costs was never obvious to me.
It now appears that Yahoo is making the effort to integrate Flickr as a service. When Flickr was first purchased, the impact on users was minimal. The service you were using was simply owned by someone else. I am guessing this situation did not tie in Flickr users sufficiently to benefit Yahoo. A transition of sorts required users to obtain a Yahoo account (no cost) and this process probably brought some exposure to other Yahoo services AND the ads embedded within such services.
Yahoo now appears to want to clean up loose ends and completely integrate Flickr within Yahoo. Those of us who joined before the transition received the following message:
You’re getting this email from Flickr HQ because you decided to detach your “markdgrabe” Flickr account from its Yahoo! ID. That means you’ve got what we like to call a “dangly” Flickr account that you need to deal with.
I have been trying untangle this situation for several days without much luck. I don’t have a great investment in the images I have stored in Flickr because this is one more of those services I have used so that I have an understanding of how the service works and can discuss the service based on experience. If a “dangly” account goes away, I can upload some new sample images without much difficult. However, I do like to play with the gadgets, widgets, or whatever offered by these services and have embedded Flickr services in several of my public offerings (e.g., this blog). I may have to wait for something to break and then fix it before this Yahoo transition makes sense to me.
