A New Flickr

[Mike Farley]

Flickr has just revamped itself and has a new design. The good news is that everyone now automatically gets a terabyte of space, so there is no limitation of the only being able to see the last 200 photos for free accounts. Less welcome is that the site will now be supported by advertising unless an annual fee of $49.99 is paid, which is twice what the old and now defunct Pro accounts used to cost. Should anyone find that a terbayte is simply just not enough, there is a two terabyte option at an eye watering cost of $499.99 annually.

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2013/05/20/a- ... er-flickr/

[davidc]

I can't see them selling any/many 2TB accounts when you consider 1TB is 537,000 normal sized images.

Looks like I renewed my Flickr subscription just in time
I really like the new design.

[Peter Boughton]

Less welcome is that the site will now be supported by advertising unless an annual fee of $49.99 is paid

Or unless a certain browser plugin is installed...


As for the new layout, initial impressions are not good. Way too much like Google+ and the scrollbar is broken (They've probably assumed everyone uses mouse wheel or tablets.)

[davidc]

Works fine using just the trackpad on my laptop or page down on work PC? How is it broken?

And who doesn't have a mouse wheel these days, they've been standard since the late 70s surely

I overall like the new look and feel but they seem to have made a rod for their own backs around the old Pro accounts - anyone on a recurring subscription gets to keep the benefits associated with that plus te new stuff but if your subscription was gifted, expired a day before or not setup to renew automatically then you lose all the Pro benefits. Especially galling for some is that Flickr made account mistakes in the US and gave people a few months free Pro... Which if it was active at the time meant even if you had a pro subscription set to recur after the free time, you've lost your pro!

Silly mistake from Flickr, they did this change to their own timescales so you'd think they would have planned ahead and ironed out silly mistakes to make it smoother and less of a PR nightmare?

[Mike Farley]

The scroll wheel works for me using Firefox. Maybe a temporary glitch?

I have to agree about the new way images are presented en masse, which can make it difficult to select a particular photo. There do seem to be some neat features, though.

[Nina]

Well, I must say that for me the new look is an improvement. With the massive storage I will give it a go I think.

[Mike Farley]

Less welcome is that the site will now be supported by advertising unless an annual fee of $49.99 is paid

Or unless a certain browser plugin is installed...

My main objection to advertising is not what I see when viewing images as I tend to ignore adverts on screen, but that I have no control over what is displayed alongside my photos when others are viewing them.

How online advertising works is something which local MP Gavin Barwell found out the hard way recently.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... ls-twitter

[Mike Farley]

Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer has expressed his views. I could not look at the forum thread with 20,000 comments which he linked to as flickr is currently down. The featured comment by Ben Syverson suns up my opinion of the new design very neatly. Glad I am not alone.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... lickr.html

[davidc]

Usually the adverts that are displayed are tailored to the browsing habits of the user themselves. I'm also not sure why you don't like the lack of "advert control" though, I can't imagine anyone would remotely care about or link even "bad" adverts to the photos of someone they were browsing, unless it was your personal site maybe. Internet advertising has been around a fair while now and I think most people tune it out. In the unlikely went something you personally would never endorse is advertised alongside one of your images and someone DID erroneously link the two and take umbrage, is that an opinion you're likely to are about?

They're just an irritation

[Mike Farley]

The problem is that at least 90% (and the actual figure could well be much higher than that) of what our brains do happens in the unconscious mind. So even if someone filters out the adverts while viewing images, the products or services being advertised could still be associated them subliminally. Agreed that targeted advertising based on the user's browsing habits reduce the risk of something being shown to which the viewer would object, but what about someone who is using a browser on someone else's machine? Or the person who removes their cookies after every browsing session? In that instance, you are relying on Yahoo not to post anything too controversial in the ads.

So yes, I do care about what is displayed. And I am not sufficiently enamoured of the new design to pay Yahoo $50 a year to lose the ads.