Flickr Free

This week i finally made a decision about Flickr and my Flickr Pro account. I cancelled it. Sometimes you just have to work through the details and come to a decision. So back to a free account i went.

I like Flickr and I'll continue to use the service but paying for it makes little sense now. I mentioned in a post back in May about how i thought the new business plan made no sense. Where was the money to come from if the free deal was so great?  For a number of years i had a Flickr Pro account with the benefits that came with it. The changes that took place at Flickr a few months ago mean that there really is no incentive to pay for the service. It's as simple as that.

In the list of new pro benefits, Flickr note that users have 'unlimited uploads'. To me that term is pretty much meaningless. The free account offers one terrabyte of storage that will be more than enough for me and probably most people too. To be honest i wouldn't really like the idea of storing one terrabyte of my hard earned images on Flickr anyway. It leaves far too much on the online system to loose. 

No adverts was another noted plus, but again the adverts aren't intrusive and it is certainly not worth paying the $50, or even $25 pro subscription, just to remove them. Even the ad free blurb has to refer to 'All the benefits of a free account' when listing benefits. It is hardly inviting people to pay! Back to the benefits of the free account many people will go just like i did.

So where will my money be going? Flickr's loss will be 500px's gain. I will upgrade my account there and upload more photography over the autumn and winter. A 500px paid account actually gives useful extra bits and pieces. As for Flickr, I really do wonder at the business thinking at Yahoo. One photographer going looses them $25 but how many others have done the same? Magnify that by a factor of ten, a hundred, or a thousand and the business income model starts to look rather sick. Or maybe they have a cunning plan!