
Flickr gets new UI, new Android app, 1 TB free space - pdknsk
http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/50934634700/your-world-in-full-resolution
======
danso
Amusingly, in the Yahoo/Tumblr acquisition thread, I complained about how
little Yahoo has improved on Flickr...but otherwise, I was a happy paying
customer.

Currently, I pay $25 for a year's worth of unlimited photo storage and being
ad-free. With this new plan, I have to pay twice as much for what I have
now...because even as a 3+ year (almost 4 now) member, I haven't uploaded
enough to fill a terabyte. Kind of a bummer, though allowing more than 200
photos (which was the Free offering until now) is absolutely critical for
Flickr to be a success.

edit: one of the things I complained about was how the horizontal-masonry that
was implemented months (if not a year) ago had been limited to just parts of
the site...and how the default logged in userpage was dull and
photoless...with the new redesign, both of these complaints are wiped out.
Nicely done Yahoo, I will complain more on HN in the future.

edit2: Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see a "let me see the old
version for now" button...Which I think underscores my opinion of how outdated
the old site design was.

~~~
adventured
From what I'm reading, existing Pro users will be grandfathered and have the
ability to continue with their existing subscription.

~~~
skkdkk
I am a pro user, but I don't have a recurring subscription, I just rebuy it
every 2 years, now I'm going to have to pay double for no ads, seems like I
got screwed most of all.

~~~
chaffneue
I feel a betrayed, too. I really don't understand why the plan went up in
price and has less features. I have the attitude that I want to store
(indefinitely), search and link my photos without being visually distracted
with ads or pagination limits. In 7 years of using Flickr, I've only uploaded
about 30GB of photos mostly just for archival use. Only a small group of
Flickr users curate more than 20k photos. Most of the high interestingness
(and ostensibly talented) Flickr members store less than 5000 photos and in
very small file weights so their photos aren't reproduced in print. So why did
they go for storage instead of pumping the features with premium
subscriptions. I can't see myself paying more for Flickr without some kind of
incentive. Hopefully they don't kill off their fairly loyal subscriber base,
but stranger things have happened.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
> So why did they go for storage instead of pumping the features with premium
> subscriptions

1TB is a meaningless promise. No one will use a full terabyte for a long time
to come. I have about 1,400 photos on Flickr today, almost all of which were
shot with a DSLR. Even if you were to consider file size of my current camera
in RAW, that would come out to about 31GB total; Jpeg will be a lot smaller.

So, they jettison features that are hard or costly, offer something that no
one will actually use for a long time to come, and...profit, I suppose.

I think the time might have come for me to move entirely onto 500px, which
kind of bums me out. I love 500px, but I've also been a Flickr user for over
eight years.

~~~
porsupah
Agreed on the issue of 1TB. It's curious to see how many people remain
concerned they might inadvertently hit that ceiling.

Myself, I'll likely remain primarily on Flickr, simply for the community
aspect - that's something which seems to remain imperceptible to the likes of
Marissa Mayer, sad to say. I'm also on 500px, but there's no atmosphere there.

------
0x0
1TB isn't that impressive when you have to deal with a 300MB/month upload rate
limit: <http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/>

It'd take 291 years to fill up the 1TB allowance:
<https://www.google.com/search?q=1TB+%2F+(300+MB%2Fmonth)>

(Also looks like there's a missing </ul> on that limits page, there.)

 __Edit: Looks like the page is being edited right this moment - the page used
to list the 300MB/month limit but was also mentioning the new account types,
at the same time. Guess they forgot to review all the text __

~~~
pajju
As per the new plans, there is no 300MB/month upload-limits on free-accounts.(
please don't see Google search results, was that cached? )

Here are their newer plans --

 _Free-Accounts:_

\+ 1 Terabyte of photo and video storage

\+ Upload photos of up to 200MB per photo

\+ Upload 1080p HD videos of up to 1GB each

\+ Video playback of up to 3 minutes each

\+ Upload and download in full original quality

 _Ad-Free accounts: (older pro-accounts are gone!)_

\+ $49.99 per year

\+ All the benefits of a free account

\+ No ads in your browsing experience

 _Doublr-Plan(extra 1 TB space):_

\+ $499.99 per year

\+ 2 Terabytes of photo and video space

\+ You get all the benefits of the free account

~~~
Osmium
So 1 TB is free, but an extra 1 TB is $500/yr?! I'm not sure I understand
that.

On another note, I (surprisingly) like how the disemvoweling is becoming
synonymous with the Yahoo brand (with Tumblr now as well). What seemed stale
is starting to seem fresh again. Playful, almost, like a wink to Web 2.0 --
though I imagine it could be perceived as being out of touch too, if they
don't play it right.

~~~
ghshephard
roughly, very roughly - 90%+ of the people on the 1 TB plan will likely use <
20 Gigabytes (at least over the next couple years), and probably 99% will use
less than 100 gigabytes, whereas close to 100% of the people on the doublr
plan will be using at least 1 Terabyte.

~~~
salimmadjd
best explanation of their pricing structure yet. What's stopping people from
creating multiple accounts and use flickr as a cloud backup system for free?

~~~
Osmium
Agreed that this is why Yahoo is pricing it this way -- but I imagine it won't
stop the pricing feeling "wrong" to many people. "Why should I pay $500 _a
year_ for just a little bit more than I what I was getting for free?"

I would imagine, at that price point, it would drive people to use multiple
accounts despite the irritation -- and that ultimately, because of that
irritation, they might leave the service. Not a good situation for anyone.

~~~
ricardobeat
$42/month is pretty cheap for 2TB storage. $499/year gets you just 500GB in
Dropbox, for example.

And you'd find it quite hard to leave a service after you've uploaded 1TB of
data to it..

~~~
jlarocco
About leaving the service...

A while back I was getting nervous about what Yahoo was going to do with
Flickr, so I signed up for a $60/ year SmugMug account.

On the technical side of things, transferring the data out of Flickr wasn't a
problem at all. If I remember correctly, importing ~9000 (~42 Gb) of photos
from Flickr took less than an hour, and preserved almost all of the meta-data
I had in Flickr (sets, collections, tags, etc.). It was so fast I almost
didn't believe it. Of course 1 Tb would take a while even at that speed.

The bigger problem is getting people to use the new site. My Mom, for example,
still goes to my Flickr page.

------
pajju
Yahoo is looking fresh again!

I think this a well-thought idea to -- get more social.

Also with this move, it might push Google users to consider syncing and
sharing their photos to Flickr now. Google gives 5GB for high-resolution, i.e
original quality photos, Yahoo is giving 1TB, but think yahoo ads.

Any such kind of service is a lock-in ( platform level, so more control) and
maybe they integrate tumblr strongly with photos? ( again a deeper lock-in to
yahoo only core-products).

All this means -- they are back into Internet business.

From the past 2 days, there were enormous analysis around Yahoo, its
principles were questioned, so did this all reach the board and the top
management? :)

~~~
MikeKusold
This has been upped to a maximum of 15GB when Google combined all their
storage into Drive. Your argument still holds though.

~~~
pajju
Yeah its now combined to be 15GB for all Google products.

------
Eduardo3rd
"So we’re also giving our Flickr users one terabyte of space — for free."

This is incredible. I remember being blown away with the 1 GB of storage I got
with my gmail account back in 2005. I couldn't even fathom needing a terabyte
back then. What a fun time to be alive.

~~~
manacit
Keep in mind as a non-pro user you can only upload 300MB a month:
<http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/>

277 years (or 7,242 fortnights) later, and you can finally use all of your
space.

Edit: It appears they have removed the limit, disregard.

~~~
fletchowns
I think they updated the limits page, I don't see any mention of 300MB per
month on there.

------
robotmay
This is pretty interesting to me as I've been spending the last month
preparing my soon-to-be startup; (hopefully) a competitor to Flickr/500px:
<https://photographer.io>

Obviously I can't compete with that free space which they're giving out.
Instead I'm going to stick to a lesser free plan and a sensible subscription
price, and hope that people realise that I actually aim to make a profitable
business out of it and stick around for a good long while.

If anyone's interested I'd be grateful for any/all feedback, or any questions
about what Photographer.io can offer over Flickr. Obviously it's still in
beta, but I figure I should probably let people know that it exists.

EDIT: If you tried to sign up, I apologise if it was broken. I pushed a fix
for something else a few hours ago and managed to break the sign up form
(clearly it needs better testing). The patch is going up now, and you should
be able to sign up again shortly.

~~~
jmathai
I'm 2 years into a photo service and disk space has never been the determining
cost factor. Space is only used to get users to upgrade to a paying account. I
don't downplay the importance of that though, it's critical to figure out how
you're going to make money today and not once you have a few million users.

In Yahoo!'s case it's about getting more engagement and users.

~~~
robotmay
I'm hoping to offer a bunch of features other than unlimited photo uploads to
entice users into subscriptions. More features, such as being able to share
private collections (albums/sets) with others, or increased control over what
they see on the site.

I'm looking to launch it proper in the next couple of weeks once I have the
TOS finalised and the company set up. And I'm always open to any suggestions
users have for features they'd like to see :)

~~~
yardie
Please, have a plugin for the major photo packages (Lightroom, Aperture,
iPhoto, etc). Making it easy to get the images into your site lowers the
barrier dramatically.

I stick with flickr because I use Aperture. It can export directly to my
flickr account and means I have one less headache.

~~~
robotmay
These are definitely on the horizon. This is one of the things that has been
on my to-do list from the start. I did look into how the integrations work,
IIRC Lightroom was pretty straightforward, but I assume Aperture can't be that
much more tricky :)

------
kailuowang
I hate this new layout.

Artistic images need space, especially images that aren't meant to be place
together. Otherwise their color would collide with each other and ruin the
visual experience for them.

If flickr wants to become a social network that features family photos maybe
that's the right layout, but I think most of the pro users weren't paying $25
a year for that purpose.

Flickr is no longer a valid place to share pictures for photographers who care
about their visual quality. That made me really sad today.

~~~
namwen
I have to agree with you. I only post my "Art" photography on flickr and all
the people I follow do the same. Seeing this huge mashup of all the varying
styles and works together is really terrible. It's just not a nice way of
presenting photography.

~~~
Terretta
Works well for travel: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/terretta/>

But poorly for featured photos with no relationship to one another. This set
is generated based on Fickr's "Interestingness" algorithm:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/terretta/sets/72157594261074270...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/terretta/sets/72157594261074270/)

The relative prominence of these machine selected photos is clearly not
associated with artistic quality or visual impact.

I would think Flickr of all sites has enough data to do a visual impact based
layout even on photos with zero views and no metadata.

That would have really impressed me. Otherwise, these new masonry layouts are
just trendiness mistakenly misallocating artistic emphasis.

------
mratzloff
I think the 300 MB upload limit from before was removed. I can only find that
in references to Free vs. Pro documentation.

Also, it looks like Pro accounts will still be available to existing Pro
subscribers... for the time being, at least.

From the FAQ:

> _I’ve heard that Flickr Pro is no longer being offered. How does that affect
> me?_

> Starting on 5/20/2013, we will no longer be offering new Flickr Pro
> subscriptions. After that point, the following things will happen:

> _Recurring Pro users currently have the ability to renew._

> Eligible Pro members have the option to switch to a Free account until
> 8/20/2013.

> The “Gift of Pro” will no longer be available for purchase.

> Pro users will no longer appear with a “Pro” badge beside their name or
> buddy icon.

So what happens after 8/20/2013?

Anyway, then there's this:

> _What happens if my Pro Account expires?_

> If your Pro account expires, don't panic! None of your photos or videos have
> been deleted!

> This means instead of enjoying the super-duper capacity of your Pro account,
> you're now subject to the limits of a free account. If you upgrade again,
> all of your photos will be waiting for you.

> Any of your sets that disappeared will magically reappear when you renew or
> upgrade.

OK, so it sounds like they'll give existing Pro subscribers the opportunity to
renew.

------
tnuc
Now I can access my high res photos again. I don't know if I can trust them
after the shit they pulled.

When I signed up : "You will never lose access to your high res photos".

A few years ago : "Sign up for pro if you want access to high res photos".

Is this a sign that Yahoo isn't going to keep fucking things up?

~~~
adventured
Mayer is a pro. She understands user experience. And Yahoo has a solid pile of
cash, so they can clearly afford to spend some of it wooing users and
repairing their image. Whether Yahoo can ultimately be rehabilitated remains
to be seen regardless.

------
sbashyal
Marissa is nearing her 1 year anniversary as Yahoo CEO and it seems that she
is turning the company around.

~~~
calinet6
Props to her, but to be fair, it's not hard to say "Hey look, a wall!" and go
the other direction.

~~~
grinich
It's a lot harder than she makes it look.

~~~
calinet6
Yeah, you're right, it might be easy to turn around a startup for example, but
she's piloting the Titanic with a hull made of mesh. It's impressive.

------
dhawalhs
From the FAQ [1]:

What’s the difference between a Free, Ad Free, and Doublr account?

There are three kinds of accounts to choose from at Flickr, and all of them
are awesome in their own way.

Free: 1 Terabyte of photo and video storage Upload photos of up to 200MB per
photo Upload 1080p HD videos of up to 1GB each Video playback of up to 3
minutes each Upload and download in full original quality

Ad Free: $49.99 per year All the benefits of a free account No ads in your
browsing experience Doublr:

$499.99 per year 2 Terabytes of photo and video space All the benefits of a
free account

Links: [1] <http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#150470666>

------
film42
I'm down right angry. I loved the old flickr interface. It was simple and
usable. Now it looks like a less functional google+. Flickr's job is NOT to be
a fancy photo viewer, it's supposed to be a photo organizer.

Looks like yahoo just screwed up the last good thing they had. This will be my
last year with this service (I've been a member since 2004 and have had a pro
account for several years now).

~~~
onli
Give it time. That is the archetypical reaction of a user being confronted by
change (angry is else hard to explain).

Flickr's job isn't that easy to be defined. It serves many purposes: Being
able to upload and store images there, to organize them, but also to view them
of course. Having a new UI putting the images first seems quite reasonable
given that definition of flickr.

Besides, the old interface was neither simple nor useable if one wasn't used
to it. No one outside of Flickr had time yet to find out whether the new
Interface works.

More general remark: We had a good impression what it was likde for the
Flickr-Team inside Yahoo. No ressources, no ability to change or improve the
service, blocked by bureaucracy and unwilling management. That they are able
now to deliver such an upgrade is downright impressive. 1 TB alone is massive
and would never have been possible with the old situation, given the
description. There really is change in that place.

~~~
CrLf
"Give it time."

Flickr was in need of a facelift, but not a complete overhaul. This just seems
to me like a rehash of Delicious (the difference being that Flickr is still a
part of Yahoo): redesign the whole thing to make it more "social" and "hip"
and lose what made it a great service in the process. Delicious is still awful
compared to what it was even under Yahoo's governance and I don't think Flickr
is going to recover from this either.

And what's this about dropping their Pro accounts in favor of some 1TB free
space nonsense? Yeah, that's going to work...

~~~
onli
Wasn't the big advantage of the Pro account unlimited storage? Do the ones
with the account really store more than 1 or 2 TB? I understand that the price
of the new paid account feels strange, but i don't think it is such a big
failure.

I don't know if Flickr really neded just a facelift. The overhaul signals more
strongly that Flickr no longer stagnates. It could be that it was indeed a
needed one, given the age of the old interface. It could be that they needed
that overhaul to get tumblr, to show them thay aint the old Yahoo no more. Who
knows.

I agree that it gives the impression of wanting to be more hip and social, but
I think that's good if the userbase was in decline before. I think that the
lack of a beta and the possibility to give feedback before makes this so hard
for existing users.

Delicious was something else, I think. I was under the impression that after
their changes, some of the old use-cases weren't supported anymore? What is
the new Flickr missing exactly, apart from tiny images as default, strange
workflow to get the real image or at least bigger sizes, and ugly menus?

I know that the old Flickr wasn't a place I enjoyed. I used it mainly to get
images for a program of mine. Don't think I will be a heavy user of the new
one, but for my use case, it sure looks better now (iff the extended search
for CC-licenced images still works).

~~~
CrLf
The problem is that now a Pro account (the way to get no ads) costs twice as
much.

Maybe the old interface could have used some polish, but the new one goes
overboard cramming photos together and hiding metadata/comments. It looks like
it is giving photos more relevance, but actually it just creates noise.

~~~
onli
What do you mean with noise?

------
marcamillion
Wow....I must say, I never thought I would be able to say this....but I am
getting excited about Yahoo again.

Marissa Mayer is doing a fabulous job.

Putting products first, like she should.

Wow....just wow!

------
noloqy
Getting Marissa Mayer is the best thing that happened to Yahoo. Regardless of
some of the mistakes that may have been made (thinking of one acquisition in
particular), she surely is putting the company back on the map. Personally I
still rarely use Yahoo; I only visit Yahoo finance once in a while, but I'm
liking what I see.

Naturally the 1 TB storage is a trick. I can't imagine more than a handful of
hardcore users filling up that space, but the feeling of not having to worry
about deleting old files significantly contributes to a great user experience.

------
bigiain
So, who's already working on their "files stored steganographically in Flickr
photos" cloud storage filesystem?

Or perhaps a little more practically, a WordPress/Joomla/Drupal/whatever
plugin to use Flickr as a CDN?

------
leephillips
They just sent me this in an email:

"As a Pro Member, your subscription remains the same. You'll enjoy unlimited
space for your photos and videos, detailed stats and an ad-free experience.
However, you can switch to a Free account before August 20, 2013."

I can't understand what this is supposed to mean. But it sounds like the pro
account, which provided unlimited storage for $25/yr, is going away. I wonder
what they do about pro members who already have more than 1 or 2 TB of usage
now?

~~~
leviathant
Pro accounts appear to be grandfathered in - you keep the unlimited space, you
can continue to renew at $25/yr, but with the 'Free' account, you can upload
larger individual files - 200mb photos in 'Free' vs 50mb photos in 'Pro', 1gb
videos in 'Free' vs 500mb in 'Pro' - there are more details at
<http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/>

~~~
rallison
I wonder if the 200MB vs 50MB differentiation is intentional. As a Pro user, I
was curious, so I tried uploading a 70MB file. The flickr uploader complained.
I tried a 30MB file and it was happy. So, it appears that, at least as of now,
the 50MB limit may still be in place for Pro users.

------
teraflop
So far, the response from Flickr power users looks overwhelmingly negative:
<http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/>

~~~
waterlesscloud
Most of that looks like the usual user complaining because an interface
changed.

~~~
NelsonMinar
Why wasn't I consulted?! <http://www.ftrain.com/SiteLaunch.html>

------
aaronbrethorst
Ok, great. The iPad experience has gone from mediocre to terrible. Hit targets
are too small, figuring out how to click through to detail pages is non
obvious, and it just feels slow as molasses on my 3rd gen iPad.

------
gyardley
Interesting design choices - the photos are highlighted front and center but
all the social aspects of Flickr have been shoved downward into have-to-scroll
territory. Contrast this to Facebook and Instagram, which both use a right
sidebar layout for profile and comments, which ensures everything's easily
visible above the fold.

If you've been using Flickr as a social tool, making and getting lots of
comments, I could see you being a bit upset with the decreased emphasis on
social features in the new layout. I wonder what effect these changes will
have on the level of social interaction on the site. I also wonder if it was a
planned deemphasis, or just an inadvertent consequence of expanding the space
given over to the picture.

~~~
epa
Good insights - I agree with you. As a past social flickr user, I checked out
my old account. It took me quite a while to find old comments and new
activity, which is much different than the past of it being up front.

------
jckt
I remember a lot of people noting that facebook's UI evolution toward a focus
on images rather than text is _theoretically_ nice. That is, it's presented
very well whenever the images are nice, but on facebook that's rarely the case
--a quick look through my homefeed, it's either blurry party shots/selfies or
obnoxiously filtered Instagram pictures. Flickr seems to have made the same
evolution, and in that respect its UI changes are hardly original ideas. Yet
it's almost a perfect fit -- where else on the Internet will you find more
professionally-taken pictures?

~~~
porsupah
> where else on the Internet will you find more professionally-taken pictures?

The main venue which comes to mind is 500px. However, with its leanings toward
a more professional level comes a lack of the fun, informal atmosphere of
Flickr. I maintain a presence on both, for now, and thoroughly enjoy Flickr -
but, I'll have to keep an eye on what happens there hereon. As they say, the
headlines giveth, the fine print taketh away. =:/

------
Pyrodogg
I used to be a flickr pro user, and then I left over a year ago. I do like the
storage and overall design change, but there are other reasons I'm not really
interested in going back.

#1 being

Don’t use Flickr to sell. If we find you engaging in commercial activity, we
will warn you or delete your account. Some examples include selling products,
services, or yourself through your photostream or in a group, using your
account solely as a product catalog, or linking to commercial sites in your
photostream. If you engage in commercial activity elsewhere on the internets
or in the real world, you’re still welcome on Flickr—in fact, we’ve even set
up some best practices especially for you.

<http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne>

...which definitely takes some steam out of the previous "pro" account.

I've been pursuing photography as a serious hobby for just over 7 years. I'm
not expecting to make tons of money in on-line sales; I just hate displaying
most of my things with those handcuffs on.

I used to upload all over the place and just crave the attention of the
favorites and likes, etc. Now I am more selective of what photos I publish and
where. I'm much more interested in a gallery type offering. Most of my casual
photos that I would think about posting back to flickr are already on Facebook
or G+ where my friends and family can see them.

------
ilaksh
How can they give away 1TB of space for free? Because the cheapest 1TB drive I
saw was $67.

Unless.. they assume that only a very small percentage of people will use it.
So if on average, everyone still only uses about 1GB of space, then a 500gb
you can get for $45. $45/500 = .09 so about 10 cents per person. With 25
million users that is about a $2.5 million investment.

If the average user uses 10GB then that is $1.00 per person though. With 25
million users that is about a $25 million investment.

~~~
reportingsjr
I, as a regular consumer, just got a 2TB hard drive for $90. That means the
space was $45/GB compared to your $67/GB. When you buy enough hard drives to
fill a data center I am sure you get better prices too! As other commenters
have said, I doubt most people will use a fraction of this space.

~~~
vidarh
You might get the drives cheaper, but you also need to pay for the servers to
house them, and rent the space, and hire the people to replace the drives that
fail, and so on. The fully loaded cost is far higher than the purchase price
of the drive.

~~~
Freaky
Don't forget the redundancy, too. Bit awkward having to explain to your users
why you randomly lose a couple of percent of their data every year.

------
aresant
I've been a paid Flickr user for years and I'm excited about the new UX.

BUT PLEASE PLEASE fix the iPhone app which, after their new update earlier
this year, no longer lets you upload video!

~~~
aeturnum
I don't know about iPhone, but they pushed an update to their android app
simultaneously with the website launch. I don't do video, but the app added
the "video" permission, so my guess is it will be back soon.

------
matheusalmeida
This is great news for people like me that continue to use Flickr after a very
long time... Unfortunately the new UI reminds me a lot 500px which I think
offers, at the moment, a much better community and user experience if one is
really a photography enthusiast.

Anyhow hats off to Yahoo for trying to make things right after several years
of stagnation. I'm aware the Flickr team have lost some valuable members and
that probably affected future plans but that's a different story.

------
quackerhacker
Go Long on Yahoo. I betting the general consensus is optimistic about
Yahoo....like I said in a different post, Yahoo is making great headlines, or
what was the term at Google when Mayer was there (buzz,JK).

As for what I believe, I REALLY hope Yahoo keeps it up, but I like rooting for
the underdog...ditch the contract with bing searches, and redesign the
homepage already. Keep up the good PR...now back it with the good products

------
dkrich
This is great for the so-called "photo-enthusiasts." I'll probably sign up on
that basis. But I'm not sure I understand the mobile play. Most of my mobile
photos are horrid quality and when I take a photo with my phone 100% of the
time it is with the intent to share with others, either via SMS or Facebook or
Twitter. I would be happy to share on Flickr. There's only one problem. That
of course is that none of my friends use Flickr.

I think they are putting the cart before the horse in thinking that upping the
storage and redesigning the interface is going to increase their user base.
That said, kudos for trying something. I think that Yahoo! continues to
struggle with a singular product strategy and that is ultimately causing them
to hemorrhage billions of dollars chasing ill-conceived product acquisition.

~~~
munificent
> Most of my mobile photos are horrid quality

Here's a few photos I've taken with my phone:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobisbob/8607495076/>
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobisbob/8539300849/>
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobisbob/8526482251/>
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobisbob/8479530691/>
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobisbob/8479526973/>

Phone cameras have gotten a hell of a lot better in the past couple of years.

~~~
Ecio78
I wish I'd be able to do this kind of photos:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/lonfong/8363181496/> taken from
<http://www.flickr.com/cameras/samsung/galaxy_s_iii/>

------
ChrisNorstrom
While I do welcome it... Design wasn't Flickr's problem, it's the piss poor
search engine and it's people uploading millions of their blurry family photos
and clogging up the search results with garbage. Flickr needs to decide what
it wants to be, an image hosting site or a photography community. One will
kill the other so stop trying to be both.

I routinely hunt for creative commons / copyrighted images for ads and
commercial use on flickr (yes, that means contacting each and every
photographer to purchase rights). I've spent a minimum of over one hundred
hours tediously going through the search results. Flickr has one of the worst
search engine algorithms I've ever seen. It's dumb beyond all reason. I'll
search for "Mountain View Lake" and get a page full of "Asian Children". I
mean it's really random.

~~~
timc3
Have you ever thought that the primary use for a lot of people isn't to give
you a resource, but is for sharing their family photos.

Pay for Getty if you don't like it.

------
NARKOZ
These changes really speak for themselves and if you've ever tried Instagram,
you're basically getting the better quality photos: clear, crisp, tons of
space, and very balanced filters. I love my iPhone and these guys deliver
awesome app without being overpowering. As some of the other comments noted,
"above and beyond" Instagram.

The new design is great: modern and a little bit more flat for a modern look.
I was actually kinda bummed because like....they got rid of the Pro
badges....oh well. My photo gallery stands out and looks pretty sharp. Well
done, Flickr.

Anyway to sum it up, these changes are nice. And with a free 'old Pro'
features, they're definitely a no brainer. I think any photographer can enjoy
these changes as much as any casual photo sharer. Yahoo does it again!

------
philsnow
The default privacy permissions are a bit loose for my taste, but I'm not big
into sharing photos except with my direct family.

Can anybody compare them with facebook's or picasa / google+'s default privacy
settings ?

Edit: I've made a bunch of comments as replies to this one. My conclusion is
that New Flickr's privacy-friendliness is just barely above Facebook's.

However, they haven't yet demonstrated _continuing_ willingness (as Facebook
has) to default to lower-privacy options as they iterate.

If they notice that I've locked down most of my privacy / sharing settings and
then take an educated guess at what I want the default to be when they launch
a new feature with a privacy slider ("we've set this to 'only family' for you
based off your choices for settings X, Y, and Z."), that would be sweet.

~~~
philsnow
It looks like the android app uses a custom browser to render the third-party
login pages, putting them in a position to trivially grab your password.

I can't think of a reason to have done this. Sure, I would have liked for the
"log in with Google" button to pop up the system account chooser, but at the
very least, just fire off an intent and let the user's browser of choice take
care of it.

~~~
randallu
That's a rough flow though. Assuming the external browser finishes itself when
the auth page calls window.close you still have a bunch of ugly activity
launches in between; you probably see the last thing you were browsing for a
few hundred milliseconds, etc. Not very polished.

------
aaronpk
I thought Flickr never charged for disk space... the whole premise was you
could store an unlimited number of photos, they'd just make you upgrade to a
"pro" account if you wanted to upload new photos beyond a limit or get photos
out. How is "1TB free space" a benefit now?

~~~
danso
Without pro, you could only access your last 200 photos. So unless your photos
were of the 100MB+ quality, you would not be able to access most of your
previous photos in Flickr.

------
quarterto
This is fantastic. And it's interesting to see the influences from Facebook
Timeline in the design.

------
PavlovsCat
I don't even need 1 GB for my photos. What I do need, and what flickr still
doesn't have from what I can see [if I missed it, I'd be glad to be
corrected], is a way to _update_ an existing photo (upload the tweaked file,
but keep the tags and URL etc.). Maybe this is to prevent abuse (make photo of
cute kitten, wait until a lot of people favourited it, swap image with
something gross), but still... carving digital images generated from RAW files
into stone like that just rubs me the wrong way.

That said, I still love the fact that _something_ is happening to the site.
Just like 500px, I think such sites are great to get feedback and exposure,
just a little awkward when it comes to really calling them home.

~~~
k2enemy
On the old Flickr this was possible with a pro account.

On the new Flickr, if you go to a single image page and click the three dots
in the lower right corner, there is an option to "replace this photo."

~~~
PavlovsCat
Oh, thanks! I wondered about those dots (they do nothing in Opera).

------
bad_user
I'm a Pro subscriber and I applaud them for starting to improve Flickr.

However, $49.99 a year just for the privilege of getting no ads? Compared to
the $25 people pay for Pro accounts, that's way overblown.

And yes, compared to cloud storage, given 1 TB of storage, this is rather
cheap. However, considering that this storage can only be used for photos and
videos and that most of these photos and videos are meant to be public, at
least within your circle of friends, which drives more traffic to Flickr, well
I consider $50 per year to be way too much.

While I am able to keep my subscription for now, I always thought that Flickr
is sustainable because they value their Pro users and this move makes me think
they don't.

~~~
technoslut
I don't think the price is unreasonable. This is the going rate that other
sites like SmugMug offer. While most offer unlimited storage, they lack the
community aspect of Flickr. I look at it as supporting a site you love to use
while opting out of ads and possibly ad tracking as well.

------
tn13
How much would it cost to store 2TB in Amazon s3 ?

With $0.080 per GB per month it is 0.08 _2048_ 12 = $1966 per year

And that is just storage. Flickr provides lot more than just storage. So $500
per year does sound reasonable and 1TB free sounds like a crazy good offer.

------
getdavidhiggins
Here's my Photostream:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/getdavidhiggins/>

I disagree with people claiming Flickr is just for pictures of Daffodils and
Sunsets. I just dump memes and humorous pics there.

~~~
britta
Flickr's Community Guidelines say that you're supposed to upload your own work
(<http://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines/>):

> _Don’t upload anything that isn't yours. This includes other people's
> photos, video, and/or stuff you've copied or collected from around the
> Internet. Accounts that consist primarily of such collections may be deleted
> at any time._

------
arindone
Dude -- I think Yahoo is cool again in my book. 1TB of pictures free combined
with the blogging platform that is Tumblr is pretty potent.

Unlike many haters out on the HN forums these days I'm actually really excited
to see what comes of this.

------
meerita
That UI is a mix of the old with new, and the website looks pretty ugly. I
wont waste too much time criticism, to be honest, for a company that acquires
companies for more than a billon this is a sad development and design.

------
benrhughes
The 300MB limit might have been removed from the copy, but it's still
enforced: <https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5428533/Capture.PNG>

------
sdoowpilihp
Flickr's UI change is definitely polarizing, mainly due to the fact that is so
sudden and all encompassing. Considering what Yahoo has to prove in the coming
months and years, it's probably a good move on their part, mainly because
after so much stagnation with this product, any movement is good movement. If
the reaction to the UI is overwhelmingly negative, they can course correct.
Right now though, they need to show movement of any kind, and they chose to do
it in one of the most visual ways possible.

I look forward to seeing if this change proves to be more than skin deep.

------
goblin89
As much as I'm excited about the new Flickr, redesign is not complete. For
example, the collections pages and batch editor remain the same. This causes
some UI inconsistencies.

Edit: along with copy inconsistencies pointed out in other comments
(concerning some important aspects such as new policies, esp. regarding paying
customers), this makes me worry. From my experience, Flickr generally has been
very consistent about their UX. I hope the redesign is just a minor screw-up.

------
clement75009
That free 1 TB of storage is a big deal. 1 TB of storage on Google Drive is
currently $49.99 a month! (DropBox is even more expensive). When Google lowers
their prices too, we'll quickly arrive to the situation where we can have
free/cheap unlimited storage for life. That's amazing.
[http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...](http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2375123)

------
jamieb
Given all the "look how they let flickr languish" responses to the tumblr
acquisition, I can't help but feel this was artfully timed. Well played yahoo.
Well played.

------
w1ntermute
Did they Photoshop the image of the Android app[0]? I don't think a Galaxy
S3/S4 would have those three on-screen buttons at the bottom. It looks like
they took a screenshot from a Nexus device and then put it on top of the
screen in a stock Galaxy S3/S4 image.

0:
[http://media.tumblr.com/d5fe504880017bde458c113a94094cbc/tum...](http://media.tumblr.com/d5fe504880017bde458c113a94094cbc/tumblr_inline_mn47zu9nyK1qz4rgp.jpg)

~~~
hamax
It's probably the new Galaxy S4 Nexus edition.

I mean, it's photoshoped, but that's what they were aiming for.

------
bane
First impressions: _awesome_ Looks beautiful at first glance.

Quick second impressions: I kinda miss lots of the information I used to have.
I don't get why there are still pages after scrolling for a while. Some of the
old interface still bleeds through a bit. Looks like it's being actively
worked on (even after launch).

Space is impressive, I haven't even gotten close to hitting that much with my
pro account let alone a free one.

I wish they'd fix the crappy upload app.

------
imonkey
I'm alone hate new design? Why? Too much dark colors (especially menu) and
frustrated navigation, probably because I have habits about old design, now
everything looks too much different.

Than next image button (when you'r not zoomed in) looks like it's ajax, but
it's not.

I loved Flickr for easy to use light design, I don't care about 1TB, too much
because I don't want to share so much on the Internet. So new Flick is lost me
as a customer.

------
photorized
For a site that's been stagnant for years, the new UI is a dramatic change. No
wonder people are reacting negatively.

I've had the Pro account since pre-acquisition days, and I have to admit there
was something strangely comforting in a predicable UX that never changes...

FB gets away with major UX changes from time to time (people seem to always
hate them at first), it will be interesting to see if Yahoo gets away with
this too.

------
prawn
I'm not sure why they'd dump the prestige of the Pro badge? I imagine users
would've liked having that displayed, like the red ring on a pro Canon lens
being a visible differentiator in public?

"Ad Free" just sounds like a bland name.

Does the paid membership make your browsing experience ad free or prevent ads
from showing on your profile on photos? I could see the latter allowing for
much cleaner and professional galleries.

------
oakaz
It's more useful but also too crowded. And it really doesn't make sense to a
popup for someone who logins with Facebook. Please fix the login.

------
andybak
How do I upload - or more to the point - sync my local folders with Flickr? Is
a web-based uploader really the only official current option?

------
fotoblur
IMHO their UI further validates the Facebook commenting style unfortunately.
I've always felt the tree based conversations design is a much easier way to
follow various side conversations that spring up. But anyway, its blah, its
bling, its boring. Can't help but to notice similarities to other sites in
their design, but I guess thats the way the web works.

------
getdavidhiggins
What? No refund for those with a Pro account?

Why do tech companies not want to take my money these days?

The concept of 'free' on the Internet is changing. Users will now happily pay
because they don't want another service dying because of no sustainable
income.

Even if Yahoo can sustain themselves with their exabyte-era data-centers. I
don't care. I just want a pro / premium option, and I want one soon.

------
superuser2
I don't think I could ever come close to even 10GB with my residential cable
connection. It would take months to upload that much.

~~~
maxerickson
Are you being cute about limits, or did you make a math error?

A dial up modem can do gigabytes per month...

~~~
superuser2
1024GB * (1024 MB/GB) * (8Mb/1MB) * (1s/0.92Mb) * (1 hr/3600s) * (1 day/24
hrs) = 105.5 days/TB.

I was talking about uploading a terabyte. Also on my connection, when one
person is uploading, download speed falls from 25Mbps to a crawl. I think it's
something to do with coax being half-duplex. My family wouldn't put up with
slow internet for the 24.73 hours it would take to upload 10GB, let alone the
two months it would take to push a terabyte.

If I had to move that kind of data, I would mail storage media.

<http://www.speedtest.net/result/2720958158.png>

------
bergie
The new UI is certainly prettier, but yet another example of Android done
wrong. Weird action bar, forcing portrait on tablets, etc.

This was already mentioned with Facebook Home, but it'd be great if UI
designers and developers would actually spend some time on their target
platforms to learn the UI conventions instead of copying iOS as-is.

------
rdl
The number of people I've seen who have asked "how do I set up self hosting
for photos now" after the Flickr announcement is kind of distressing for
Yahoo!'s future product plans.

I'm slightly terrified Pro will go away; none of the new plans is at all
appealing to me. I'd switch to 500px or self-host entirely, but that's a lot
of work.

------
Strang
I am genuinely confused. I am currently a Pro user. I'm happy paying $25/year
for what I get.

Now, to get all the same benefits that I was getting for $25/year, I can just
degrade to a free account? I guess this assumes that there are a lot of mobile
users now and installing ad-blockers on mobile is much more difficult.

Still, what a strange decision.

~~~
rallison
If you continue to pay for the Pro account, you get no ads (the free tier is
ad supported), unlimited storage space (no new plans get this, so this is a
nice grandfathered bonus.. if you need more than 1TB that is) and photo stats.

But yes, the difference between free and Pro is no longer as large of a
distinction as it used to be.

~~~
Strang
Hmm, I guess I will degrade my account and flickr will lose a paying customer.

Seems like most users either a) are resigned to seeing ads on every website or
b) have installed an ad-blocker. I don't see how paying for ad removal can
generate much money.

~~~
rallison
Keep in mind that the ad-free experience also means visitors don't see any ads
when browsing your photos if you are a pro user. This may or may not be
important to you, but is arguably worth the $25 per year for any use that
approaches professional level.

------
cjdavis
The Android app STILL does not provide automatic upload. That is the only
thing I want or need from the Android app - I backup images I take on my
phone, and make public the few that I want to share. So now I use Google+. But
I have years of photos on Flickr, so I'd still like to switch back.

I really don't understand why it's missing.

~~~
cjdavis
Ok, looks like I have an OSS solution with code on Github:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rafali.fli...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rafali.flickruploader)

------
mark_l_watson
A nice looking upgrade. That said, a few months ago I decided to use Dropbox
for just about everything, and upped my storage plan. The new Dropbox photo
album service and android download photos as soon as I am on wifi service is
great. I still keep photos on Flickr and G+ photos, but I consider those to be
backups.

------
joshmn
Can someone please explain to me how on each they're able to do this? They're
valuing each of their users at the cost of 1TB (plus bandwidth, electricity,
etc.) Like in the hosting industry, "unlimited space" means "fuck you, don't
host shit here other than files that serve your content."

~~~
minimaxir
Statistics, most likely. If the average Flickr user only uses 10GB, for
example, then it doesn't matter what the upper bound is aside for the 1% of
power users.

------
Meai
Sounds like bad news for these guys: <http://pics.io/>

For some reason I'm following their progress for over a month already. Sneaky,
their progress bar has gone backwards one time. As if nobody would notice! I
wish them all the best though.

------
planetjones
The loss of photo statistics seems a big one. As far as I can see unless you
have an existing pro account and continue to renew, there is no way to get
photo statistics. I really think Yahoo should offer a 'spyr' account or
something which gives access to the stats.

------
eterm
I commented the other day that I hadn't renewed my sub for the first time in 6
or so years.

I'm now VERY annoyed I didn't; I'd have had 2 more years of "pro", and with it
the one feature I enjoyed looking at which is my stats page with referrer info
etc.

That no longer seems to be an option at all.

------
thomasfoster96
Seeing every tech blog in the universe carrying this story in my Facebook feed
this morning got me really excited. So I actually went over and tried to log
into my old Flickr account.

And so encountered Yahoo's terrible login system for Australian users. No 1TB
for me.

------
waterlesscloud
Points for where she announced it. Guess that other announcement wasn't a one
time gimmick.

~~~
pdknsk
Yahoo! actually moved its official blog to Tumblr.

[http://yodel.yahoo.com/blogs/general/we-re-moving--
120325712...](http://yodel.yahoo.com/blogs/general/we-re-moving--
120325712.html)

------
salimmadjd
How long before someone starts creating a photo cloud backup solution using
flickr? Heck, we can create multiple accounts to extend the size to 4,5,6 TB
and have a simple interface to treat the array of independent accounts as one
storage unit.

~~~
d23
Glad I'm not the only one who thought this way. I always wanted to do that
with Dropbox or Drive, but the free 1TB is making this a lot more attractive
of a prospect. Still, it might be a bit obvious one were abusing it.

------
MicahWedemeyer
Happy paying customer for 2 or 3 years now. I'll probably be downgrading to
free because it definitely supports my needs with these upgrades.

This is a strange view of business: Take what people are happy to pay for,
then give it to them for free.

~~~
omfg
They can probably make more with ads and the new fee to disable said ads.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
I'd love to see the CPM they get that beats $24/yr from an infrequent user
like me. I use it as a storage site and visit it extremely rarely. Maybe I'm
an outlier.

~~~
danso
Nope, you're like me, another happy paying user. However, I'll pay $25 if I'm
grandfathered in. But with how much more engaging the design is, I'll be sure
to visit more often

------
dreamdu5t
Why does Marissa Mayor get all the credit? Was the redesign her idea? Was it
headed by her? etc.

Of course she posted it, because she has a super-positive personal brand/image
in popular media. Just curious how much of this is her.

~~~
thomasjoulin
I think for the same reason we credited Steve Jobs when he came back to Apple
to turn it over. New Flickr might be team work, but it's thanks to Mayer work
to bring back Yahoo at the big players table.

------
llgrrl_
Did anyone notice that the first link on ... "Since 2005, Flickr has become
synonymous with inspiring imagery." ... was actually linking to flick.com, but
not flickr.com?

Edit: In fact the second link also links to flick.com.

------
junto
I imagine I am not alone here, but I actually can't find out how much space I
am currently using 4,000+ photos. Looked on the stats page, but nothing there
regarding the number of MB/GB used. Any ideas?

~~~
porsupah
If you're a Pro user, and thus without any storage limit, it seems they don't
show you any usage information. If you're on one of the new accounts, you
apparently do see a usage meter of some kind.

------
tiemand
1 TB free space is meaningless for me, unless they allow the upload of RAW
files. As a hobbyist photographer, I avoid JPEG like a plague and store keep
all my images in NEF (Nikon RAW) format.

------
tsbardella
I just spent 17 frustrating minutes trying to get it set up on my android
phone. I had to remove flickr from facebook then the twitter page went white.
.. I dont care enough really.

------
kristopolous
But, couldn't I just coerce any data to be an image and then just use it as a
general store?

Certainly. I imagine flickrstore.py in my near future - it'd be like
megaupload (was) without the nagware.

------
oakaz
What is that huge "joined on" text? Am I blind? Do I want to see that? Is it
something useful? Yahoo obviously needs to hire a designer. It looks like an
intern designed it.

------
Y0YO
R.I.P. 500px.

------
joelhooks
Really like the ability to buy my way out of ads. Would love to see other big
ad driven properties (I'm looking at you Facebook) give me the option too.

------
pax
Won't they lose a lot of paid subscribers? I currently have a Pro account but
1Tb will be plentiful so I'm not planning to renew my subscription

------
aeurielesn
I hope they update the limits in the Flickr Uploader application.

At least in OSX, I recently downloaded it and it shows me the old 300MB limit
(left this month.)

------
myth_drannon
"Eligible Pro members have the option to switch to a Free account until
8/20/2013"

I paid for Pro until 07/2014 I hope they don't switch me to Free a year early
!

~~~
greghinch
If you do, they give you a pro-rated refund.

------
fiatmoney
With 1TB of space, it starts to be really attractive to try to embed
additional data in your pictures and use it as a general data store.

------
replax
Well, their new Flickr page instantly crashes on Win8 on IE10.

Wow!

------
luisivan
Did nobody notice that the Samsung Galaxy S4 that they are using for the post
has both physical and software keys? Pretty weird

------
darxius
1TB free space eh....

I wonder if there are any strings attached.

------
mtgx
Well on Google+ it's unlimited now for photos (I'm not sure if for every
resolution or just up to 8MP, though).

~~~
intrazoo
I believe over that limit goes towards your 15gb limit (unless you pay for a
plan).

Side note, if you are grand-parented into a google storage plan (which is
great, $20 a year for 80gbs), the recent gmail/other storage merge does not
apply to you, I believe.

------
limpangel
Just when I was about to delete my Yahoo account ... this comes up on HN. I
think I'll wait a while longer. :)

------
tn13
Will Yahoo! tightly integrate Flickr with Tumblr ? It will be really good for
Photoblog lovers like me.

------
amckinlay
I think this design looks incredibly bland and uninspired. I really like the
old design better.

------
artursapek
I think Yahoo is going to need a big rebranding. The new Flickr actually looks
pretty fresh.

------
xpose2000
Well done with the timing of all of these announcements. Flickr is finally a
modern web app.

------
kaewka_thanawat
<http://dearmarissamayer.com>

------
TazeTSchnitzel
That photostream looks lovely.

------
pajju
1 TB is a lot of space for free-accounts, very generous move!

So, will they get more traffic now?

------
ggordan
Is anyone else having trouble signing up with a Google account?

------
jebblue
Is it possible to use it as general file storage for backups?

~~~
krcz
I'm not sure it is a good idea to store backups in place where they can be
deleted anytime due to violation of terms (data disguised as photos !=
photos).

------
walid
Does anybody find the ad free account attractive? I don't.

------
macarthy12
"This item can not be installed you your country" wtf

------
agiamas
now that's what you call revamping a service! Awesome =)

------
forlorn
Good bless Marissa!

------
forgotAgain
Nice move Marissa!

------
easymovet
enough for a lifetime...as long as it's up.

------
fakeer
What happened to their "only last 80 or 100 or so photos visible for free
accounts" feature, is it gone for _new_ free accounts?

People resist change but I really believe the old interface was more
_photographically inclined_! The new interface looks like, how do I say it...,
a little too much or just loud, trying to be hip or sth or web n.0. Whatever.

Someone needs to tell me the logic behind Ad-free and Doublr plans' pricing
because I just failed to the point! Or it's a typing error, Yahoo might fix in
a week or so?

Good to see some change and work at Flickr!.

~~~
rallison
The "only the last 200" photos visible "feature" is now gone, as is the
300MB/month limit. Yahoo has decided to pursue the gmail strategy - offer a
huge amount of free storage as compared to the competition.

The ad-free plan is probably most attractive for professional users (pro
photographers, business accounts, etc) as it means no ads for anybody when
viewing photos of a paid account.

The doublr plan seems pretty clearly targeted at business accounts where
$500/year is trivial. It definitely isn't a typo.

------
alifaizan
but still like every other Big Website they have privacy issues.!!

[http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/google-internet-
privacy-i...](http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/google-internet-privacy-
issue-with-europe/)

------
rusbra
Well then I guess I'll be using Flickr...

