Yahoo! Helps Users Transition to Flickr
by Dan Harrelson
Two days ago I visited Yahoo! Photos upon reading that the site’s official closure has begun. I was impressed with the experience offered. It’s clear that the Flickr team is rubbing off on the rest of Yahoo!
It really couldn’t have been much simpler to migrate to Flickr. Since my browser was already signed into both Flickr and Y!, it was just 2 clicks to start the magic of moving my photos.
I also really like that they give you a means to export into competing services Photobucket, Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly and Snapfish. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated to migrate out of the Y! universe, but it shows a good user focus on the part Yahoo! to support alternatives. From the Flickr help FAQ:
“Do I have to move to Flickr?
Not necessarily. Yahoo! Photos has a number of other affiliates that you may be interested to move to, and each of them is ready to migrate your photos for you if that’s what you decide you’d like to do. They are Snapfish, Photobucket, Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly.
You can also download your favorite photos or purchase an archive CD of your entire Yahoo! Photos collection. (There’s more information on these options over at the Yahoo! Photos site.)
I have been wondering how the Y! Photo and Flickr service offerings would mesh upon consolidation, and I’m starting to get some answers. Y! Photos offered unlimited photo hosting and unlimited albums, but Flickr encourages users to sign up for pro accounts in order to store a lot of photos and create more than a handful of “photo sets”. Well, it appears that they are upgrading everyone who migrates to a free pro account until Sept. 13th. I am way over the “free” number of photos and sets, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens in September.
The only quirk I found in the migration was the duplication of my Y! Photos albums. Each album was listed as two identical Flickr sets. This was simple to remedy with a couple clicks, but would have been a real hassle if I have more than 15 sets to deal with.
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on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Experience design, Friends of Adaptive Path.
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June 15th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I may have this wrong (not speaking officially for Yahoo) but I believe Flickr limits how much you can upload per month, how many of your photos can be displayed publicly at one time (I think the limit is 200) and how many sets you can have, not how many photos you can store on Flickr with a free acct.
June 15th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Right, the upload and display limits are what I was referring to. Thanks for the clarification.