For all the people who don’t trust Yahoo to take on Tumblr without screwing it up, may I suggest you take a look at what happened to Flickr yesterday? I find that a huge improvement in appearance, however there may be ads now, although the announcement of the changes doesn’t mention this.
Your Flickr Account
Going beyond the announcement to search through the FAQ, you find that the $25 Pro account (which I have had for years) is no longer available. People with the Pro account still get ad-free browsing and sharing and unlimited uploading, but the account type and $25 price point are fading away. Flickr promises, “Recurring Pro members currently have the ability to continue renewing at the same price.”
Notice that word currently.
Going forward, there will be 3 account types.
- Free, with 1 Terabyte of photo and video storage, but sporting ads
- Ad-free, for $49.99 per year which is similar to the free account, but with no ads
- Doublr, with 2 Terabytes of photo and video space for $499.99 per year
To Make Sure Your Pro Membership Continues
The FAQ page also explains how to make sure your Pro membership is renewed. You can go to your account information to see if you are set up with a renewing subscription already. If not, you may want to sign up for automatic renewals.
Here are Flickr’s instructions, which are less helpful than going straight to your account settings.
- Anyone who was Pro at 12:00 am (midnight) GMT on May 20, 2013, may be eligible to sign up for recurring Pro in order to extend their Pro membership beyond its expiration date.
- This applies to:
- those whose one-time or gift Pro memberships expired after 12:00 am GMT.
- those who are on a gifted Pro account.
- those who have purchased one-off Pro and are set to expire in the future.
- To keep your Pro status by signing up for a recurring Pro subscription, visit the account order page.
Is it Yahoo VS. Google now?
Yahoo is making big moves with the purchase of Tumblr and the changes at Flickr. Does this mean Yahoo is back in the running as competition for Google? Since Google seems to be taking over the world, I think a little competition may be a good thing.