New Flickr 2013
Careful! This post is looking a little old and could be inaccurate in many, many ways
So Flickr has gone and changed; dramatically. Some people are annoyed by the new design but it’s the new pricing model that really confuses me.
Flickr Pro
I currently have a Pro account for which I paid $47.99 / 2 year for unlimited space to show all my photos. Until the 20th August I can cancel Pro and get a bit of a refund (maybe) or keep my unlimited space and remain ad free. I assume come renewal time the cost will remain largely the same as what I previously paid.
Free
But if I do cancel my Pro account I get 1 terabyte of space and a website covered in ads. What I cannot do currently is see how much space my photos currently eat out of 1 terabyte. I expect I’m far from the limit but some may not be and have no clue as to if remaining on a Pro account is the best thing for them.
Doublr
That’s because if they do cancel Pro the best they can do after that is pay for 2 terabytes of data at $499.99 / 1 year. That represents an increase of over 20 times for only double the allowance rather than an unlimited amount of space. I’d love to meet the rich bugger willing to pay that.
Ad-Free
So with Doublr unlikely to generate all that much cash and the number of Pro accounts falling due to increases in Free space where will Flickr earn their money? Initially this will be through placing adverts on the website.
Flickr know ads are annoying and will also offer a paid option to remove the ads, at $49.99 / 1 year. That’s a 100% increase over the old Pro account just to remove the ads.
Is Flickr expecting people to pay this much to remove some adverts, or is the plan to place so many adverts throughout the website that people are forced to hand over nearly $50 each year? I bet most will close their account before they stump up that kind of cash.
A stupid risk
I don’t know what Flickr’s finances look like but their old subscription model appeared sound. Now the subscription options appear unattractive (other than legacy Pro accounts) and Flickr is risking it all on being able to generate enough revenue primarily from ads.
Clearly Flickr thinks they had to offer additional free space to compete with Google Drive or Dropbox as storage solutions and as such altered the subscriptions around this.
For me Flickr has always been better when I’ve used it as a curated Photo Gallery website so I don’t need Flickr to compete with cloud storage solutions. Instead I just need to know I’m using a service that allows me to present the photos I have in an environment I’m comfortable with.