Comments on: Flickr Does the Right Thing

By: DSLRBLOG - Photography Business Blog - Starting and Running a Business as a Professional Photographer » Blog Archive » Flickr Rethinks Contact Limit

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:40:12 +0000

[...] Thomas Hawk has reported that Flickr has rethought the cap on Flickr contacts. Now reciprocal contacts will not be counted towards the limit, allowing people to amass larger numbers of contacts. [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:27:00 +0000

Well, so the performance problem wasn’t really that important then. It must really only be a theoretical problem for the future. If it was a current problem they would have had to say no to discounting reciprocal contacts.

But if it was a technical issue I think Flickr should just had acted like a lot of say Web Hosting companies do and say each user can have 1000 mb of web space but not actually have that much storage since all users will never use all of it. Flickr could have just said 15000 contacts and noone would have complained. This was just a poor way to treat the most active users.

It’s like this woman said in that linked forum thread:
http://www.flickr.com/forums/help/32686/166102/
You add a couple of contacts a day and all of a sudden you have 1500.

To me it seems that 3000 is a bit low realistically for the most active users. I don’t think it’s like you have to know someone to make them a contact, just like what you see and be able to see it again. And if i spent an hour or two a day on flickr looking, I’m sure i’d have a thousand contacts in a year without even trying.

And treating the most active users bad is not a good thing. I am one example of people being sucked in to Flickr by Thomas and even though I take his raves with a grain of salt (especially with him having this Zoomr bias), his opinion still matters to me. It stops the possibly most active recruiters of new members to the site from bringing in new members, I’m sure that for example Thomas has brought in new members in the hundreds, if not thousands to Flickr.

By: Ron C

Ron C — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 13:02:00 +0000

Gee, where are all the idiots bashing TH on pointing out Flickr’s faults just to advance Zooomr? Ya post something good about flickr, and all we hear are crickets…why am I not surprised? I guess they are just waiting until you say one negative word against Flickr, then they will pounce again.
Regardless, this is good news, and makes sense, and best of all – the took direct input from a user for the idea.

By: Shawn Morton

Shawn Morton — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 06:59:00 +0000

As much as I would like to say Flickr did the right thing, they didn’t. This is damage control.

If they really were interested in doing the right thing, they would have involved their “old skool” members in the decision-making process.

Involving your passionate users early is a great way to diffuse criticism even if you make a decision they don’t like.

http://www.smorty71.com/2007/02/flickr-caves.html

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:55:00 +0000

This is really good news. Glad to see that Flickr listens to their users and will at least compromise with them.

By: Pacdog

Pacdog — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:28:00 +0000

Your soo on top of this whole digital thing and you might be handsome, but that is another issue! Great stuff TH!!

By: Thomas Hawk

Thomas Hawk — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:24:00 +0000

Henrik, that would be good. And I hope they do that too.

By: Henrik

Henrik — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:22:00 +0000

Thomas,

With this happening, why don't you ask if they can make it possible for you to have all your user accounts under one Yahoo ID? That way you could switch between the accounts (maybe using a drop-down) and only use one Yahoo ID.

That would actually increase usability for you, wouldn't it?