Adrants ? Flickr User Upset Over Yahoo Ads on Photo Pages: Flickr user Tanais doesn’t like Flickr putting text ads next to his photos on Flickr. He is specifically objecting to placing an ad for a breeder next to his dog apparently. Personally I think that using advertising for non paid users is perfectly valid. It is the only way really to subsidize the bandwidth costs and still keep Flickr open to everyone.
However, a couple of ideas:
1. Offer a super pro account that shows all of your photo pages without advertising. Perhaps you price it at $49.95.
2. Offer Pro users the ability to select the general type of ads that will appear on non-paid users pages. Perhaps create 30 or so categories and require them to choose at least five. This way if Tanais objects to breeders he can screen them out. Perhaps he doesn’t object as much to online travel or online brokerage.
Personally I’m not very sympathetic with Tanias’ objection. Flickr offers a pretty kick ass service and is subsidizing all kinds of bandwidth for the paltry $24.95 per year that they pick up from Pro accounts.
Update: My bad. It turns out that the above two options are not necessary. Apparently if you have a Pro account no user will get ads on your pages. Sounds like Tanais needs to stop being such a complaining cheapskate and step up and buy a Pro account if he’s so upset by people seeing advertising on his Flickr page.
I should have taken the time to research this better as Stewart Butterfield himself already said as much in a comment on the very post linked above. Sorry for being such an idiot.