Flickr Caves In

Since Flickr's acquisition by Yahoo! in 2005, "old skool" members have been able to keep their original login information. Well, the time has come for us "old skool" members to migrate over to Yahoo!'s personal accounts system. This is sad to me for a few reasons:

1. Since the dawn of Yahoo!'s account system, I've had an account. Unfortunately, something else always appeals to me more and Yahoo! becomes a memory. Therefore, I've had many accounts for Yahoo! under many different "primary" email addresses, which no longer exist. The accounts probably still exist, but I of course have no way to use the "forgot my password" feature.
   
   
2. The result of this, is that I must of course create another account which is then another username for me to remember. I often feel that I am clearing out important stuff in my head to remember yet another username. Not only that, I can no longer use my desired names (read reason above) and will as a result force me to settle for "HanShotFirstPhotoGuy_1234_Photuber." Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a Star Wars fan, shoot photos and of course am a 'Photuber,' but I in no way want to be forced into a username so ugly.
   
   But why does this really matter? I guess it doesn't, but "old skool" members currently just get to use their email address. I can remember that--easily. No need to complicate things with another username.
   
   
3. Though I'm happy that Flickr was bought out by Yahoo! and appreciate the good things that have/will come from this acquisition, I can't help but think of Flickr as a start-up. Paying for a pro membership every year, used to make me feel good--like I was helping someone eat. I wasn't helping some corporate giant. I guess the point is that we're bound to see more Yahoo! branding going on, and of course Yahoo! has every right to do so. Flickr is popular as hell, and Yahoo! who is losing the search engine war, is bound to take advantage of every high traffic site it has to advertise it's high quality search engine and other products, most of which I don't care to use. (Exceptions being: movies.yahoo.com, del.icio.us, Flickr. [scrap heap: tv.yahoo.com--now replaced by zap2it.com because of over ajaxification]
   
   

These reasons all seem petty, but they are just a few examples of why I'm a bit upset. Ultimately I'll still enjoy using Flickr and I'll probably find a better username, but I'll also be reminded that we're no longer dealing with a startup-- we're now dealing with a multi-million dollar company and it's all about money.

UPDATE: Thomas Hawk has a post regarding this and about the Flickr community being "mighty pissed off." Thomas Hawk is the CEO of Zooomr, a competing site to Flickr. So, this article is more or less a publicity stunt in my opinion. But it does show how disgruntled Flickr users actually seem to be about this.