In my mailbox today:

Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We're making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in -- like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.

95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It's easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don't.

You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you'll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page:

http://flickr.com/account/associate/

Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any domain and your screenname will remain the same.

Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here:

http://flickr.com/help/signin/

Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you're reading this, you've been around for a while and that means a lot to us!

Warmest regards,

- The Flickreenos

Comments

1. Elaine on 2007-01-30 19:43:23 wrote: And I thought I was the last holdout. Better check my hotmail account.

2. Eric C. Snowdeal III on 2007-01-30 19:54:29 wrote: as another “5 percenter” who is using the old school login, i too am somewhat sad to see it go.

3. Matt Sims on 2007-01-31 06:18:29 wrote: How lame! I neither want nor need a yahoo ID. Ive got my own email account with my own address that noone else has. Why do i need a crappy yahoo thingy? :(

4. jaymce on 2007-01-31 07:43:00 wrote: sad here as well…

5. Pat J on 2007-01-31 08:48:05 wrote: I switched yesterday, after receiving the Old Skool email. I’m kind of meh on the whole matter. I’ve had a yahoo account for a long time; just never bothered to switch before.

6. Drew on 2007-01-31 09:02:33 wrote: Seems Thomas Hawk made the front page of Digg with a blog post showing user comments on the changes: http://thomashawk.com/2007/01/theres-some-mighty-pissed-off-flickr.html I also heard that they are putting limits on tags and contacts, but there seems to be debate on whether that really matters. What do you think Mr Flagrant, are these limits a big deal or not? (it won’t affect me…smalltime user of flickr).

7. John on 2007-01-31 10:16:19 wrote: They’re not a big deal at all to me (but who am I?). The only thing I really have to say about the limits is that they don’t affect the vast majority of people in any way, will probably cut down on tag and contact spamming significantly, some people will be affected who are not spamming, and you can’t please everyone. As for the login issue… sigh I feel a loss akin to the feeling of nostalgia I have over the Summer of 91 (when I met my wife). That was a great Summer. The fact is, though, Flickr’s acquisition by Yahoo marked the end of Flickr’s youthful Summer… the end of the beginning, if you will. I’ll miss it and I’ll remember it fondly but it’s not the end. Many people dislike change. They expect things they like to stay the way they like them forever. But it never works that way. Never. That’s just the way the universe works.

8. pete on 2007-02-03 23:19:40 wrote: surfing on by since flickr is having a 4 hour massage. what’s a flickr addict to do?!? im an old skooler too. bummed too, but oh well. i already have 2 other flcikr accounts outside of my original one, so i guess im sorta use to it already.