I was reading the Flickr forums the other week when I saw a comment along the lines of “I think Yahoo are just trolling us now“, which made me laugh. However I’m now starting to think that the comment is squarely in the “Many a true word said in jest” category.
There has been much criticism of the new Flickr design from users, tech bloggers heaped praise on it but the comments from users tell a different story. Two quick examples of this, The Torygraph ran an article about the great new revamped Flickr, and below the line you see Flickr users disagreeing about the new awesome, with comments such as: “Check out the 139 pages of mostly negative comments on the changes on Flickr’s help pages. This isn’t an improvement. It’s a downgrade.”
There’s a similar pattern from The Grauniad article on the new Flickr, where we see comments like this: “It’s a terrible change. I used to be able to carefully curate my beautiful photostream, now it’s just a mass of photos. All the descriptions have gone too. I think Yahoo have made a big mistake. It’s like they don’t *get* Flickr.”
So Yahoo/Flickr have somehow done something political parties crave, they’ve united the right (Torygraph) and left (Grauniad), I suppose they deserve some sort of credit for that! The Flickr forums have heated up again this week, because not content with unleashing the new awesome on photostreams, search and explore, they’ve now hit groups. Some people who were all “Neener Neener” when people complained about the redesign have now had the penny firmly drop, because they largely use groups so put the complaints down as whining, but now they see the new awesome in all its glory.
The problem with the new Flickr is one that should ring a bell with Second Life users. Sometimes we land in a sim and it’s busy, we see grey people, it’s slow. One of the factors for this can be too many large sized textures loading, Linden Lab even have a page on texture usage that explains the problem. So when Flickr started serving up larger images, I was not surprised to see people complaining they were seeing grey boxes!
However matters have hit farcical levels this week. Flickr announced that group admins and mods would be able to view thumbnails instead of having to suffer justified in group pools. This was after users pointed out that the new group system was undermining their ability to manage groups. However this workaround, which involved adding ?thumb=1 to the end of a group url, worked for all users. Admins and Moderators had it as a UI option, but it worked for all.
Users thanked Flickr, for some the fog lifted, the sun shone, flowers bloomed, birds sang, in short, they were happy, usability was improved, they went back to their groups and prepared for government. However it seems that at Flickr towers, thunder and lightning was raging, rain was pouring down. The very idea that usability of the new site had been improved sent shivers through the spine of managers.
Today, despite the latency, the problems with view counts, the slow loading of images, they’ve managed to find the time to disable thumbnails for people who aren’t group mods or admins. Sauron, Lord Voldermort, Darth Vader, The Wicked Wich Of The West and Davros all +1’d Flickr’s awesome decison to reduce usability. Someone on the Flickr forum summed it up well: “I’m sorry, but that is making me giggle (because it’s either that or cry). Actively *removing* functionality? INSANTIY.”
It’s at the stage now where people are urging others not to post workarounds in the forum, in case Flickr “fix it“. If anything the Flickr redesign is ahead of its time, too many people are caught in the net of poor performance, Flickr will not listen to these complaints. The site concepts can have better delivery, Google Image search pulls it off much better, but even then, they have a basic view for people whose equipment can’t cope with that design.
Flickr have never attempted to explain to people where they are heading with this redesign, they’ve just unleashed it, obviously many members are confused and disappointed, buzzwords and spin are not a communication method.
If you’re a Tumblr user, be afraid, be very afraid. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer posted on her Tumblr page: “We promise not to screw it up” The evidence from the Flickr redesign suggests otherwise. Yahoo also have this awful menu bar on some of their sites, thankfully not in the UK, it’s hideously ugly and looks very amateur.
Are Yahoo/Flickr trolling their members? I would say no, but it sure feels like it at times and in terms of feedback, they really do not listen.