Flickr has undergone a bit of a makeover. Your photostream homepage now looks completely different, you now have a cover photo à la Facebook and your “buddy icon” needs to be bigger than it was previously. Big wow.
But behind the scenes, Flickr has also given users of its free service (I’m not one of them) loads more features too. They now have a Terabyte of space each, they can upload bigger photos and longer videos. In fact, why would you even want (or need) a Pro account anymore? Flickr tells me:
Spectaculr things are happening at Flickr!
Dear 6000, as a Pro member continue to enjoy the benefits of unlimited space, an ad free experience and stats.
OK. The ad free bit is nice but ads are annoying more than anything and sure, I can like to like my statpr0n, so the unlimited space thing must be the biggie, right?
Except that 1 terabyte = 258,907 13.5 megapixel photos.
That’s a whole lot of picture.
I’ve managed to upload 5,218 photos in almost seven years so I’m unlikely to run out of space any time soon.
So again: Why would I want to renew my Pro account? Mashable asks the same question:
Flickr Pro is going away, but Flickr will still offer upgrades for users. For $49.99 a year, users can remove ads from the Flickr experience. This doesn’t add any other features; it just removes ads.
It’s worth noting that $49.99 a year is twice what a Flickr Pro membership used to cost.
So, as far as I can work out, it’s an idiot filter.
And users that choose to go to a free account will receive a pro-rated refund for their Flickr Pro account. Cash is king.
I’m going to have to go through the details again before I choose to drop my pro account – once you go free, you can never go back – because I must have missed something here, right?
Right?