Musings – Abhay S. Kushwaha

Well, not really. I don’t remember when I signed up for the account but I never really used it till recently when I showed a friend some of my pics. So I set up three sets:

• Pluto’s Photos (my dog)
• Office Parties
• Me & Mine

I quickly filled up my 100 photos quota and was about to upgrade to Pro membership when I remembered that they’d been bought by Yahoo! Looking for more information, I finally reached the post about the acquisition and what it meant for Flickr on the Flickr Blog. Among other things, it mentioned the following.

Free accounts will have more storage and uploads — pro accounts too — AND they’ll be cheaper.

Cheaper? I drool. But then, just above that, they say this:

Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon.

So I wrote them an email asking what happens if I upgrade now. They actually wrote back within 24 hours with a proper reply to my question. That alone is worth upgrading but the content was even more cryptic:

If you upgrade to a pro account now you’ll definitely get a bonus when we change over formally. I’m afraid I can’t reveal exactly what that bonus is, so put it this way – you’ll get your money’s worth, either way.

Sorry I can’t be more specific, but the information you’re asking for is confidential.

Funny. All I’m asking is what happens to my money if I upgrade now and tomorrow you reduce the cost of the pro account. How can that be confidential? But I suppose it would affect things far more than I’m thinking so I’m okay with that. The question now is: Do I trust them to give me my money’s worth?

I don’t own a digital camera yet. Almost all the pics in the near future are going to be from the inbuilt camera of my Nokia 3660 handset. That’s a 640×480 photo (.29 Megapixel ;)). But having completed my 100 at Flickr, do I want to pay nearly 2k (I’m talking INR here) for that as well?

Still undecided, I’m weighing in the pros & cons yet for the amount is significant for me (it represents a substantial percentage of my monthly pay). But I have fallen in love with Flickr interface and utility and I am wondering on how to share the rest of the photographs…