And, I am not offended by her statement because I understand what she is trying to do even if she is being ridiculous. I use it as a professional because it works well for some of my clients and I appreciate the make over. Anyone who produces photography professionally knows that competence as a photographer is only a small part of running a successful business. Remember Kodak? “You push the button, we do the rest”. Software is sold on this premiss all the time. Second, she wanted users and new users to feel equivalent to professionals. It is a very successful ploy that any knowledgable PR person knows. What they are really doing is trying to get people to buy guns and ammunition.

It is the same thing the NRA does pretending to defend the Second Amendment. Push a few hot buttons and you get attention. It probably worked because a million blogs picked up on it and she got a lot of free attention. Pro accounts don’t have advertising hence no change to them. She just wanted to create attention for Flickr and find more new users so she could sell advertising. Mayer’s absurd comment was intended to do several things. This is why media is often useless as a source of information. Will most likely not use Flickr as anything else other than a way to tell people where my site/galleries really are. I’ve taken my CC info off of my account and switched my account to the “Free” account.

Guess what? this basically made Flickr a no go, especially given, what appears to be, for me, various attempts at royalty free rights grabbing and sub-licensing agreements. I got a notice the other day saying, “Good News! Big change!” which basically told me that Pro is going away, the free account basically is an all you can eat at 1TB, but with slow xfer, and if one wanted to be free from ads, they would need to pay $49/year, which is about what I paid for 2 years of Pro service. WTH!? I’ve been a Pro member of Flickr for several years. perhaps because in embracing their “no more professionals anymore” philosophy, they have opted to fire competent editors, lawyers, and staff in general, with people who have similarly strongly voiced opinions. This mindset might explain the lax copyright protections of users’ photos on Flickr….

Flickr photographers