So far I'm really enjoying it. It's a BIG change to absorb all at once, but I've spent a lot more time in the last 24 hrs looking at other people's pics than I have in quite a while, because it's just fun to see all the images so large and hi-res. The Android app is also a big improvement, both with the new layout and I like that comments on my pics now give me a notification, just like if someone gives me a mention in a Tweet. (I understand the iOS app was already a lot like this, but I haven't seen it so I'm not sure.)

People with current Pro accounts are going to be able to keep them, which is probably what I'll do.

I really hate it with all my heart. It's not at all how I want to see my photos, it's not how I want to see other people's photos and it's definitely not how I want to see potential clients (okay, okay, a woman can dream) to see my photos. I want space around images; they need room to breathe. This giant undifferentiated stream makes it really hard for me to focus on any one picture and it also makes my computer grind to a near halt.

Getting to recent activity is really difficult; getting to stats is nearly impossible (and stats is something that only Pro account holders have now and that only they will ever have, which, since there will never be any new Pro accounts, makes me think that they will be going away quite quickly) and I loathe the new slideshows, which basically crop your photos without your consent. I do not want my images changed in any way, thanks. And, among other technical issues, the iPad Safari browser version seems to be completely broken, which means that I can no longer share my pictures with my aunt (I can't download apps onto her iPad; my brother controls it; he's paranoid; don't ask) and that was an activity we both enjoyed, so that sucks a thousand donkey balls. I'm not an admin for any currently active groups but I'm hearing that group functionality - communicating with members, adding members, etc - is basically broken now and nobody is sure if there are any plans to get it working again or not. Flickr has rather pointedly not commented on any of the complaints that have been made.

My feeling is that Flickr is completely dumping the community that has been built up over almost a decade in favor of a whole new userbase who aren't invested in their photos as art in any way. They seem to think they can grab the Instagram / Facebook audience but I seriously doubt it and I don't want to watch the entire thing get shut down with as little notice as we had of these changes (none) and take my 10,000 photos with it. This group has some angry information; I'm sure there are MANY more groups out there.

'm looking for a better solution. The two that are getting tossed around most are ipernity, which is cooking up a handy script to help you transfer your images and seems to be free - can't find the link for the transfer script right now - and 500px which seems pretty groovy and which has a membership tier that costs the same as Flickr and seems to offer a lot of the same kind of things. I just signed up for 500px 14 day free trial; I'm hoping they too will come up with a simple way to transfer disgruntled flickr refugees' photos on over.

Mefi thread.

I've talked about it in the MeFi thread. I feel like they sort of missed the opportunity to make some design changes without membership changes and vice versa and so people are reacting to both at once and that doubles the chances for people to be unhappy. I don't like the way they handled it (and talked about this over on MeFi a bunch) and I don't hate the design. Don't love it and it feels that it's half done because there are a lot of secondary pages that are mostly using the old look (I enter via Recent Activity a lot of the time and it looks basically the same).

Getting used to internet tools is a tough sort of culture because things always change. I'm getting better at adjusting to it, but I don't always like it. I've been in "community management" long enough now that I find myself sympathizing with their support team even as I wince at the way this roll out was handled, communicated and (not) managed.

More to the point, I expect there will be a lot of little changes in the upcoming weeks and that feels even more exhausting than dealing with this one big change.

I think there are lots of small negatives, but one big positive, which I think outweighs the problems.

The big positive is the one terabyte free storage. I have a pro account which I got for the unlimited storage: I think it's a huge bonus if people can now get a lot of storage for free.

The problems are that the stats are now likely to go away, that the new UI takes getting used to, and there are actual problems with the UI.

One problem for instance, on the Android app front page, it tells me that someone wants to add my photo to a group, but there seems to be no way to add it or get rid of the message.

Regarding the UI, the sliding tiles remind me a lot of Windows 8 and the latest Google Plus. I think the common factor is that the sliding tiles are a compromise between phone, tablet and PC.

On a phone or small tablet, it's pointless to have lots of small buttons, links and controls, because a finger isn't precise enough to select them. So, they disappear in favour of a few easy-to-select controls. Whitespace is an annoying waste on a small screen, so that disappears. The sliding tiles work OK in both portrait or landscape mode, they fill up a big screen without looking ridiculous, but still work on a small screen.

Considered as a PC-only UI, this style is basically inferior. The few icons make it hard to do stuff: it takes lots of steps to work through the menus, and the functions are less discoverable as you've no idea what's available. The lack of whitespace can be a problem. But I think because it's a useful compromise, we're still likely to see more of it. A few companies might support different phone, tablet and PC interfaces, but that's expensive and has its own problems.

Finally, people on Metafilter have been complaining for ages about how Yahoo is so evil and stupid for just leaving Flickr to stagnate, though I personally thought it was OK to just leave Flickr alone. They wanted Change, now they've got it.

Another article I liked. I've been playing around with 500px all morning. It's a lot like the old Flickr - which is both good and bad. I don't much like how they're making everything square but at least it's consistent. It also keeps timing out on uploads, which is unreservedly bad and worrying me. Anyway here's my first 500px set.

I really dislike it. I loved the old feature of being able to see a set as thumbnails, and I really hate the way sets display now, where it's impossible to find how to progress through the sets of photos. Horrible.

Basically, everything mgl said, but I will keep my pro account for the time being (which Flickr has confirmed pro accounts will remain as they are - so presumably at the $24.99 old price? We'll see.)

But why would anyone pay $500 (are they insane?) for 2TB storage when they could open two Flickr accounts using two Yahoo accounts and get 2 x 1TB for free?

I like it a lot , but I never had a Pro account, so for me it's mostly a gain.

The day this happened, I had a picture that is not in a set I had to find and it was absolutely impossible. I've been paying for a pro account for years and will have things there I've deleted off my computers. I haven't had time to check out what's been going on recently or the last time there was a change and my 1st gen phone lets me upload shots directly most of the time... is it worth paying for stats? I'm not sure yet because I'm not sure how much they are going to charge, as it was fairly steep and I have some business to sort out with them. A fair amount may have to do with how they deal with that.
I'm going to have to make time to check it all out soon, but it says I have until August but my renewal is June/July. So far, I hate the favorites and photostream layout.