Just a few hours ago, Flickr announced 1 Terabyte for all free users. Although this sounds impressive, you will quickly realize this is just a marketing move. Since their announcement, Flickr's been really messy with their roll-out; it comes across that it hasn't been thought through properly before announcing and as of right now, it's still not clear. According to Flickr's service terms posted earlier, they had a 300MB per month upload restriction. This was hastily removed after many users complained. Even as I write this blog they are editing their terms in real-time to fix up the allergic reaction from consumers, who find it confusing and untrustworthy. This might sound like they're trying, but after testing it out for myself, I discovered that the upload restriction of 300MB per month is still in effect. So if the limit were still true, from calculations, it will take you 291 years before you can reach that 1TB. Even though that 537,731 photo limit sounds tempting, the offer they are presenting is not what you think it is.
Also, did anyone else take note that Flickr's previous pricing plan was unlimited storage for pro users for $24.99? Is 1TB free storage with ads and $49.99 without a better offer? An increase of storage for free users and a decrease for pro users doesn't make Flickr any better. It's still the same service. It might now be a little prettier for some people but essentially the same web-based online photo management service. In fact, the new UI enables Yahoo! to now put out ads to users more prominently; already more than 3000 Flickr users are complaining about the redesign. I actually don't even see users uploading more than 300MB per month using their current product setup; it's an archaic method, phased out in the dropbox-era; deliberately manual, painful process of uploading selected photos in small batches. And even if users upload more per month, this would be a good thing for Flickr since more content means more users, more traffic, more clicks; thus, more revenue through ads. Considering they are running ads, the users are the product.
Flickr's value proposition isn't that it is a photo storage utility, it's a photo community to share and explore photos. Now that they are trying to sell storage as well as adverts next to my photos, I feel it's a move too far. My contributions are being used to make money for Flickr through ads.
Bottom line: it is pure marketing bait. The product didn't change, the value proposition is worse; Pro users had unlimited storage for $25 a year, now it's 'ads-free' for $50 for 1TB.