Are you a Flickr user ? Or are you new to Flickr and want to take advantage of the recent announcement of 1TB of free storage to store your photos indefinitely and share with friends and families ? Are you confused about the difference between your Flickr ID and why do you need a Yahoo! ID ? Then you might find this article useful.
A long time ago before Flickr was acquired by Yahoo!, users had one way to access their photos. You login to flickr.com and that was it. Everything was confined to the flickr.com domain. No mess, no confusion. Pretty simple huh.
That was then. Fast forward to now.
Why do I need a Yahoo! ID ?
- flickr.com users are required to sign in via yahoo.com.
- Once you are signed in, you will be redirected to flickr.com and everything that you can do on flickr.com stays the same.
- After you are redirected to flickr.com, you are now authenticated and authorized on your Flickr account. You might find this link useful in explaining what are the things that ** do not change **, even though you just logged in via yahoo.com
Flickr vs Yahoo! Sign In Sign Out Dance
Ever wondered what happened during sign out of flickr.com or yahoo.com ? This section is for you.
- When you signed into flickr.com, you are also automatically signed into yahoo.com
- When you signed out on flickr.com, you are not signed out from yahoo.com (.i.e. the reverse is not true)
- Curious mind ask: what happens when you signed out of yahoo.com ? You are still signed into flickr.com :)
Why does flickr.com require me to have a Yahoo! ID to sign ?
Most likely flickr.com is leveraging the Yahoo! login web servies.
- Security. Accounts getting hacked is a huge problem, and Yahoo! has the scale to handle those.
- Spam. Creating fake / spamming accounts is another huge problem, and Yahoo! has the scale to handle those.
- Overall, let Yahoo! take care of the infrastructure, and let Flickr focus on building the best photo experience.
As mentioned above, once you logged in via the yahoo.com Login Page, you are immediately signed in to flickr.com and redirected there. And you don't have to use any Yahoo! products in order to have a fully functional Flickr experience. Using any Yahoo! products are optional, entirely up to you.
Ok, so what's the difference between a Flickr ID and a Yahoo! ID ?
As of now, every Flickr account is associated with a Yahoo! account. There is no work around this. One can only associate a Flickr account with one Yahoo! account, and every Yahoo! account can only be associated with one Flickr account.
You ** only ** use your Yahoo! account to sign in to your Flickr account.
Once you are logged in, everything happens on flickr.com. Your Flickr ID applies to flickr.com only. For example, you receive your FlickrMail through your Flickr ID.
Advanced Users Only
Remember that each Flickr ID can be associated with a Yahoo! ID. Flickr allows you to change which Yahoo! account you want to use with your Flickr account.
But what I want to cover here is what happens to my Flickr account if I associate it with a different Yahoo! account?
Nothing changes on your Flickr account. The following stays exactly as before: contacts list, gallery, favorites, group subscriptions.
All your contacts linked to your Flickr ID will remain "as is". Remember, everything on flickr.com is tied to your Flickr ID. Nothing changes in that respect. That means, your contacts list, gallery, favorites, group subscriptions will remain unchanged.
The ** only ** thing that changes is next time you have to sign into flickr.com, you should remember to use your newly assigned Yahoo! account.
Summary
So in effect, nothing on your Flickr account is affected. You will simply use the newly associated Yahoo! ID to sign into flickr. That's about it.
Hopefully you are now enlightened :).
