If you did not already have a Yahoo account, you had to create one. You could no longer use your existing Flickr login to get to your photos, you had to use a Yahoo one. Yahoo's RegID solution turned out to be a nightmare for the existing community. And here's how that worked out, per Honan: The company, to further its own interests, instituted a mandatory Yahoo login for Flickr users. That's exactly what happened with Flickr, as Honan tells it. Considering Instagram has a passionate community coming with it as it migrates to Facebook, it stands to lose a big chunk of its fans, if it implements some sort of annoying something or other that will disrupt the Instagram way of life.

Lessons for Facebookĭon't botch the transition. And while we're learning lessons from the tech giant of yesteryear, Google, which looks a lot like Yahoo these days, should take some notes, too. But, from reading Honan's account of Flickr and Yahoo, both the big and little guy in this situation are susceptible to ruin. It's been over a month since Facebook bought Instagram, and it hasn't killed it - not yet. But, that paradigm sounds familiar to a modern-day tech company marriage of unequals: Facebook and Instagram.

That's the story Gizmodo's Mat Honan tells in his long read report on the demise of Flickr at the hands of Yahoo. Once upon a time a big tech company bought a smaller photo sharing tech start-up and ruined both. This article is from the archive of our partner.

Flickr yahoo login