[mmmooo]

That's a pretty bold move, given over 100k people a day/800k a month use the facebook auth alone[1]. and though looks like its on a bit of a decline. Maybe losing 100k users a day doesn't matter much to yahoo.

[1]https://factets.com/application/flickr-AQkvRaEJ

[onion2k]

"Number of users per day" is a vanity metric. It doesn't matter to a business like Yahoo. The thing that actually matters is whether or not those particular users make money for Yahoo. If they're run the numbers and discovered that Facebook users don't turn in to paying subscribers or click on adverts (and they can't find a way to do that) yet cost them $0.25 per day in bandwidth then turning off Facebook login will increase their profits by £200k/month due to the saving.

[laumars]

I don't think this is a short term profit-based decision like your example suggests. I think this move is done to convert some Flickr users over to Yahoo!'s own passports rather than promote their competitors.

There was a time (back in the 90s) when Yahoo! logins offered more services than Google accounts. I'd be surprised if Yahoo! didn't see getting back on top as an eventual end goal (even if it seems rather optimistic at the moment). So it would make sense not to have competitors linked into their own resources when they have their own passports already.

[Ntrails]

I assume that they are also handing over data to Facebook with every auth that helps the competition with targeted advertising revenue?

[mmmooo]

definitely a fair point, though personally, based on absolutely nothing, I don't think it is likely that 'those that login via facebook/google' have a drastically different behavior pattern (when it comes to stuff like paying or clicking). Would love to see anyone that has any such data.

[srg0]

> Maybe losing 100k users a day doesn't matter much to yahoo.

1. Not all of them will be lost.

2. 100k/day is probably a lot for Yahoo.

Given camera use statistics, https://www.flickr.com/cameras, we may take the most used breands and count their daily users.

Daily Canon users (brand #1): 41621. Daily Apple users (brand #2): 38002. Daily Nikon users (brand #3): 28667. Daily Samsung users (brand #4): 5007. Daily Sony users (brand #5): 9160.

Thus there are 130k daily users of the top 5 brands.

If we go one for the long tail of the less popular brands, we will probably double the estimate. So it gives us 200-300k daily users contributing images. Losing 100k of them is a lot. But are Facebook users uploading images to Flickr? Are they active commenters? Are they active at all?

[srg0]

Assuming that user contrbutors, commenters and silent visitors ratios are typical 1:9:90, we may guesstimate 2M daily commenters and 20-30M daily visitors.

I suppose that most Facebook users on Flickr contribute few images and logged in with Facebook to leave an occasional comment or two. So this will likerly affect only 5% of commenters.

[danudey]

Your numbers assume that there is no overlap between those groups. It's entirely possible for someone to be both a Daily Apple User and a Daily Canon User (e.g. a professional photographer with an iPhone).

[danudey]

You're making a false assumption here that those users will stop logging into Flickr when Facebook auth is removed; the more likely scenario is that the majority of those users will create a Yahoo ID and use that, rather than abandoning Flickr entirely.

[mmmooo]

I wasn't really stating that assumption, and I agree, many will convert, but I was simply referring to what they are 'betting with'. Yes that's the most they can lose (ignoring that people pissed off at this move may leave even if they didn't use fb/g+), but its still how much you put in the pot. At least for me.