How to Alienate your Best Customers – Flickr Case Study
June 16, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Life as a cog in a multinational machine is complicated, as the Flickr team is learning.
Apparently trying to navigate the legal systems of various countries, Flickr imposed restrictions on customers in various countries (including China and Germany, blocking them from viewing pictures that have been categorized as nudity or otherwise potentially offensive.
The customer response has been loud, angry, consistent and insistent. Customers want Flickr/Yahoo to backtrack, or they’ll leave.
Add to that the rage expressed by customers using the new German language version of Flickr, who find their use restricted even though they don’t live in Germany. Want to make an Austrian apopleptic? Call them a German, and explain to them that nudity is naughty.
After many small firestorms over terms of use, censorship, ownership of metadata, etc., this one stands a chance of actually driving a small but determined group of Flickr users from the service for good.
On Thursday, Flickr’s Stewart Butterfield posted a "we don’t have a choice" note about the new changes, explaining that they couldn’t talk about the details, and that people would have to trust that Flick staff were working hard to fix the problems. Not the greatest example of corporate crisis communications, and not posted in the most prominent location, but at least it was a response to the growing protests.
Some quotes from Flickr users:
"My love and passion is unavailable to you."
(a variant of "This photo is unavailable to you.")
"I suspect flickr will take a big hit on this one, media wise and money wise. It has really ticked people off, and not just Germans.
"Unless something really changes and this policy reversed, I will not extend my pro account when it lapses and will be doing all my word of mouth advertising for other sites, while badmouthing flick all I can. It may not be much, but I suspect I will be one of many doing so and the cumulative effect will be felt where it counts.
"Flickr might think they are at the top of the world, but so did Borland and Lotus, before they alienated their customer base with stupid management decisions. Sad that flickr seems to be following suit, and the lack of response from Customer Service is only making the condition much worse."
"What angers me the most is this sneaky "oh if we don’t tell anyone, no one will figure it out" attitude. When Yahoo bought Flickr I knew that something like this would happen eventually. Big corporations destroy good things.
"Get rid of the filter or I’m gone."
"Flickr obviously just doesn’t understand the German law at all. And instead of getting a German lawyer to check what really needs to be done, they just do something that doesn’t make sense and it blows in their face. I’m working for a global company and we have lawyers in every single country, just to be able to deal with the local laws there. So why doesn’t Yahoo have that as well?"
"here’s a question .. does anyone here think that flickr is full of evil people who enjoy the idea of preventing german adults from looking at nudes?
"seriously, does anyone here believe that flickr has malicious intent?"
Kevin Dugan sums up the controversy. Thomas Hawk, one of the most popular photographers on Flickr stops posting for the time being. Update: see also CNet News and Epicenter.
Previous posts:
- JPG Magazine and Flickr Follow the Digg Route to User Backlash
- Christopher Locke’s Damage Control During a Blogstorm
Tags: flickr, thomas hawk, stewart butterfield, controversy, photography, photos, censorship, customers, loyalty, communications, business, yahoo, revolt, consumers, germany, german
No! Not my beloved flickr!
The editing of the web for Chinese (or any) users makes me nervous in general. It’s difficult to blame flickr for trying to abide by international laws but I have to agree with Mike Schneider, it sounds like they’ve done a shody job.
Anyway somehow I hadn’t heard anything about this. Thanks for bringing it up!