In my recent How Flickr can eat Instagram’s table scraps. I’m Instagram’s table scraps. And so are you. piece I postulated that Flickr needed to make some adjustments and, possibly, make a new account type that was a little less expensive to compete with the free Instagram.
Well, Flickr has done something that I think could be the first big step towards doing just that. They’re giving away 3-months free of Flickr Pro to existing members. This should help bolster the usage of Flickr over the next three months in a big way. This could also help them to determine how people will use the new iPhone app on-the-go (something they have very little experience in since, until recently, their iOS app was no where near as great as it is now) and, perhaps, come up with a new model as I suggested.
Regardless of their reasoning for doing the giveaway – Flickr will be used a whole lot more over the next three months and I’m sure a portion of the people that take advantage of this deal will fall in love with Flickr all over again.