Tom Warren, of The Verge, agrees with me about Flickr gaining from this recent Instagram policy change:
With a nicely redesigned client and support for filters, Flickr is finally catching up to battle Instagram on the photo sharing front. And its dormant community of lapsed Pro users (who are required to pay a nominal fee each year) could be awakened after Instagram users realize they’re the product of advertisers. It could be a temporary backlash, the same type we witness whenever Facebook adjusts its news feed, but competitors are ready this time and Twitter and Flickr are waiting in the wings for a share of Instagram’s unhappy user base.
He calls what Flickr charges for its Pro account a "nominal fee" and for what you get I suppose it is. Warren states that Flickr Pro users, like myself, will come out of hiding and reup their accounts. That may be true but I don’t think we’ll see new usersjettisoningfrom Instagram and signing up to Flickr as Pro users. I would, however, see them moving over in droves if there were a cheaper account level that stated, simply, that Flickr/Yahoo wouldn’t use their information for advertising purposes.
Your move Yahoo!.