Okay Flickr, now I’m confused.

I have seen two conflicting posts on the ‘nets today discussing what it means to be a Flickr Pro user.  First, Flickr super user Thomas Hawk posted this.  He states that Pro users can keep their Pro accounts, but only if they switched to a renewing subscription in January of 2013.  I did not.  My account was set to expire in May of 2013 prior to Flickr gifting everyone three months of Pro status.  That pushed my expiration off to August.  I didn’t do anything in January, and now my account is listing an expiration date, not a renewal date.  This strongly implies that I am losing my unlimited uploads and my much loved statistics in August.

Next I read a story on Mashable that said something different.  This story says that Flickr migrated all Pro users to the renewing subscription in January, and that current Pro users will be allowed to re-up when their renewal/expiration date comes.

Both of these articles claim to have gotten their information directly from Flickr.  So which is accurate?

I joined Fickr in May of 2009, just before my wedding.  I had been using free Picasa accounts, but the 1 gig storage limit meant that I was constantly creating new accounts.  I had one for family, one for bands, one for sports, one for this, one for that.  I got sick of it and wanted to consolidate.  I had a choice between paying for additional storage on Picasa, or buying a Pro account on Flickr.  Flickr offered unlimited storage.  Win.  Flickr also let me set permissions at the photo level, not the album level.  Win Win.  That’s all it took.  Once I started using my new toy I became obsessed with the Stats functions as well.  I’m a nerd, I love playing with the numbers.  Go figure.

The key though is now and ever shall be the unlimited storage.  One terabyte might seem unlimited, and it might actually, effectively be unlimited… but it’s not unlimited.  I want my unlimited.

Come August, will I have it or not?

Right now, I have no idea.