I have just noticed an announcement posted by Yahoo! at the 'mitchmen' group about major changes.
They haven't announced a reason for these changes. Obviously they will save money on storing data but I suspect it's intended to get out of any responsibility for who joins and what happens in the groups.
- It seems they intend to do away with all the information stored at the Group, messages, pictures and files (in December).
- In future it will simply operate as a message sharing service.
- They are also changing the rules for joining the group, new members will have to request an invitation.
They haven't announced a reason for these changes. Obviously they will save money on storing data but I suspect it's intended to get out of any responsibility for who joins and what happens in the groups.
It's a disappointment for me, the combination of features in 'Groups' - messaging, photo galleries and file sharing - suited me very well. Yahoo seem to have a bizarre policy of buying successful businesses and then deliberately destroying them, ah well!
Needless to say, they haven't notified group owners directly about these changes and the notice is hidden away at the top of the page and is only fleetingly visible as the page loads.
Read the Yahoo! announcement
How will this affect mitchmen?
- It looks as if I will be able to continue to use the Group for posting messages and episodes of my stories to members. Providing new members are still able to join easily, I plan to carry on using this feature for the time being. It will be a concern to me if I no longer have the Yahoo age-screening function, but this detail is not clear yet. Obviously moving 4,000 members to a different service and bedding it in is a distraction I'd rather not have. However I suspect the writing is on the wall here and will start looking at alternatives, possibly set up a mirror arrangement. At the moment the only comparable service I am aware of is Google groups. I'd welcome any information about other alternatives, I could use the blog format potentially but don't understand other modern social media well enough to know if/how I can use those channels for messaging and sharing (adult) pictures and files. Suggestions welcome!
- Obviously my picture galleries and story PDF's will have to find a new home. I can't say I'm heartbroken about this, it hasn't worked properly since the 'Neo' fiasco, but it will be a pain to move everything. I will probably have to 'attach' them to the mitchmen blog in some way. I can see how I could use Google Photos and Google Drive (for files), but it's that eggs in one basket thing so I'll probably look for a non-Google solution that I can link to the blog. One obvious possibilty for pictures is to expand my Deviant Art presence, since this does have an 'adult' screen.
Mitchell
17 Oct 2019