It looks like Yahoo! is in hot water with users. Again. This time, they’re forcing Flickr users to switch to Yahoo! IDs.

Making users in a community change online identities is a really, really, really bad thing. It’s bad business. It’s bad user experience. It’s bad customer service. It’s bad PR.

Yahoo! did the same thing when they took over Launch, the once really cool music and video service.

Sure, I have a Yahoo! ID, and in the case of Flickr, for me, the switch wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I hardly use the service. But I’m still a little irritated over the Launch thing. I put a good deal of effort into that virtual identity, and it was an identity already take by another Yahoo!, so I lost everything. In protest, I may just be done with Flickr now, too.

Yahoo! is really just another big packaged goods media company that doesn’t really get the Internet.