San Francisco, Feb 8 (IANS): Photo-sharing website Flickr has extended the February 5 deadline to March 12 for free accounts to download pictures before it officially starts deleting them if they exceed 1,000 images.

Last year, Flickr had announced a new pricing plan under which users had to pay $50 for a Pro membership, or stay limited to 1,000 photographs.

"Anyone with over 1,000 photos would have to pay $50 for unlimited storage, and that new policy still stands. Flickr says server issues and customer complaints pushed it to give people more time to download and delete," the USA Today reported on Thursday.

"Based on feedback from our members and complications some members experienced when downloading photos, we've decided to extend our deletion eligibility deadline," Scott Kinzie, Vice President of Flickr-owner SmugMug, was quoted as saying in the report.

Meanwhile, the photo-sharing platform is allowing people to download their images, but only 500 at a time.

It started out independently in 2004 and in 2005 was acquired by Yahoo, which had left it dormant for several years.

Photo site SmugMug that targets professional photographers as a place to sell photos and run their websites, purchased Flickr in April 2018 and announced the new policies on November 1, 2018.