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Yahoo buys Flickr
FLickLover writes "Yahoo is buying Flickr for an undisclosed amount. The rumors of the deal have been doing the rounds for weeks now. On the Flickr Blog Ludicorp folks are talking about the deal and how it impacts the community. "We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks! Woohoo! " This is the third high profile Blog/RSS related buyout of 2005. Live Journal was bought by Six Apart, while Ask Jeeves snapped up Bloglines." Update: 03/21 12:49 GMT by H : And my favorite comment on it comes from Ben Hyde's blog. Genius.
sulli: just turn off javascript, it works fine without.
Why? Because it stops you from downloading the photos to yr desktop cause you couldn't be arsed doing a screengrab. Can't see what other reason there would be to get annoyed at this, and maybe that's just what they want. The slideshow application is fantastic IMHO, and yes it uses Flash.
It's the year of Linux! To celebrate I have x free hotmail accounts to give away
Gallery2
See Forums->G2->Development->Sticky Thread for Demo Sites
G2 is beta, quite stable since alpha.
I know of Photo Organizer and Photos (original name huh?), check them out.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Perhaps this is a "big buyout", but I honestly don't think so.
The Ludicorp people themselves speak of their money troubles (on their Typepad, no less, weblog) "It means that we'll no longer have to draw straws to see who gets paid."
So, my take is that while they do have a vibrant, growing, etc. community of photosharing/social networking, they do not have a sustainable business model.
They may not have a sustainable business model because they never needed one. This isn't Stewart's first buyout: he always called himself 'one of the winners of the Internet lottery'. During the dotcom bubble he created one of those 'follow your ex-schoolmates' sites, that by accident got very popular in India, so was sold off the some party that liked that demography (how's that for outsourcing?).
[beware: I do not posses magic checkbook-x-ray-goggles so I might completely miss the mark here]
It always seemed to me like he used that money to develop the things he wanted to develop more than the things he thought would bring revenue. There was certainly no money, but a lot of fun in gameneverending.
And I don't think the developers will rest quietly after this buyout, no matter how small or big it is. You'd better prepare for more fun in the future.
"I've been curious about Google's attempts to do email (introduce a new paradigm and confuse users), and photo management (buy a desktop product - wtf does Picass have to do with web?)"
Care to explain how gmail confuses users? Google's stated motto is to organize the world's information. For me, Picassa helps organize my photos and it does a kickass job of it. If you still need a connection between Picassa and the web, there's their 'Hello' service that lets you blog your pictures directly.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
It's just an image already, why on earth would it need Flash?
Apparently you haven't used the little "add note" button yet.