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.

Comments

So will they finally get rid of that stupid thing

[sulli]

that makes all the photos Flash? Drives me nuts.

They've renamed it

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it's Fl!ckr

Yahoos' Dark Helmut

[NoGuffCheck]

Prepare ship for Ludicorp speed!

Re:So will they finally get rid of that stupid thi

[huphtur]

sulli: just turn off javascript, it works fine without.

I wish I could make that much moola....

[Rick and Roll]

It's really amazing how a couple of good ideas and some initiative can turn into such a big buyout. I haven't signed up for an account, because I don't do much picture-taking, so I don't know about all of the features that helped them to make it. What I do know is that there have been many companies trying to make money of the same concept for several years.

I think the difference between them and I is partly that there was more than one competent computer scientist and partly that they understood the users so well because they were users. I can't imagine someone putting together such an excellent photo suite that wasn't into photography.

The one thing that I have in common with them is that I can think of clever ideas for implementation.

So basically, their achievement was a combination of having an excellent development team, being users (domain knowledge), and being able to utilize the latest and greatest technology to create a truly innovative product.

Anyway, I am a little jealous, but if the creators of Flickr are reading this I would like to say "Congrats."

Re:I wish I could make that much moola....

[Incadenza]

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.

Makes Sense

[nzgeek]

I think this makes a lot of sense. First Oddpost (for desktop-like webmail), then Flickr (for desktop-like photo management). If they can pull this together, I can see it being pretty cool.

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?), but I can see some sense of coherence with Yahoo's (both web-based with slick/easy UIs).

Interesting times.

Re:Makes Sense

[alphakappa]

"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.

Flickr is very cool and I hope it stays that way.

[jbum]

I'm a big fan of Flickr, which if you haven't heard of it, is a community-oriented photo-sharing service. Their photo-sharing API has enabled me to quickly assemble some nifty things such as this Colr Pickr and photo mosaics. However, I must admit I have mixed feelings about this acquisition, perhaps due my experiences in the late 90s, in which I found myself in a continual battle with new corporate overlords.

If you read the posts that founders Stewart and Caterina have been making in the Flickr Blog, and elsewhere, it's clear that they truly believe that this acquisition is for the best, and I don't doubt that both the Ludicorp folks and the Yahoo folks have the best of intentions.

Just as small children sometimes accidentally mistreat beloved pets, large groups of people with the best of intentions sometimes break things. Flickr currently has the feel of a 'mom & pop shop' and it is hard to believe that this state of affairs will continue with the influx of more money & extra management. But let's hope so!

Will Yahoo eat this up?

[Lewisham]

The Flickr guys say that they'll remain separate. I fail to see how much say Ludicorp have left seeing as this appears to be a total buyout.

Yahoo! will do what they have always done, and subsume the functionality into their own, and slap it's own design on to boot. Unfortunately, unlike the Borg, Yahoo! does not look cool. The design of Yahoo! is as poor (both in ugliness and usability) today as it has always been. One of Flickr's many strengths (apart from the obvious technological ones) is that the designers always seemed to recognise the importance of *white space*. Flickr makes my photos look good. It looks professional, but it doesn't take the focus away from the photo. If Yahoo! forces the its unique brand of boring, cluttered onto the site, the usability and visual appeal is going to go down the drain. And isn't visual appeal part of why we take photos?

Geocities was no looker that's for sure, but at least it looked like it had some creativity left in its soul.

Yahoo! stopped that cadaver kicking.

Re:Will Yahoo eat this up?

[lavaface]

Geocities was no looker that's for sure, but at least it looked like it had some creativity left in its soul. Yahoo! stopped that cadaver kicking.

Sorry, but I think in this case Yahoo's presentation is cleaner and more usable than the old geocities site. I know people 'round here like to jizz all over Google, but the fact is that Yahoo has improved the clutter greatly. Google is still my primary search engine, but I visited yahoo the other day and was fairly impressed. Compare their current page with this or this. Their yellow pages/maps served me better than google's offerings for my most recent visit *gasp*.

Say what you want about Yahoo, but I work in a university computer lab and I see people spend oodles of time over at launch (remember when they were a cd mag?) and YahooGames. They've got more eyeballs and spend more on R&D and more profitable than Google. See?

Having said that, it's hard to see how they could possibly integrate Flickr properly but don't discount them offhand because they are not "teh g00gle"

Re:excellent!

[hunterx11]

RTFA; they're buying Flickr, not AOL.

Tragic?

[Free_Trial_Thinking]

Am I the only who thinks this is a tragety(sp)?

Flickr was cool because it wasn't too commercial and wasn't in your face with signing up for shit. I can only picture what will happen under yahoo ownership ...

(fade into fantasy sequence 1 year from now)

You go onto Flickr, there are links everywhere for signing up for yahoo junk. I try to upload a photo, but instead I am taken to a page where I am solicited to sign up for something called "Yahoo groups". I try to do a search for a certain tag, but instead of pretty pictures, I get half a page of junk ads and then maybe some layout of pictures that's unusable for some reason. I could go on and on.

I just hope my beloved del.icio.us never sells out.

My Flickr account password

[Linuxathome]

I have an account, the password is:

1...2...3...4...5

Brilliant! Just like my luggage combo.

Re:I'm confused

[Colol]

what the differents between flickr.com and photos.yahoo.com ?

Flickr isn't used almost exclusively to host members' amateur porn. ;)

Keeping up with, then shooting, the joneses...

[mcc]

Perhaps I'm excessively cynical, but I can't help but wonder if along with Flickr Yahoo is acquiring any patents that could be used to chase competing photo-sharing products out of the market... like Yahoo is doing to XFire already...

Re:So will they finally get rid of that stupid thi

[SirSnapperHead]

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.

Re:New bubble sighted; investors "Dumbstruck"

[HyperChicken]

I don't know much about Flickr, but I don't think it's a blog company. They deal with images, I thought. You upload them, people view them. Right?

Although I do agree that blogs are just a fad.

Re:what's a flickr program for your own server?

[uss_valiant]

Gallery2

See Forums->G2->Development->Sticky Thread for Demo Sites
G2 is beta, quite stable since alpha.

Re:what's a flickr program for your own server?

[netsharc]

I know of Photo Organizer and Photos (original name huh?), check them out.

Re:So will they finally get rid of that stupid thi

[cmallinson]

If you examine the source code to Flickr pages, the image URL is provided as an argument to the flash plugin -> it's possible to get the JPEG directly without capturing the screen.

I hate all things Flash - including this. For those of us who have flash turned off / disabled, it's extremely inconvenient. There's no reason that an online image viewer should need to use it. Period.

First of all, you went to the trouble of finding out that the image url is passed to the flash application, but did not realize that they provide that URL in a link next to the picture? Did you also notice that they provide the URL to alternate sizes of the picture as well?

Secondly, Flash is NOT REQUIRED to use Flickr. Turn Flash off, and it still works.

So tell me again about how inconvenient Flickr is to those who are too good for Flash.

Re:New bubble sighted; investors "Dumbstruck"

[wootest]

Flickr isn't a "blog" company, they're indeed a photo management company.

"Blogs" are being adopted at lots of places because they mean *communication*. The proverbial angst-ridden teen talking about his/her lunch and how life sucks is communication as much as team members inside a company making decisions is communication. "Blog" is just a buzzword for communication, and it's good in that it has gotten people to adopt it; the form itself may or may not be a fad depending on if some greater way of communication shapes up.

(Personally I think calling this a fad is arrogant - people kept captain's logs and personal diaries centuries ago. But it all hinges on the definition of "blog" and "fad" respectively, I guess; If you mean that people will not start as many "blogs" and that they won't be as hyped in a few years, you may be right.)

Here's my prediction

[melted]

Yahoo service will not be all that successful and Yahoo management will drive it into the ground. A year later MSN will release something similar, but it will be a half baked unimaginative piece of shit that's 10 times worse than Yahoo Flickr (or whatever its remnants are called). Then Google releases their own picture gallery service and eats their breakfast, lunch and dinner with their first public beta.

Crap

[Bronz]

I for one do not welcome Flickr's Yahoo overlords. I was actually flirting with the idea of subscribing to Flickr after trying it over the last few weeks. Now I fully expect to see a dramatic decrease in the site's responsiveness and a dramatic increase in obnoxious ads.

Yahoo digest Geocities easily...

[also aswell]

What Yahoo says is not what Yahoo does. Take the case of Geocities. What was once a thriving sprawl similar to the one reaching from Boston to Atlanta with spots of brilliance scattered everywhere is now a homogenized mangle of hit or miss. To quote Caterina Fake at the Flickr blog...

What is going to happen to Flickr?
Flickr will be continuing on the path it's on -- to Flickr 1.0 and beyond. We'll be working with a bunch of people that Totally Get Flickr and want to preserve the community and the flavor of what is here. We're going to grow and change, but we're in it for the long haul, with the same management and same team.

I would mod this as Funny if this were a post at /.! I met the guys that were starting Geocities back in the old days at a CA conference here in New Orleans and found their new idea of an online community exciting (I suggested side streets or allys to give them more space in the developed areas.) I learned html on Geocities and still have a couple of pages there (which I cannot get into). But their company has gone into the blender that is Yahoo.

You're not going to become a bunch of suits?
No, no, no! The precious DNA we've got -- that of the Ludicrew -- is on side and revving up for building Flickr. Having the team building out the team's vision for Flickr has been stressed as our number one priority, and keeping us around -- in spite of our wiseassery, tomfoolery and tendency to hoot spontaneously -- is crucial for preserving the Flickrness that is Flickr. They're not going to replace any of us with suits, nor induce us to wear them. Lapel? I don't know what you mean.

The target stores circular in todays paper had some nice ties with ...s and ooos on them and at a good price. Better stock up. You may not be replaced, but you may very well become suits. "Just for this one important meeting" is how it usually starts...

Are you going to become Yahoo Photos?
No. Yahoo Photos will get a lot of Flickr features, and there are alot of other areas around Yahoo that will also be Flickrized where Flickrization would be good. Yahoo Photos and Flickr have different kinds of users with different needs, and will remain separate for the foreseeable future. Flickr would also suffer from a sudden deluge of LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg! so we're going to grow it carefully.

It took about a year for Yahoo to totally digest Geocities. It's just a word now that is internet history.

Do I have to have a Yahoo ID to use Flickr?
No. In the future, you'll be able to log into Flickr using your Yahoo account, but you can continue logging on as before.

I'll bet it'll be less than a year on the ID thing. Yahoo is looking to sell you to the advertisers and the ID is the hook, look at what you get. It's a lot. I use my yahoo personal page for a great news feed, totally customizable and with lots of features and look forward to a Flickr module in there aswell.

Waaaaaaaah!! I don't want Flickr to change!
Don't forget to breathe. It's not the end, it's the beginning! As the wise woman who taught us The One True Way of Flickr Massage says, the only thing permanent is change. But we're going to stay true to our vision and to the people who made us what we are -- that's you, the Flickr pioneers. Thanks for making the first year of Flickr so wonderful.

I'm sorry Caterina, but like the old Jefferson Airplane song goes," When the truth within you turns out to be lies, And all the joy within you dies..."

Of course, we will be happy to answer questions, accept backslapping, and do deep breathing exercises with the Flickr community at Flickr Central.

Don't count on it. I've tried to get access to my Geocities pages for over a year now and have yet to find an email address or 800 number at Yahoo to talk to someone about getting access there again, but... Sure there are plenty of forms, with standard replies and forums where there i

Great

[bogie]

Now all of those cool 3rd party projects will suddently becomes against terms of service.
You can also now probably look foward to having to click "skip this ad" when trying to view photos I'm sure.

The lamest thing that could happen to a cool tech company is to be swallowed up by some big public company. I'm actually not anti-yahoo by any means, I just don't possibly see how this will be good for flickr. And I'm just sure that ipod toting pseudo hipster crowd is going to love paying money to yahoo now.

And finally worst of all is that I'm sure that the previous owners will convince themselves that somehow they will remain independant and that yahoo will just let them run things "like always". Yea right. Anyone want to buy a bridge?

Oh yea

[bogie]

Forgot to mention you can read the flickr takeover faq at the flickr blog. Again not being a naive teenager and as someone who has followed yahoo since it began, why should I possibly believe that flickr won't become some sort of ad-filled yahoo cobranded site? They are already talking about how yahoo id's will now work at flickr. What, flickr is going to be the ONE yahoo property where your not assaulted with flash ads and somehow its going to remain independant?
I will say congrats to the flickr guys. It's awesome that they are going to get paid. Just don't be too surprised when you lose control of things. I look forward to when one of your founders splits off from yahoo in a few years and createst the next cool thing.

Re:So will they finally get rid of that stupid thi

[ceejayoz]

It's just an image already, why on earth would it need Flash?

Apparently you haven't used the little "add note" button yet.

Too bad.

[boring, tired]

I just started using Flickr about a month ago and I think it's great. Yahoo is going to ruin it. I don't want people who look through my pictures to have to go through pages of ads just to see them.

Does this mean

[Zerth]

That Ludicorp might finally get back to working on GNE?

Tragedy in the Making

[luna69]

> Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!

This is NOT GOOD NEWS.

Yahoo might have some remnant of niftyism about them for having survived this long, but let's face it. Their site(s)

a) suck
b) look like shit
c) use annoying navigation & layout
d) are too Borg-like to attract people who were attracted by Flickr.

I just finshed uploading lots of pics to Flickr, and am now considering removing all of them and cancelling my PAID FOR membership, given this news of Yahoo's buyout.

I joined Flickr because they're NOT Yahoo/MSN/Google/etc. I love the community feel of Flickr, its layout, design, vibe...and I GUARANTEE that Yahoo won't leave it untouched. And even if it did leave the design the same, the changes to the TOS are bound to be evil by definition (as Flickr's were not).