Yahoo showing signs of life, albeit too late

Earlier last week, we broke news of the thaw in merger negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft. If two sides ultimately decide to tie the knot, get ready for months--maybe years--of furious debate about the wisdom of this deal. But the latest rumblings concerning Flickr speaks volumes about the problems Microsoft may be about to inherit.

Jerry Yang

My partner-in-crime Dan Farber was clubbing with assorted Yahoos Saturday night at a celebration of Flickr's fourth anniversary. That's where he got word that a Flickr video beta will debut next month. (Here's more from TechCrunch. )

Fantastic idea. Makes all the sense in the world. But where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio, or in this case, Jerry Yang? Flickr fans around the world--yours truly, included--will welcome word of a Flickr face-lift. Great, but why has it taken forever?

After Yahoo bought Flickr three years ago (this month, actually), management was rightly enamored of its new crown jewel. Flickr was a terrific property. Unfortunately for Yahoo, it blew a big opportunity. When Google bought YouTube in October 2006, the concept of video sharing was about to go viral. I don't know if that qualifies as one of Clayton Christensen's "disruptive technologies," but it comes close. While Yahoo's own video site was going nowhere fast, Yahoo decided to leave Flickr as a pure photo site.

Big mistake. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I'm sure Yang and the rest of Yahoo management wished they had a do-over. Flickr was always the more valuable franchise. But Yahoo's made no secret about its intentions to gussy it up with a video makeover. Now it's apparently about to happen. (If the Microsoft deal goes through, Flickr would be one heck of a brand. Let's remember that if YouTube has 34 percent of the market, then that leaves 66 percent up for grabs. The challenge is that time's a wasting and YouTube has a huge lead.) Too bad for Yahoo that their developers failed to pull this off sooner. Kakul Srivastava, director of product management at Flickr, explained to Dan that the company wanted to guarantee that any move into video would be received as "authentic" by the community.

Move carefully, I can understand. But move at a snail's pace? Come on.

[luckymikerocks]

As an avid Flickr user, one thing I like about the site is the singular focus on photography. There is a certain economy to photographs, which prevent the site from being dominated by odd RE: posts and oft-failing attempts at humor. There also is little reposted content, at least not much that gets high placement.

The notion of a YouTube like experience on Flickr--with the entirely worthless comments, pointless RE: videos and frequently poor attempts at humor--makes me cringe.

It's unfortunate that, all too often, large web-properties are punished, economically, for not changing or expanding enough, but they are rarely rewarded for building something elegant and straightforward. Aside from some issues I have with the menu functionality, I would describe Flickr as a very elegant, straightforward website, that wonderfully serves its users. Yahoo was wise to leave it alone and shoehorning video will likely hurt its position as one of, if not the, premiere photosharing sites.

Attacking Yang/Yahoo in this way is silly. All Google has done with YouTube was buy the right site. They have not added anything particularly special since the purchase (ads! wow!) or shown particular vision (monetizing user submitted content with ads! wow!). Flickr isn't YouTube, and financially, that is unfortunate for Yahoo, but that doesn't mean that Flickr should turn into YouTube, or that Yahoo has somehow failed by not bastardizing the site.

[charlie cooper]

some areas of agreement:

it is unfortunate that big web properties often go unrewarded - near term - for building something elegant & straightforward. also, you're right about the straightfoward, easy to navigate UI on flickr.

but i think you're overly harsh about youtube. yes, a lot of it is silly drivel. but there's also wheat beyond the chaff. and it goes without saying that it has become tremendously popular. google's in an enviable position. it would continue to clean up on search, with or w/o youtube. but yahoo's in a far more difficult position, wouldn't you agree? fair or not, the pressure's on yang to innovate and since taking the helm, i've seen precious little out of yahoo to change my opinion of his leadership.

i'll keep an open mind but time's not in his favor.

cheers & tx for the feedback

[averagebetty]

The newly revamped Yahoo! video is far superior to the old interface... And I'm with luckymike... I like Flickr for photo-sharing and don't know how excited I am about the prospect of video there *too*.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Using Popfly/Silverlight for the video makes sense , since Flash is such a POS...MSFT-Yahoo could gain some ground.

[MTGrizzly]

I use Flickr, specifically, because it is not like YouTube. The people who post there are, for the most part, intelligent and creative. It isn't about who shows the weirdest this or that. No re-posting commercials. In other words, there is real creativity on the site.

When the MS/Yahoo offer was first revealed, I posted a reply to an article saying that MS would ruin Flickr by making it just like the rest of MSN-the anthesis of creative. Apparently, the change doesn't have to wait for MS to get ahold of Flickr and ruin it. Yahoo is going to do it all by itself...

Good-bye creativity. Hello totally useless, inane and pointless content... Flickr has got my last "Pro" account money...

[jpmays]

Have you ever heard the saying, "sex sells?" I can remember growing up, over the last three decades, almost every commercial on TV (and some radio spots as well) had some type of a sexual connotation attached to it.

Not anymore! In the Uber-Techie world of today, the new concept in sales (of any type) is... stupidity!

STUPIDITY IS THE NEW SEX!

Can you hear me now?