7 Comments

Yahoo favors Flickr, will announce Yahoo Photos closure

May 4, 2007 by in Tech with 7 Comments

Despite having higher traffic figures than Flickr, Yahoo Photos will begin notifying users of the decision to close the service. This surprising news brought to light via TechCrunch. What’s intersting is that rather than forcing Yahoo Photos users to move to Flickr – which is what I assumed would happen, existing users will be given a handful of options including Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak, or Shutterfly.

The service will be shut down in favor of the newer and more social Flickr, which they acquired in March of 2005. There has long been an issue at Yahoo where newer services have competed with older services, and Yahoo has finally taken some strong action to getting their house in order with a consistent set of product offerings. Garlinghouse has been one of the stronger proponents of this strategy.

Yahoo is not forcing transition to Flickr – instead, users are being given the option of choosing among a number of top photo sharing sites. If you are a current Yahoo! Photos user, you will be given the option to export all your photos into Flickr (a one-click process) or you will be able to export to a few other services such as Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly.

Are there any readers who are current Yahoo Photos users that are a little disappointed with the decision to close the service? If there are any existing users, will you take advantage of the one-click import to Flickr? Or, will you move your libraries elsewhere?


  • http://www.cphcreatives.dk Benjamin A. Wendelboe

    I’m a Flickr user myself, and look forward to the company there..

    I think it makes sense to close down the one of them, and I’d be sad to see Flickr go..

    The fact that they allow the export to other services than their own is great! Nicely played by Yahoo!..

  • Olivier

    What??? I remember a few weeks ago receiving an email from Yahoo Photos stating that they had something new in the works with unlimited storage and (not so sure about this part) some gizz whizz interface (Ajax or flash most probably).

    Yahoo Photos hasn’t changed since 1998 and it sucks. Too bad Yahoo didn’t offer to migrate to the second best thing after Flickr: PIcasa Web Albums

  • http://www.mcdevzone.com/ Mike

    I’ve never used Yahoo Photos but I’m a Flickr Pro user. I would be very upset if they shut down Flickr because I depend on it.

  • chad

    http://smugmug.com for life!

    and if you’re a developer and actually create something that uses their API they will give you a lifetime free pro member ship ($150/year value)

    I loooove me some smug mug

    http://chadillac.smugmug.com

  • http://is.derekpunsalan.com Derek

    Smugmug does look pretty good. If I weren’t a Pro user on Flickr I would move my photos over.

  • http://www.aboyandhispixels.com dann

    people still use yahoo photos?

    wild.

  • Tracy @ torotno

    Is that one-click process to export all my yahoo photos into Flickr available now?

    Thanks

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