IN ONE week Yahoo spent a billion dollars on some blogs and relaunched its photo-sharing site Flickr but it has annoyed a lot of people along the way.
“Such a lot of new stuff came out today, and we’re sure you’re itching to tell us what you think about it,” wrote Flickr on its help forum last week, on the day the site got an overhaul.
Flickr users didn’t hold back.
“Change it back!” said one.
“I hate it!” said thousands more.
The new design puts the emphasis on larger photos. Dig deeper and a lot of the essentials have changed only slightly, but still the change annoyed a lot of people. Before Google came along Yahoo was top dog and now it is trying to reassert itself with former Google executive Marissa Mayer in charge.
As well as relaunching Flickr, she’s spent a billion dollars buying Tumblr, a blogging platform.
But it has to be a difficult fight back against Google, a site so popular it has become part of the language.
One theory is that that the Yahoo brand itself will slowly fade from view. It no longer means much to anyone.
But the brands it owns – and buys in the years to come – will be huge, each with millions of users: Flickr for photos, Tumblr for blogs, more sites for maps, video, whatever else comes along.
What links Flickr and Tumblr is that they’re good at what they do.
That makes people want to keep using them. And that means there’s scope for making money through advertising.
After all, it worked for Google with purchases such as YouTube.
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