While there’s been no official word from either company, confirmation is outon the Web that Yahoo has acquired Flickr, the photo sharing company. Rumorsof such a deal have been circulating for weeks.
Flickr is a Web-based photo sharing system that allows users to add tags tophotos, making them easy to search. Not only can the person who posted thephoto create tags and write comments, but so can the people invited to viewthem.
ZDNet reported Sunday that Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang announced the acquisition during aninterview. Attempts to obtain further comment from Yahoo were not fruitful.
Deal Confirmed
Today, Catarina Fake, Ludicorp vice president of marketing, wrote in theFlickr blog, “Yes! We can finallyconfirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us,Ludicorp.” Ludicorp is the developer of Flickr. The company’s managementteam will remain in place.
Yahoo platform engineer Jeremy Zawodney also blogged about Flickr.
“The first time I used Flickr, I knew it was something different andsomething important. It took me a while to figure out and try to articulateexactly what that was, but I took my first swipe back in September when Icalled it a Next Generation Web Service,” he wrote today, also confirmingthe transaction.
More Than Photos
Zawodny said that he imagines Yahoo 360 being “Flickrized.” Yahoo 360 aggregates many of Yahoo’s services –including instant messaging, photo storage and sharing, and Internet radio –adds a new blogging tool and offers ways to share recommendations on books,music, restaurants or anything else. It is now ininvitation-only beta testing but is expected to be released in a public beta atthe end of the month. Flickr itself is still in beta, and was scheduled to launch in the summer.
According to reports, features of Flickr will be added to Yahoo Photos, but the two services willremain separate for now. Users will be able to log into Flickr using a YahooID or their Flickr ID.
“Yahoo Photos and Flickr have different kinds of users with different needs,and will remain separate for the foreseeable future,” Fake wrote.
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