Whithr Flickr? at Deadpoet’s Cave

Read/Write Web highlights an internal Yahoo! memo which is a harbinger of change to products like Flickr and del.icio.us. Part of the memo highlights that various Yahoo! products/brands are treading the same ground. However…

There’s a good argument to be made that Flickr doesn’t cannibalize Photos, because Flickr is used by the early adopter crowd and Photos by your Mom or Pop. That’s very true, because there is still a big gulf between the blogosphere and the mainstream. My feeling though is that Flickr’s technology should be utilized more in Photos - i.e. why not re-brand Flickr as Photos. I can hear the gasps of horror from early adopter Flickr fans (of which I am one). But these are the kinds of hard decisions which Yahoo probably needs to make.

So, Flickr will cease to exist in its current form. Already, Flickr login is integrated with Yahoo! accounts. I realise they are bending over backwards for early adopters like me to retain their old, non-Yahoo!-integrated Flickr accounts. I don’t care what they do with Yahoo! Photos. As long as I retain all of Flickr’s current features and functionality. Hell, import all the Yahoo! Photo accounts into Flickr, and rename it Yahoo! Photos. Not as cool, but I’m not going to pay to use Yahoo! Photos.

But I realise that migrating Photos users to Flickr will cheese off the larger market who do use Yahoo! Photos. Google did something similar to Writely, buying it, then renaming (and merging) it Google Docs & Spreadsheets. However, Google didn’t have to contend with a large preexisting user-base when they made the switch. Yahoo! is seemingly at an impasse, and I don’t like how it might turn out.

Brad Garlinghouse, the Yahoo! senior vice president who wrote the memo declares, “We need to exit (sell?) non core businesses and eliminate duplicative projects and businesses.”

Ominous.