Yahoo Photos Beta Launches Today

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1. Tomas
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

   Any news from the 360 camp over at Yahoo?

   You have to think that they are working on something that will integrate flickr, del.ico.us etc. It seemed like they were just testing the water with 360, and that it was never a serious attempt at challanging MySpace etc.

2. Ebrahim
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:12 pm

   Nice, just tried it. But I still like flickr more, for several compelling reasons.

   (”much anticipated” takes to a 404.)

3. Farhad
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:13 pm

   I saw the demo and I loved it.
   I think it’s an impressive product, especially their use of AJAX features.

4. Michael Arrington
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:19 pm

   Ebrahim, thank for pointing out the link error. Fixed it.

5. Simran
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:21 pm

   As usual no one in India gets in to the BETA. Well, Yahoo!’s not stopping me, everyone just spoofed their country and got in on the Yahoo! Mail Beta, do they think that we’re not going to get on this too?

   About del.icio.us and Flickr, anyone know why Yahoo! is trying so hard to sideline two of its best purchases? It’s like they bought the two companies only to be able to steal their ideas legally. I use them and I do not want to switch over to Yahoo! My Web and Yahoo! Photos. It’s kinda sad, since I paid for my Flickr account and now Yahoo!’s trying to push it aside.

   A certain Stodva has submitted this story into Digg.

6. Michael Arrington
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

   Cool. Thanks for putting this into digg, Simran - http://digg.com/technology/Yah.....ches_Today

7. Stewart Butterfield
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:43 pm

   (Mike - nice to meet you tonight. One small correction: Comscore’s May numbers have been out for a few days, and it’s 30.7M for Yahoo! Photos 16.5M for Flickr.)

   Yahoo! Photos new drag and drop organizational features are h-o-t-t, hot — I actually just sit there moving photos around gratuitously, just because the UI is so smooth. I actually joked with the Photos team that I wish you could get points for doing it, because it’d make a sweet game

   And Simran: don’t worry about it. Neither delicious nor Flickr are being sidelined. At Flickr, we’ve spent a lot of our time over the last year building infrastructure to deal with scaling, but we’re back to active feature development and Flickr is absolutely, unambiguously, not going away. They are different slightly-overlapping-but-complementary products.

8. Michael Arrington
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:46 pm

   Stewart,

   Nice meeting you as well. I have a great picture of you and the team that I want to upload to Flickr, but sadly it is “getting a massage” right now. Can you look into that?

   Stats updated. Flickr growth is amazing, doubling since Feb.

9. Jüri Kaljundi
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 11:53 pm

   Different people want different things. It is nice Yahoo will give people a choice and keep Photos and Flickr separate. Even if they can in the future share some infrastructure, user databases and addressbooks, friend connections and may be even UI widgets, the UI and end-user functionality needs to differ depending on what you do with your and your friends photos. Although I am a Flickr user, many people prefer something more album-oriented, to share 1-500 photos of a party with your friends each weekend.

   It would be cool to see more of this from other companies as well: same foundation, multiple interfaces and functionality approaches. Who says Google or Yahoo must have only one UI for all the people, why not have 2 or more of them from which you can choose?

10. Simran
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 12:17 am

    Stewart, I’m glad to know that Flickr is an important part of Yahoo!. It would be a shame to see it tucked away after its features have been replicated. I love Flickr and think that it’s an amazing site.

    But you must understand where I’m coming from. Yahoo! isn’t featuring Flickr anywhere prominent on their site. And del.icio.us for that matter isn’t even considered a Yahoo! service, because it isn’t mentioned on their Everything Yahoo! page.

    Mike, I’m glad to see Flickr growing at such a fast pace. I personally think that it’s far superior to (the old) Yahoo! Photos (haven’t used the new one yet).

    Jüri, I like your idea of sharing databases. It would be great if I could just choose some of my Flickr photos and make them into albums on Yahoo! Photos, without having to re-upload them. Sets are nice on Flickr, but they aren’t albums.

11. Razvan
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 12:32 am

    If Yahoo insists to put the same butt ugly advertising as they did on Yahoo Mail beta they won’t stand a chance in front of the future Google Service and their only chance will be Flickr. The screens look great but will stop doing so as soon as a huge banner will be inserted in there

12. Razvan
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 12:36 am

    To make things more clear I am not against advertising on free services. But not advertising inserted with no sense of logic or usability. What Google did on Gmail should be a case study for both MSN and Yahoo. Flickr stays popular because even on the free accounts, users are respected and not considered brain dead idiots that will click on the first shinny blinking banner

13. zbrox
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 12:37 am

    You mean the new Yahoo! Photos won’t have bandwidth limitations (like Flickr for example with its 20Mb per month), again unline Flickr will keep the original size photos, and will be free? How is this sustainable? Where’s the catch I haven’t seen it on the screenshots (or I’ve missed it, sorry if I did), but Yahoo will keep the site alive thanks to lots of ads, right? Cause as you said with the most page views of all photo sharing services such un-limitations will drive a huge amount of traffic.

14. Alex Hatzipanis
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 12:57 am

    So I am a little confused…

    Should I pay for flickr’s Pro service or do I use Yahoo! Photos, which does exactly the same for free?

15. Simran
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 1:30 am

    Alex, zbrox, I think Yahoo! is doing this to drive people back to Yahoo! Photos. Either you pay for bandwidth and no ads on Flickr or you pay nothing and use Yahoo!’s unlimited service, but bear with the massive flash banners and intrusive ads. The common person would choose the later. I would choose Flickr.

16. Jüri Kaljundi
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 1:57 am

    Not everyone considers unlimited bandwidth and disk space a good thing. It encourages lower quality of the photos, while limitations makes you think what you publish. Instead of 100 photos per day, on Flickr many people choose to post 1 photo per week or day. It creates an open community, while Yahoo Photos kind of sites mostly help to connect with your existing friends, family etc. Your goals with your photos should help you choose between Flickr and Yahoo, not just the user interface or functions.

17. Alan O'Rourke
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 2:00 am

    Does anyone have a list of the current players in the Photo sharing market?

18. selvin
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 5:16 am

    Simran,
    I agree too, I would definitely vote for flickr for the multiple usability it has, even yahoo photos can’t beat it..

    D’all,
    if you use firefox, try installing greasemonkey & the various flickr scripts available (http://userscripts.org/tag/flickr) and watch flickr show its ‘true color’
    …trust me, it rocks !!!

19. Eric
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 5:23 am

    Wasn’t Yahoo recently complaining of “buyer’s remorse” with regards to Flickr, because of the bandwidth costs? It seems surprising to me they’d eliminate those limitations with this service.

    And I still don’t get the logic behind maintaining two entirely different services that effectively do the same thing.

20. GRex
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 5:36 am

    Would this be a slow-but-sure killing of Flickr? Does it make sense for them to do that?

21. Sam
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 5:41 am

    Alan, Mike (or it may have been Frank) did a review of all the “Flickr Gunners” recently at:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....o-gunners/

    Stewart’s comment above is quite unbelievable. “They are different slightly-overlapping-but-complementary products.” As far as I can see they are pretty much identical products just they have different interfaces, different prices and probably slightly different features. It seems more like to me Yahoo is offering a normal free photo service, and then a premium service for people who have to have the best UI. Personally I subscribe to Flickr and I cant get this new Y! Photos up yet so I will have to wait but I expect advertising will be the key.

    Yahoo keep shooting themselves in the foot with the amount of advertising they bathe their products in (Y Mail).

22. Tom Hoey
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 6:26 am

    Obviously Flickr and Yahoo Photos are two seperate services. Both offering a different take on sharing photos. Howerver, myself, I have to say the Flickr benefits me more for two reasons. One, I am able to add my photos easily to my Typepad blog and Two, I enjoy trolling for photos to add to my desktop as wallpaper. These two functions (which I cannot see that yahoo offers) are vital to my “day”. I can see where there is a definate plus with yahoo if I want to share a large quantity of my photos, probably family or friends oriented…more a social networking thing. Both services have a place, I guess…but wouldn’t it be great if someone could get their act together and offer all services at one address.

23. Jüri Kaljundi
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 7:34 am

    How can you say they are identical products? Look at cars - it is the same as saying Volkswagen should have only one car and one brand instead of Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, Škoda and Volkswagen and the various models of them. You can never have one product for everyone in the world. Its about the small details in functionality and emotional side in branding, you have to have variety, even it all belongs to the same shareholders.

24. ToddZ
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 7:37 am

    I can see myself using Yahoo Photos to upload the big batches of unretouched weekend party snapshots and whatnot to share with people who where there, much as people do with Ofoto, et. al. today.

    Meanwhile I’ll stick with the lovely Flickr for posting more carefully considered photography for the Flickr community and selected friends.

    I hope others will do the same, so that we can continue to appreciate finer images on Flickr without Yahoo’s cluttered surroundings, and so that Flickr doesn’t become overcrowded with teraflops of unremarkable snapshots.

25. Daniele Levy
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 8:56 am

    This is a great step for Yahoo photos to improve as a photo sharing site. To become a full photo management solution, though, Y! still needs to move dowstream to allow conversion of the digital prints into paper (prints, books, calendars, etc), like Shutterfly for example. If it’s able to marry both - online sharing with offline preservation - it’ll truly be a killer app.

26. Mike D
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 8:59 am

    I am 100% on the same page as ToddZ. I’d like to use my Flickr account as a showcase for my best shots and Yahoo Photos for photos of family/friends and “out takes”.

27. Jeffrey Yang
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 9:09 am

    Is Yahoo photos going to have an open API for developers as flickr does? I’m currently blogging with wordpress and I have an album plugin that uses the flickr API to get the pictures from my flickr account. This alone would prevent me from switching over to yahoo photos even though I would prefer not paying for a service.

28. Corey
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 9:22 am

    The “smart albums” idea looks like it’s borrowed from Apple’s iPhoto, with a feature of the same name. Nice to see other apps picking it up!

29. Eddie A
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 9:23 am

    I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I don’t see any image/link for the beta when I log in, just the same old UI… I have already set up an account with Yahoo! Photos, but shouldn’t give me first shot at the beta? Frustrating to not be able to get in and play with the new toys…!!

30. Daniel
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 10:31 am

    Well, I just signed up for the beta. Although it told me that it could take up to 10 days for the “conversion”.

31. Eddie A
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 10:38 am

    Is there a specific link to the signup form that I could just go directly to?

32. Rostislav Siryk
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 10:40 am

    2Alan O’Rourke: You can find this list in here: http://www.demo.com/demonstrat.....63052.html in “Competitors” section.

    BTW, Y!’ve started accepting joining Beta Already! I’ve clicked the “Join Beta” link in my photos.yahoo.com and have got a response of enabling my access to beta in 10 days. Can’t wait to try it :):):)

33. William Morris
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 10:58 am

    The drag and drop features and AJAX style photo management has been in AOL Pictures for well over a year now… Check it out at pictures.aol.com. We put this out last July, and have made many enhancements since.
    It’s also free, unlimited storage, good organization.
    –Will– (AOL)

34. AP
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 1:08 pm

    THe new URL when service is provisioned for those who BETA is: http://new.photos.yahoo.com/

35. Darren
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 2:42 pm

    Hmm…where’s the purple cow (to borrow Seth Godin’s phrase)? I think photo sharing has gotten mature enough that a new service has to be pretty revolutionary to cause a signficant amount of users to migrate.

    New services (and possibly new versions of services like Yahoo’s new offering) are going to have to be exceptional or go after the non-photo-sharers of the world.

36. gary smith
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 4:47 pm

    Yahoo has also been beta testing Yahoo Photos on their mobile site since April.
    See:
    http://www.resourceshelf.com/2.....ss-to.html

37. robin
    

    June 8th, 2006 at 7:52 pm

    the largest online photo site is NetEase Photo (网易相册) with nearly 41 million unique monthly visitors. it has chinese version only, so users are almost chinese.
    http://photo.163.com/

38. Eddie A
    

    June 9th, 2006 at 10:21 am

    Well, for those of you who may be interested, I finally found a direct link to to the opt-in form:

    http://feedback.new.photos.yahoo.com/optin

    Eddie

39. Jnetty
    

    June 9th, 2006 at 12:05 pm

    Yahoo Photos free and unlimited everything, would make my Flickr Pro account not worth it anymore and they are the same company…
    messed up.

40. other
    

    June 10th, 2006 at 6:51 pm

    OMG. How long does it take for them to let people into the beta!?!?!?!?!?!?

    wtf is this “10 business days” thing? I’ve NEVER waited that long to get into a beta. Sheesh.

41. other
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 4:49 am

    i’m hesitant to use yahoo photos - from everything i’ve seen (unfortunately those bastards still haven’t invited me in) it looks amazing and i’ll fall in love with it, but I’m a google junky (mail, calendar mainly) and I know google will eventually come out with a badass product, so it’ll suck having to switch back over

42. Chey
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

    PLZ AND THANK U WILL U LET ME IN BETA!……u gotta u your manners if u want in! Thank u for your time in reading this…Good Day.

43. Michael K
    

    June 28th, 2006 at 11:26 am

    Unfortunately Yahoo Photos Beta does not seem to work with Firefox. Any attempt to load the photos in Firefox 1.5 (or the 2.0 beta) results in an error message informing the user to try again later.

    Works fine in Internet Explorer 6.0.

44. netster007x
    

    June 29th, 2006 at 11:55 am

    I don’t understand why Yahoo! owns and maintains two different photo services, flickr and Y! photos. Why not just pick which one is currently better, convert people’s pics to the service deemed superior, and update that?

    I use Y! photos because it integrates more into Y!, and when i started using it i didn’t know wat Flickr was.

    I CRAVE an update to Y! photos beta, but not as much as i craved Y! mail beta, as i use the photos much less. I hope i do get updated sometime soon, and not a year from now or something like that. Unfortunately, at&t always takes far longer to get the updates for these cool new features…

    HEY Eddie, just saw your link; i figured it probably wouldn’t work, like how the mail beta hack didnt work for at&t, but i think it did. I hit the sign up button and it said to wait 10 buisiness days and for now when i go to photos.yahoo.com it says…

    “Error
    CHECK_MIGRATION”

    …So i think it will work THANKS so much!!!

45. netster007x
    

    June 29th, 2006 at 11:57 am

    OMG, its AWSOME!!!

    It said it’d take 10 buisiness days. It only took 10 seconds!!!!!!!

    YES, I LOVE IT, THANKS EDDIE

46. netster007x
    

    June 29th, 2006 at 12:02 pm

    works perfectly for me with Fx 1.5.0.4

47. ABCD
    

    July 4th, 2006 at 1:21 am

    how can i switch from Beta version to the old version of Yahoo photos

48. mark amato
    

    July 5th, 2006 at 1:21 pm

    “how can i switch from Beta version to the old version of Yahoo photos”

    YOU CAN”T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It says it all over the place when you join beta.

    “There are four important things you must know before you decide to join the beta:

    1. 1. This is a one-way ticket!
    Your account in the New Yahoo! Photos Beta will replace your current Yahoo! Photos account (we’ll move your existing account for you). Once you’re in the beta, you can’t go back to the old version.”

    Then you have to click a box next to—-

    “I understand that once I’m in the beta I can’t go back to the old Y! Photos, and I still want in!”

    They didn’t exactly trick you now did they

49. Tim Do
    

    July 5th, 2006 at 4:46 pm

    Does the CHECK_MIGRATION error stay until I’m completely switched to the beta?? So basically I’m down for 10 days?! This blows!

50. ravi
    

    July 18th, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    cheers to eddie a, been looking for a direct link to join for ages. now lets see how long the 10 business days take.

51. Grant
    

    July 20th, 2006 at 5:02 am

    Will the new beta keep the original high resolution photos like Flickr does?

52. John
    

    July 21st, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    Your company has made up-loading photos so difficult for the average YAHOO user , aka : ME
    I want to go back to the easy photo up-load
    so i can just Double-click and attach a picture
    Make with

53. Adedayo Adeyinka Kamaldeen
    

    August 9th, 2006 at 10:24 am

    No comment 4 now since i have not asset it well.

54. Adedayo Adeyinka Kamaldeen
    

    August 9th, 2006 at 10:24 am

    No comment 4 now since i have not asset it well.

55. Seo Update
    

    October 7th, 2006 at 9:51 am

    How can i reach the old one?

56. pravinchary
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 4:57 am

    very nice

57. UK Hosting
    

    October 26th, 2006 at 4:33 am

    Hello Jüri Kaljundi,

    Many people avoid unlimited space and bandwidth because it does not exist and bandwidth is a commodity that someone needs to pay for eventually. The term unlimited is only a marketing strategy go through the TOS of companies offering unlimited bandwidth and you will find some restrictions after all nothing in the world is unlimited.

58. Michael
    

    October 27th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

    I found a cool additional service on Yahoo Photos. This service allows you get an archive of photos from Yahoo Photos account or send a gift. I used it to send a gift for my friends and get an archive of my shots. And not is for a free. They told for limited time only. Do not know is it free now. http://yahoo.backupr.com

59. richard
    

    February 20th, 2007 at 11:08 am

    thanks ..