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August 17, 2006

Yahoo! Photos to leave beta today

Marshall Kirkpatrick

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The market leading Yahoo! Photos is launching the new version of its site today, we had screen shots in a February post. The beta version of the site came online in June. The new version of the site includes tagging of photos, smart folders, ajax drag and drop photo organizing, single click tag editing and a simple photo editor. Storage space in Yahoo! Photos is free, though early users of the new system are reporting that there is still a 300 image limit to albums and a 5MB limit to individual photo size. The new site will be limited to US users for now but will roll out to users around the rest of the world in coming months, according to InfoWorld’s coverage.

Yahoo! Photos is reported to have 30 million users, while Webshots and Photobucket have 19 million users and Flickr approximately 2.5 million.

Accounts at Yahoo! Photos are free and will be monetized by advertisements and printing options. We reported in February that users will be able to pick up prints at Target stores, as Flickr users can, and presumably by postal mail as well. Mobile use of the system will also be featured in a partnership with AT&T.

Today may also be the day that Yahoo! Photos unveils its long awaited API. The company has said for months that it was on its way. The huge user base of Yahoo! Photos could make it a particularly appealing target for outside developers, though the fact that the user base is largely made up of non-early adopters could mitigate that excitement.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction to features like tagging and ajax is by the huge base of non-early adopters Yahoo! Photos. The company has said that some integration of Yahoo! Photos with Flickr will be forthcoming but that the sites will not be merged together due to the different types of users for each.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 7:47 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Jeremy Pepper

    August 17th, 2006 at 7:55 am

    Market leading?

  2. EP

    August 17th, 2006 at 8:11 am

    I love what Yahoo has done. Looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.

  3. Mike Welch

    August 17th, 2006 at 8:28 am

    How many photo sharing sites does yahoo need?

  4. Cruncher

    August 17th, 2006 at 8:52 am

    Always curious why two products for the same? yahoo photoes and flickr? what are the diferrent needs? Is it really working.

  5. Slava

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:08 am

    Cruncher: I don’t think you can view other people’s photos on Yahoo Photos. (can you?). Y! Photos is mostly for sharing photos with your friends (via email invites) and if you want to open up your images to the world for viewership and feedback then that’s what Flickr is for.

  6. Scott Schiller

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:28 am

    You can make photos or albums public and viewable at your public URL, eg.

    http://photos.yahoo.com/idliketowork/

    You can also share albums via email invites as noted.

  7. Mike Welch

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:46 am

    This service doesn’t even come close in features or options to sites like http://www.smugmug.com or countless others.

  8. Peter

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:50 am

    I was also curious why Y! photos and Flickr remain separate, but the reason, as pointed out by Marshall, is something as simple as market segregation. Flickr and Yahoo! photos, in general, host very different types of users.

    Flickr users are generally the “tech-saavy” sort, and may into computer/design or something similar, and a lot of them have a blog. Flickr’s also very community-oriented, making it easy to discover other people’s photos and comment on them. In this way, Flickr is more like a community.

    Yahoo! photos is mainstream - this is evidenced by their huge (numerically) user base. These people, as pointed out, are just looking to share photos with friends/family and usually not with the whole world, though that is an option. There’s no real options to browse/discover other people’s photos. Thus, Yahoo! Photos is less like a community than just a personal service.

    Combining the two probably wouldn’t be good - besides the technical issues and time it would take, users probably wouldn’t like the result, even it “compromised” between the two - Flickr users would feel it to be “dumbed down” and regular users wouldn’t “get it”. In this way, it’s better to separate the niche from the mainstream.

    On another note, I’ve been trying Y! photos out since about June, (mostly just using it for online archival purposes), and the interface is pretty slick - drag and drop selection for photos, mass-edit/delete options. (Though there’s a hamster-dance reference instead of the regular Ajax activity indicators - ack!)

  9. El Guapo

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:59 am

    I think the new Yahoo photos sucks:

    - Clicking on an image thumbnail does not show the full image (you have to double-click it!). This is web blasphemy. Why break a universally understood and accepted user interface? This boggles the mind.

    - There is no way to link directly to an album slideshow.

    - The advertisements are overwhelming and totally distracting.

    I still use it because it has unlimited free uploads of any image size. But the new site really irks me. I’m looking for something better that is still free. Any suggestions?

  10. Brian

    August 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am

    It doesn’t look like it’s public yet. And I don’t know how long it’s been here. But: there is now a Yahoo! Photos Services site on the Yahoo! Dev site.
    http://developer.yahoo.com/photos/

    So, it looks like the API is on its way!

  11. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    August 17th, 2006 at 10:24 am

    Brian, very cool. Thanks.

  12. Thyaga

    August 17th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    I actually have been using Yahoo! Photos for a while and the reason why i haven’t moved to the more “tech-savvy” sites such as Flickr/Picasa/Riya is the pain in transferring my photos there. Wonder, if all my photos on Yahoo! will automatically show up in Flickr ?

    Having said that, it is great that Yahoo! Photos has undergone a face lift - many features in the previous version used to work fine in IE (drag and drop, rearrange photos for example) but not in Firefox. Hopefully, they have got around that problem now.

  13. Colin C.

    August 17th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

    Wow, I’m actually surprised no one mentioned Zoomr in this thread/comments. It seems any time the word flickr pops up on TechCrunch that there is a plug in for Zoomr.

    On a side note, I’m also confused why Yahoo has 2 photo sites.

  14. Jude Matsalla

    August 17th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

    The YUI blog has a post about the new Y! Photos that includes a note about an app built on its API: http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/0.....ol-things/

  15. Joe

    August 17th, 2006 at 8:54 pm

    zooomr is nothing. I think zoto is great.

    Yahoo! photo’s unlimited storage of full size photo is better than any similar service.

  16. Baher

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:25 pm

    Yahoo Photos is one of the first Web 2.0 Services Yahoo decided to release for public use, despite its relatively short beta period, which gives a hint of its stability, and the dire need to release it as soon as possible in the face of heated competition, and for fear of losing their current users to more advanced services.

  17. Rajesh Segu

    August 18th, 2006 at 12:27 am

    Guys!!! I just got a trick to upgrade my normal yahoo photos account to Yahoo Photos Beta, just change your content type to Yahoo US!! and you would find a link to Join Beta on the top right hand side. If you want detailed steps , refer http://www.rajeshsegu.com/?p=208 .

    Initially it would take some time for migrating your old account to the latest…. so you could come across some glitches, dont panic, your information would never be lost.

    I have started playing with the new Y! Photos and I must confess that I am already in love with it……

    By the way, there is no mention of any storage space, does it mean its “UNLIMITED”, I personally doubt!!

  18. El Guapo

    August 19th, 2006 at 3:26 pm

    Zoomr is horrible, the upload system is absolutely a joke. You can only upload 5 images at a time, using a web form? You have to be kidding me.

  19. Ove

    August 21st, 2006 at 2:23 am

    My Yahoo! Photos accout is still not converted to the new version. I get a message “We’ve been putting the finishing touches on a big upgrade to Yahoo! Photos and it’s rolling out now. Your accout will be upgraded automatically - so check back soon”.

    Maybe it is coz I’ve a Norwegian account, xxxx@yahoo.no?

    Someone who knows when my accout will be converted?

  20. Brian

    August 21st, 2006 at 8:05 am

    I look forward to checking out the Yahoo! Photos API. I agree with Marshall’s comment that it could be particularly appealing target for outside developers. I don’t think the fact that the user base is largely made up of non-early adopters will mitigate the excitement too much.

  21. Rob Igo

    August 23rd, 2006 at 3:33 am

    Hi, I’ve tried switching to US - English on preferred content etc but now when I click “Join Beta” it gives me an error saying it’s being looked into.

    I have a question for the people who are using the beta. Is there any upload or storage limit. Is there a image size limit. THE MAIN question is - does yahoo now store your original size for you to recall/download at a later date (like my flickr account).

  22. Mark

    September 14th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

    I just discovered this website: http://www.venturecapitalconferences.com that has specially discounted tickets for next DEMO conference! Check it out

  23. Nerys

    December 26th, 2006 at 10:02 pm

    I have not yet received the Yahoo Photos upgrade. Any idea as to how I can get it? I also have a yahoo 360 page, my Yahoo photos have disappeared from my page. When I tried to put them back, I got the message that I had no Yahoo Photos to share. I have Several Yahoo Photos. For some reason, I can no longer display them on my yahoo 360 page. Any ideas there? Hope you have had a Blessed Holiday Season.

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