It appears that a few days ago there was a slight change to Flickr’s logo: an addition of a small Yahoo logo to the right side so it reads “Flickr from Yahoo.” In response, many Flickr users have taken to the photo-sharing site’s forums to express their horror at Yahoo’s branding on Flickr.
The underlying fact is that Flickr users, many of whom are techy hipsters, just don’t mix well with “middle America Yahoo” as Bartz put it a few days ago at the unveiling of Yahoo’s $100 million marketing campaign about “Y!ou.” Bartz said to a roomful of journalists and bloggers:
“When you get outside New York and Silicon Valley, everyone loves Yahoo. I just want to transplant all of you guys out of your cynicism. What is wrong with you guys?. Go be cynical about frickin’ Google. You got me pissed off.”
Yahoo also got into a bit of a sticky situation with users when it removed a photoshopped image posted on Flickr of President Barack Obama that makes him look like the Heath Ledger (Joker) character from The Dark Knight. Flickr took the image down, citing a DMCA notice, adding that “We very much value freedom of speech and creativity.” Thomas Hawk had a good overview of all the gory details.
Strangely, the company not only took down the image, but also removed the Flickr page and comments, even though this isn’t required by the DMCA. And then, in what was a totally contradictory move, Yahoo shut down the forum discussions about the political controversy, cutting off further political discourse about the image.
Judging from the comments in the discussions surrounding the (re)branding of Flickr, users don’t want to be reminded that Yahoo bought Flickr. On the forum, users call Yahoo “stale” and think the logo is “horrifying” and “ugly” with many writing that they’d rather ignore the fact that Yahoo even owns Flickr. It’s kinda sad that even though Yahoo owns one of the most popular photo-sharing sites on the web, Flickr’s users would rather not be reminded of that fact. Perhaps Yahoo should start to make nice with its younger, hipster users that reside outside of middle America.
And here’s something for laughs—a funny mockup from a community member:
It’s a little much. This type of showboating is usually best reserved for a website’s footer
No need for it whatsoever. Yahoo didn’t create Flickr, they just bought it. Having said that though, if I owned a brand like Flickr, i’d like to show it off.
Cry me a river. They own it, they can brand it. Since when do you decide what’s best for a company you don’t even work for? Opinionated loudmouthed d-bags, the lot of you.
Agree entirely
Though it is a company’s decision to brand or not, this sucks. Flickr logo looked well as such. And everyone knows that Yahoo owns Flickr. Why this sudden branding?
And the funny mockup is really good
Talk about not getting it! I don’t see a bunch of d-bags complaining and having no lives, I see a whole lot of very passionate users! There is a thriving community of flickr users and you must have one hell of a great product on your hands if this kind of branding change causes such commotion. This is an excellent opportunity for Yahoo to make inroads and connect with their hipster flickr users. Talk to them.
They bought Flickr, but then they expanded it significantly. It’s not like it just sat there and hummed along freely. Yahoo’s put some serious resources into the site, keeping it stable and actively growing. They’ve earned a right to call it their own.
Uh… What?
Other than money, what resources have they poured into Flickr?
The branding thing is their right, but it’s also retarded. No one cares if a cab is a checker or a yellow. No one cares if their favorite show is on CBS or FOX. And we certainly don’t care that Yahoo is paying the electric bill for Zimbra and Flickr enough to, you know, have their logo start to creep into the interface everywhere.
And yes, there are also a ton of people who joined these services initially because they were NOT Yahoo… Totally understandable that they should mourn the apparent impending death of their favorite indie service…
other than money … lol
…do you know ANYTHING about the start-up world of which both Flickr and Yahoo! are a part
other than money – funniest thing i’ve read all night
Other than air, what do you breath?
Other than money? Not that money isn’t important but others have addressed that.
How about successfully expanding storage and computational power at server farms? Better uptime? The great uploaded tool? Adding the ability to store video? The wonderful integration with Picnic they’ve added?
The complainers strike me as the same folks who think a band is cool and great…. until they actually start to sell albums. Ya know, U2 was cool until they sold out with that Joshua Tree albumn. Muse was wonderful for their first couple of albumns but now they suck…. ya know, those folks.
Yahoo isn’t showing it off… they’re slowly sinking it. Like King Midas in reverse.
ok have to ask…
Whats with the pictures via your name link?
Why do you people care so much? You must lead the most boring lives in the world.
It’s the whole iPhone, Mac, Firefox, Microsoft Sucks because it’s Mainstream America type people. It makes me wanna puke
Umm, not anymore than you. Read my other comment.
We bought this frickin’ company we can do whatever we want with it. Flickr users can Fuckr off if they dont like it. You got me pissed off.
+1 for the word “Fuckr”
Dang, someone already has http://www.fuckr.com/. Kinda obviously.
+2
It was bad enough that I had to dig up my YahooID from middle school to sign in when Flickr was purchased. This is just cruel.
+1
give them credit for not killing it at least…
+2
More Yahoo bashing from TechCrunch. What a surprise. Leena, why all the hate?
Middle America — does that refer to the 50% whose IQ is less than 100?
Go read the comments on Yahoo Buzz, especially any political submission. You will find your answer pretty quickly.
Studies show that 50% of Americans are below the mean American IQ score.
You mean “median”.
No – he means mean.
haha, oh the irony…
Even more irony… Proper punctuation would have been “median.” That is, unless mathprof is British. UK & US punctuation differ on that one.
No… He meant mean. The mean is the average. The “median” is the middle number.
Cheese and Rice what is the world coming to?
+1 for being right (even dumb old me figured he meant mean) and for the image of people in real life saying “cheese and rices”. i’m gonna use that phrase now. lol.
No actually I meant the mean. “Median” would be a little obvious, wouldn’t it? (excluding, of course, people AT the median).
Noticed the new logo a while back and didn’t like it a bit but I think Yahoo won’t revert this change and Flickr users will get back to business as usual..
yeah anyone who’s been on flickr knows that yahoo has been trying over time to add whatever imprint they could on flickr. this one is quite bold and from a design perspective too messy which would make it a fail, but i was just getting used to their Y!
I agree with Sean. It’s a bit too “look at us” feeling. I would rather see the logo in the footer or someplace less in your face. After all Yahoo! did not build the flickr community, they just paid for it.
Well the Flickr “community” is just a bunch of hacker hobbyists. The kind of people that need to see 50 people post a comment like “great photo!”. It’s a consumer site with consumer branding. Pretty funny that these people have this pride about that POS website.
Yahoo put their name on a service they run. Big whoop. Is the number of cry babies really over 5% of Flickr’s users? Doubt it (else that is another embarrassment for Humans v1.0)
I’ve been reading the message boards and trying to get angry about this, but for some reason… I just can’t.
Isn’t Flickr a bit of a “loss-leader” (to put it kindly) for Yahoo?
Maybe this change is just to exhaust all the Flickrnuts so that they won’t have enough energy left to complain about Flickr going to a tiered subscription model?
Shouldn’t flickr users be thankful to Yahoo! for keeping flickr going and free all these years?
Aside from the Obama image issue, haven’t flickr users remained a happy and dedicated bunch? Hasn’t Yahoo! made improvements to flickr over the last 4 years?
Isn’t flickr (in some way) the future of Yahoo!? One of the gem’s in Yahoo!’s crown?
I think Yahoo! should be able to brand their web properties to show the world that they aren’t finished. That they still exist and are relevant.
BUT… that Yahoo! logo is a bit large and does encroach on the flickr brand more than it should. Maybe they should just shrink it down a bit.
“Shouldn’t flickr users be thankful to Yahoo! for keeping flickr going and free all these years? ”
Agreed. Internet users these days can’t remember what it was like to actually pay for stuff. Everyone just expects stuff for free. Free is always a good loss-leader but at some point businesses need to make money to keep delivering all those free products.
I think most of us GenXers get that. It is the GenY crowd that believes they are entitled to everything – now and free. Jackasses.
Go do something that involves actually “earning” and stop expecting the world to bow down.
Yeah, like their old yahoo photos which let you host unlimited number of photos instead changed to flickr with a per month upload limit and already established price structure.
So yeah it’s nice of them to still let Flickr members pay money and continue letting Flickr be a popular site?
lol. you remember y!phots!!!! i loved y!photos and was so sad when it became flickr, but now i like flickr because i can go there and use it for research. flickr is much more of a community than y!photos.
“Shouldn’t flickr users be thankful to Yahoo! for keeping flickr going and free all these years?”
Since when is Flickr FREE??? It costs more than $24.95/year for the pro version and the “Free” version is filled with ads just like anything else on the web. Should we also thank Google for keeping Search going and “Free” all these years?
Flickr is its own brand, just like Britney … LEAVE IT ALONE!
And just like Britney, I assume her label puts their logo on CD, posters, and anywhere else they can.
I’m not a user of Britney either.
Yes, usually it’s in the footer. Just not in Flickr’s case.
“It costs more than $24.95/year for the pro version”
No. It costs exactly $24.95.
See all those “PRO” icons besides the user names of the vast majority of people protesting?
Those are all *paying* customers.
Flickr is one of the most successful sites in getting users to pay for premium services.
FLICKRFROMYAHOO.COM is available! For $10.69 on godaddy, you can hold them hostage. Go for it.
way to go, Daniel Catt !
http://www.netw...krfromyahoo.com
who cares???????????
are people really bothered by this? I bet if it said “from Apple, people would be busting a nut.
Its all about the sheep, billy. you nailed it.
Here is a simple thought for everyone here – Use what works for you and mind your own biz.
I’m glad I’m a cynical Google PIcasa user. Fuckr Flickr, and Yahoo both.
Google bought Picasa http://www.goog...rel/picasa.html
The colors definitely clash from a design perspective. The Yahoo! part is all pixelated as well and looks like it was scaled wrong. It almost makes me wonder if someone at Flickr didn’t purposely go out of their way to make the new logo look horrible as a sort of personal protest for having to attach the Yahoo part on.
While I personally think the new logo looks pretty fugly, it’s less of a concern to me than the censorship stuff.
The fact that Flickr has placed secret flags on some of my images to hide them from search and other public areas of the site and the fact that they’ve seemed now to have permanently banned me from the Flickr Help forum suck worse in my opinion.
Elisa Steele said that the “new” Yahoo was supposed to be about “me” and yet Yahoo! still hates me as much as ever. Yahoo/Flickr should learn to embrace their most active users and not take criticism so personally.
It’s too bad, Flickr wasn’t always that way.
Oh, at least one ex-Flickr employee seems to like the new look by the way.
http://www.flic...e5/#reply692711
Fugly, fuckr words all over…yes, Flickr employees could have done better with the logo integration. And this looks like Yahoo saying, “me, my, my flickr” all of a sudden!
Do they want to yell that they are on top when it comes to web albums?
I agree Thomas…
While this critique is towards a bad design decision, Flickrs other issues seriously concerns me.
Openness and transparency is key and certainly a must when communicating with your users. It’s all about respect. Mutual respect. For me Flickr has lost a lot of the goodwill it once had. I was a Pro user and now I’m just moments away to deleting my account.
Flickr/Yahoo has some serious management issues…
The first Flickr employee to speak up on the issue seems to be Heather Champ who seems to suggest that Flickr did this to “”quell those weird intermittent stories that bubble up that Yahoo! is on the verge of pulling the plug on the Flickrverse.” (her words, not mine).
That seems a bit disingenuous to me. I think Flickr probably did it because Yahoo told them too because they think that Yahoo will somehow benefit from the branding.
nice of heather to be the first to pipe up. i agree with the other commenter about this fucken header and i also agree with you about this lucking ugly. you can’t just combine both the logos. it doesn’t make any design sense. think before you do. UGH!
Flickr users are hip? Give me a break. Talk about a holier-than-thou mentality.
jeez good to know you took the bait. yeah all the old farts and young twats using flickr must be young and hip and not from middle america.
why do users care … unless they pay for it
“Retaliate” is a tad sensational, no? Nobody has attacked them. “Users Complain” is more like it.
This might be a good time for Google to make Picasa a real contender.
Picasa is an absolute chore to use compared to Flickr. Not even in the same ballpark. It would take some MAJOR improvement.
Yeah, it would be nice if Google really did something with Picasa. I have an account there as well as one on Flickr, and Flickr’s community, as well as the site itself (in terms of features, navigation, etc.) is just *better*.
It was a major disappointment when Google passed up the chance to buy Flickr and let Yahoo take it instead. YouTube always seemed like it was a Yahoo property (lowest common denominator, full of morons, ugly), while Flickr always seemed like Google (premium service, friendly community, well-designed site). In a parallel universe, things went the way they were supposed to and everyone is happy.
i wish i could use pisca. it’s too complicated…it’s even worse than the online versions of photoshop and other online photosharing sites. pisca interface is a huge no.
I thought an important element of website design was the testing. Let them try it and see if it works. No need to go all Justine Bateman on Yahoo.
I can very easily understand why such “retaliations” occured, why on Flickr, why to Yahoo! … But if this post above is more than “breaking news”, it’s a bad post, bad analysis.
Who cares, its still the same product!
Are you kidding me? Why are people freaking out about this. You LOGIN using your YAHOO ID. Anyone who doesn’t understand that Yahoo owns Flickr is not paying attention. I clicked this link thinking there must be more to this headline than the way it reads. Unfortunately, this mole hill is only a mole hill. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. They own it. Why shouldn’t be put their brand on it. Wouldn’t you? Move on to more inportant things, people.
I was forced to use yahoo id when it started doing that. I was happily using it without yahoo id at first.
Did you cry at first, freeloader?
It’s interesting that some web brands like Yahoo feel compelled to stamp their mark on all of their various properties. Why not leave well enough alone?
Vitamin Water doesn’t stamp the Coke word mark prominently on the bottle; Mini Cooper dealerships don’t have the BMW propeller plastered on their signage; Cole Hans don’t bear the Nike swoosh.
Why not let web brands live independently if the air of independence is an important quality of that brand? Is the BMW brand worth less because their mark isn’t on the Mini Cooper brochures? Is Nike’s?
Srsly? This qualifies as news?
And in other breaking news, PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS BITCH ABOUT SOMETHING no matter how trivial.
Damn, people will bitch about anything.
By adding that bit in the logo:
1) it makes the loading time longer
2) it makes the site look dumber (which is from very cool to very bad)
3) it makes me hate the site
Somehow a 2k update (if that) on page that houses 20 – 50 jpgs at any given time seems a tad dramatic. You’ll live.
what’s the big deal?
Here’s what’s going to happen next:
http://twitpic.com/iw21v
I’m a Flickr user, and could care less about the Yahoo logo as long as the product still gets the job done.
+1
The worst part about using Flickr is that you have to have a Yahoo! ID. I just want a Twitter login and password. Branding only reminds me of this
Big deal. If they have not changed any features or functionality, why be upset?
I like what yahoo is doing – especially like the new mail UI.
They paid 35MM for flickr. If they want to put their logo on it, I think they have earned that right.
Keep it up Y!
They paid cheap!
How many of the ‘retaliating’ users are paying users?
…..exactly
95% of them…
…exactly
Thomas Squawk, who works for Flickr copycat Zooomr, doesn’t like something Flickr is doing? Shocking!
How did Y!’s brand become so lame in such a short time span?
no they’ve always had a shit logo but it was the treng at that time…even google tried their own version of shit logo with crap font and style. i don’t think there’s any hope for yahoo design-wise.
Flickr had free accounts before Yahoo! came along, just to let you know. Also, they would have done fine without them.
yeah but people forget. i miss not knowing that i needed a yahoo account to sign in to flickr. so much has changed. i think yahoo has managed flickr alright and the site has improved, but i still wish it could remain seperate. i guess it’s not possible especially with all the rumours about yahoo chopping flickr like how they do everything else they acquire. i do appreciate heather champ commenting on this but i don’t buy her explanation. i think it’s a perfect moment to get all this Y! crap uniform bradning done all at once to coincide with their Y!ou plan. they’re already tried this yahoo imprint on flickr and they mostly settler with just the Y!…but this one especially in the header is unbecoming. i mean it’s okay if they are testing it, but if i would test it by opening an account, having various examples and maybe allow the community and other flickr visiters to vote. they can even link it on the explore page or the log in page.
It also goes to show that there is no such thing as a logo that will every be “acceptable” to a community of designers & photographers.
These are, by nature, and impossible group to please…unless they design it themselves (personally).
There’s no reason to bitch until it breaks, and then only when you’re paying for it.
(Ahem! Google’s latest round of Gfail for Apps users today, perhaps?)
this is true. artists are a bitchy bunch, but we do it for good reason and i bet not all the commentors are artists, although a good portion of them probably are, kinda like the one’s protesting ikea going verdana (snicker). if we’re really going to talk design then this header link of two brands is just complete crap unless they redo both brand so that it is more cohesive, change colours, change fonts, sizes, etc… and they have a good source in their own flickr community. it would be good for them to get feedback. the actual yahoo logo needs to change.
Ouch!
silly move by yahoo. would tata ever consider putting their logo on a jaguar?
Thanks for the post.
But I was wondering, is it still hip to use the word hipster?
Keep up the great work at TechCrunch. We love you guys!
no it is not. even indie emo kids with their skinny jeans and black nail polish and mascera plus latest trend style, don’t say hipster.
People are such a-holes when you get right down to it. They own the site, they can brand it, if you don’t like it go and start your own site and call it “Unbranded Site to Place Your Photos That NO ONE Cares About On” (brought to you by some hipster with way too much time on his hands).
Flickr has bigger issues than who owns the f’n place — get over it.
the only time i ever go on yahoo is when you guys write about them and i want to figure out what they actually do.
if bartz wants efficiency savings why doesnt she just do the simple thing, close everything down/sell everything off and live off the advertising businesses. rightmedia etc.
terrible thing to do, but it would push up share prices and dividends in the short term. which is what she was hired to do.
Sorry, no mather what you say. Putting “from Yahoo!” after the Flickr logo appears desperate to be relevant…
I loved Yahoo! once. Today I think they’re not relevante anymore… and everything that has its logo (like what they did with Geocities like 10 years ago) crashs after a while…
They just make it toooo much about the revenue and forget that even bigger revenues comes with attention to detail and consumer respect…
Bye bye to Flickr… and to my 5000 images hosted there…
I’m not really sure what the big deal is. Flickr made a minor change, a vocal minority hates change for the sake of hating change, but nothing will happen and everyone will go on with their lives. This is something that pretty that every company that has ever supported a community website goes through.
no. lol. people do not spend time and money on logos, company signature, planning and branding for MINOR changes. this is a big change. fact is it’s really nothing new except that it looks like crap, it has from there, they didn’t do anything to fix it so the two brands are either uniform or cohesive, and it’s in the header with is basically what people see first on a page. they’ve been working this yahoo imprint on flickr for a while now and i guess it seems like this is the perfect moment for them to strike while the plans are hot. i mean did you hear about their Y!ou campaign, which is craptastic?
Flickr hasn’t been Flickr since they fired George. The reason I don’t have a Flickr account is a Yahoo ID is required, and I won’t do it. Yahoo is evil right down to the kernal.
–Ax
Super skilled and the best vision. Where is she now?
I believe George is now with archive.org, still rocking the free world.
People sure know about to bitch on much ado about nothing
Its a goddamn logo – what the hell is wrong with people.
lol same thing happened with ikea and they changed FONTS. ahahahaa. i love people. people suck but you gotta love them cause they care about everything.
I think the issue here is that Flickr has created a unique and outstanding brand (never mind a Web 2.0 naming meme). It’s difficult to see how co-branding the service benefits Flickr, especially given Yahoo’s current troubles. This just feels wrong in the same way that ‘Lexus from Toyota’ logo or ‘MySpace from News Corp.’ would benefit the parent company while hurting the product’s brand.
A rose by any other name.
Wrong…
A rose by Monsanto
Now go sell your rose…
Who cares? It works just the same. Wa waaaa waaa
Is that her? Any way to confirm that?
Look the fact is if you don’t like Yahoo you don’t like Flickr. We bought it we made it great and we continue to make it better. More people visit Yahoo.com than ANY other website. Google cant say that nor can Facebook…lol Wise up so called Techie’s?
you’re an idiot. I hate Yapoo. I love Flickr. And I have paid for my Flickr since the third day I was there, back in 2004. Y did NOT make it great, in fact certain aspects are worse. Y has changed the whole feel of the community that used to be Flickr.. and no not for the *better*.
PS the only time i have visited yahoo.com was when I clicked on that ugly ass icon by mistake. Adblock took care of that for me now, though.
I’m glad you posted, because I was trying to figure out who Bartz is. Why doesnt TechCrunch identify people like normal journalists?
i think it’s interesting that yahoo doesn’t use purple for its corporate logo.
We’re in the middle of 2 wars & a major economic crisis & they bitch about this?
Give it a few days and they’ll forget all about this and be bitching about something equally irrelevant.
People complain. As far as I know, no government in the history of man has ever even considered outlawing the practice amongst its citizenry.