Sniptools

All ye “Youtube-killers” step aside.

TechCrunch is reporting (while at a meal at a conference — I presume the content of the presentations was better than that on the plate) that Yahoo! will soon announce the killing of Yahoo Photos, allowing users to move to an alternative service.

This is valiant and very much in the good spirit of social media, even if Flickr gets a one-click transfer for obvious reasons and is thus the most sensible option for users of Yahoo Photo. The combined service will have a user base of about 50-60 million, depending on how many choose to stick around with Flickr. Both services have had features that make them endearing to their user base (I personally preferred Flickr of the two, but now, Google’s Picasa web thingie is the one to beat) so a merger of the two may have been just a painful process and perhaps an inefficient use of corporate resources.

But the more interesting tidbit is this last line that gets a short shrift in the piece:

That should be fun to watch. Literally too, but how it will play out against the much-loved-much-denigrated Youtube. This will be a little like Vimeo. I wonder if this will be integrated side by side, ala Picasa, or a separate tab in a user’s account. I guessing this is more the “short home videos people record” type video service, while YouTube will keep the “mashups/legal content/digital repository” side of things.

Either way, it is good to see Yahoo bringing its disparate services together in a way that Google very successfully has. If you use Upcoming, you’d have noticed it is already http://upcoming.yahoo.com/. It wouldn’t be surprising if Flickr will probably just use the functionality of Yahoo video.

This post is tagged Musings