Yahoo will close its Yahoo Photos service in favor of photo sharing darling Flickr, acquired by Yahoo a little over two years ago and considered by many a pioneer of the Web 2.0 wave of Internet innovation.
“People are changing the way they use photography, and we have decided to shift our focus accordingly. [Digital photography] is evolving from its original purpose as a means to preserve memories into a social activity that allows people to communicate and connect,” a Yahoo spokeswoman said via e-mail.
The reaction of Yahoo Photos users remains to be seen. Yahoo will keep the service operational for another three months and will provide migration services to Flickr as well as to third-party services like Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish and Photobucket. As an incentive, users who choose Flickr will get a free three-month subscription to its paid membership level.
I understand collective endeavor and direction easily enough. When political and social content barely equals Reality TV, I’m content to step aside and observe the flood proceeding along whatever predictable path.
I must admit to a bit of head-shaking over the large-scale cult of “connectivity” that threads religously through today’s Internet. From Digg to Twitter, Flickr to YouTube, I get more of a feeling of Jonestown than, say, the War of 1812.
Over the decades I’ve been online, the need to form “web communities” still confounds me. I understand how and why folks feel a need to overcome present-day alienation. I guess.
Stacking everyone together into a sort of hive mentality still feels to Borg-like.
#1
I agree with you moss, but hey… for a lot of people, group mentality is a way to hide their self. Just look at religion… a group of people gets together to share their ignorance and fear of dying. You see group mentality everywhere… just look at schools, work places… and sports for that matter. The communities online serves the same purpose…. “Hey, I’m a part of this community…”
I’m not apart of any community!
Oh yeah, I post on here all the time. Shit.
Flikr is banned in the UAE — which gets to be a bigger nuisance the more popular it gets.
Yahoo needs to reinvent it self to compete with other online properties.
Seting up a community creates additional
duplicate traffic which means more revenue bucks from advertisers. Its more of a cleaver numbers gimic than anything elese.
Communities, social networks,forums and blogs are great but not everyone wants you to know who is in thier private click.
Anyway some, not all the pics from the Tribeca Film Festival are up in my blog…
You know the saying, “The more things change, the more it remains the same.” Today’s “\web communities” is nothing more than yesterdays “BBS” system, providing all the basic interactive and connectivity and the saming of information, be it files, images, music, chatting, etc. The only difference today is the “GUI”, the presentation, the higher bandwidth and the wider user access (# of users that can reach you). But truth be told – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and all simple that – GIGANTIC BBSes!
I’m the CTO of what is basically the “Last Mohican” of the traditional BBS system – Wildcat! Interactive Net Server, the most successful BBS of all time, which I purchased from Jim Harrer (Mustang Software) in 1998. While many were skeptical of the purchase and the future, my vision was clear – we were all headed toward the day where each one of us will have a “Personal BBS” installed on our personal computers and connected as well. This web page is basically John’s Personal BBS.
But the evolution is not complete! There is more to come!
“…web communities” is nothing more than yesterdays “BBS” system…”
I agree with you about web user communities being much the same as BBS user communities. Unfortunately, I’m not the Sysop of the ‘Internet BBS’ and I miss the power and subsequent control.
I tried out Wildcat! from Mustang Software a couple of times and I liked it OK but I always went back to PCBoard. I think I owned every version of PCBoard, right up to v15.x.
#3
This is not a community…
Well Put Hector
While AOL, Prodigy, geni, delphi, BBS’s was late to the internet the internet was modeled after thier frame work only bigger and better…
Who says reinventing the wheel is a bad idea….Thats whats been happening for the past 20 years in tech…
PC board was a favorite but mustangee to the game, had the bells and whistles…