Yahoo Photos Updated With Limited Beta Testing
Yahoo is answering its promise to keep control and dominance of the social media spectrum with the new rollout of the “Flickrization” of Yahoo Photos (very limited beta testing). Chocked full of Flickr goodness with tags (comma separated!), ratings, comments, details and sharing; Yahoo Photos is gathering some rave reviews from the limited beta testing of its much awaited (for the past 6 years) update.
The most powerful aspect of Yahoo’s latest ‘2.0’ updates to Yahoo Video, Yahoo MyWeb and Yahoo Photos is that Yahoo has polished the geeky features of Web 2.0 into something concrete and useful for their millions upon millions of Yahoo registered users. Yahoo first saw this success in their Yahoo Answers offering, and is building upon its ease of use, fun and adaptation.
They’ve deconstructed Flickr & Photos down to their cores – and released a tool that almost any Yahoo user will be able to easily navigate and take advantage of. Yahoo has taken its time with its transition from Yahoo Portal Channels to Yahoo Social Channels; and the patience they have showed is paying off.
This is a quickie here from SEJ as I’m currently in route to dinner and then a drive to JFK Airport, but here are the opinions of some of the most respected Yahoo’rs, 2.0 freaks and search gurus in the blogosphere.
Joe Beaulaurier of the Unofficial Yahoo Weblog :
When first accessing the new Y! Photos property, you have easy access to the three primary functions – add photos, select your own photos using tags or preassigned albums, and view your friends’ photos. Speaking of friends, how are they assigned in the new Y! Photos? They can come from your Y! 360 friends, Flickr contacts, Y! Messenger contacts and your Y! Address Book.
So far, it’s truely impressive. The new Y! Photos is smartly designed for the family user who wants to collect their photos, print them occasionaly at Target and on coffee mugs. They want to give their friends access and to view photos their friends want to share but they are not trying to reveal their photo collection to the world. And that is the principal difference between those who will like Flickr (global exposure/RSS feeds) and those who will like Y! Photos (sharing with friends and family).
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch :
The new functionality brings in the best of Flickr (lots of Ajax, features like tagging and sets, and the ability to drag and drop photos) as well as new stuff that Flickr doesn’t have. Unlimited free uploading and bandwidth, full quality uploading (and downloading), and point and click tag editing. Two additional features – lots of pictures shown on a single page (see screen shots), and something called “smart albums”. Smart albums allow dynamic creation of albums based on rules (ratings, tags, date, etc.), and also allow inclusion of photos from friends. With smart albums, users can create albums like “highly rated” or “new” that will always be created on the fly.
Yahoo Photos is the largest online photo site with nearly 31 million unique monthly visitors (compare to Flickr’s 16.5 million). Flickr is for the early adopters. Yahoo photos used to be for the masses, but a few early adopters may be giving it a try, too.
Harry McCracken of PC World :
All this feels a bit like a more mainstream version of Yahoo’s Flickr, and while it’s not Flickr–which will continue on–the Yahoo folks I talked to said they learned from that service’s success.
Only a limited number of users will get access to the new Yahoo Photos at first. Yahoo says it plans to completely replace the aging current version of Yahoo Photos with this one sometime this summer.