Everything about Yahoo seems vaguely up in the air right now. Ever since an employee leaked a slide show from a company presentation that revealed which parts of Yahoo were being sent to the graveyard, Yahoo fans have wondered at the fate of their most beloved services. After all, even immensely popular sites like Delicious were dropped because they were unprofitable and “didn’t fit with the company vision.” Another popular service that fans have been worried about is Flickr, but Yahoo representative Blake Irving has given us a solid response on Flickr’s livelihood.
This response came in the form of a Twitter post formed as a Q & A. “Q. Is Yahoo! committed to Flickr?” Irving began. “A. Hell yes we are! We love this product and team.” The post also confirmed that the Flickr product is profitable for the company.
This tweet may well have been a response from some fairly incorrect conclusions drawn by the Flickr user, Thomas Hawk, who estimated that Flickr only brings in about $50 million to Yahoo each year — which may not even be enough to cover the site’s cost, considering that they host something to the tune of five billion pictures. Hawk’s conclusions led to several news stories which questioned whether or not Flickr would survive.
In addition to this very clear “hell yes” from Irving (who, as the Chief Product Officer over at Yahoo, probably does know what he’s talking about), Flickr’s Director of Engineering (Cal Henderson) stated that Hawk had made calculations that were “deeply flawed” since they were based on pro membership fees rather than advertising and partnerships, which is Yahoo’s primary method of income on the site.
Regardless of the final facts and figures, one thing seems to be clear: There are plenty of Yahoo services to worry about, but Flickr is by no means one of them.
