Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

It has been recently announced that Yahoo! has or is about to acquire Flickr, an online photo sharing company with over 250,000 members who, judging from their blog, are very loyal. While not confirmed, rumor has it that the deal was/is for $30 million.

When asked about the deal Yahoo! searches' Jeremy Zawodny wrote:

"Flickr has the potential to set the new standard for on-line photo sharing, management, etc. Why? Because Flickr...

1. does one thing and does it well
2. provides a clean and simple UI
3. has clear and helpful documentation
4. exposes core functionality with a documented API
5. account sign up is brain-dead simple
6. makes extensive and intuitive use of RSS
7. like del.icio.us, uses tags to help organize
8. doens't spam me with graphical/animated/flash ads or try to unexpectedly pop up any sort of window

In other words, it's developer friendly, user friendly, and is a web site as well as a "service" or "platform" (in the Web 2.0 sense) all at the same time.

It was around that time that I jokingly responded to every mention of Flickr at the office with "you know, we should buy them..." And I was only half joking.

Be careful what you wish for, right? :-)"

What does this mean for us in the SEO world? Just that Yahoo! is continuing to expand and is offering more and more services. I would (and will) be watching them very closely over the next year. What they may lack in search results (still good but not as good as MSN in my opinion) they make up for in services and added value for visiting them. This will draw more more visitors and loyal users which of course means more traffic for you and I from this engine. :)

You can read more about the deal on the Flickr blog at http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2005/03/yahoo_actually_.html.