
Yahoo Brands Flickr; Users Retaliate - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/yahoo-brands-flickr-users-retaliate/
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sachinag
You know, if Yahoo actually took advantage of the fact that people have
multiple accounts on its service, some active (Flickr, Mail), some dormant
(delicious, upcoming), and really fucking figured out a coherent user profile
strategy, they'd have something.

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eli
Aren't Flickr accounts already merged with Mail accounts (and the other Yahoo-
branded services)?

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Skeuomorph
Yes.

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there
_The underlying fact is that Flickr users, many of whom are techy hipsters_

awesome journalism

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maukdaddy
and entirely accurate. See also: Yelp.

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neilk
There is a difference between people who post reviews or complain on certain
forums, and the actual user population.

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prpon
May be if Yahoo put up a contest and asked Flickr users to create a logo with
Yahoo branding, it would have created a good PR, a better logo and time for
Flickr users to digest the fact that this is coming.

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DannoHung
Maybe they should've made a Yahoo logo especially for Flickr. The purple
staggered lettering does sort of clash with the blue and red flickr logo.

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idlewords
There's a hilariously detailed 50+ page internal style guide at Yahoo
explaining exactly what you can and can't do to the logo. These kinds of
decisions go all the way to the top at Yahoo! (exclamation mark obligatory),
which says a lot about the company.

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TrevorJ
What's awesome about that is that red was heavily tied into their brand
identity and purple came from nowhere and really un-does a lot of the brand
equity they have built up.

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neilk
Internally, Yahoo has always had purple and yellow as a theme. The legend is
that they were the cheapest colors at the store when Jerry and Filo were
setting up the office. Personally, I don't buy this; probably the real
explanation is that they deliberately chose eye-watering colors like every
other startup in the mid-90s.

They also say that the online Yahoo logo was made red because there wasn't a
good shade of purple on old Windows 3.1 computers. Remember those days?

In recent years, Yahoo has been dominated by more cheerleaders and corporate
climbers than do-ers, and purpleness has become an _obsession_. It's purple
purple purple everything there. Proof: the move to rebrand Yahoo as purple, a
color which users had never associated with the company before.

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indiejade
At least yahoo had the decency to let flickr live at <http://www.flickr.com>.
There's just no escaping the associations of <http://picasa.google.com>

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tsondermann
Were it only a logo change, I'd say much ado about nothing. It's the watermark
that's raising hackles. TC piece misses this entirely. See here:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/shellen/3951018593/>

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jsz0
With users like this who needs competitors? It's a bit unreasonable to
complain about a company branding a service they own.

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alex_c
Online service makes minor change, users complain. News at 11.

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buugs
Good for yahoo, lets see those techy hipsters flock to photobucket where
freedom reigns.

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lurkinggrue
Ummm... I'll stick to Flickr, thank you very much.

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buugs
I guess there really does need to be a universal sarcasm indicator on the
internet.

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lurkinggrue
You should have used the sarcasm font.

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kscaldef
It's been 5 years. I think it's time to let it go.

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barredo
Just because they changed the logo? It's been a Y! Company for years, it's
been yahoo-mail only login for more than a year.

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kscaldef
I think you misunderstood me. I know well that it's been a yahoo company for
years. Nearly 5 years, in fact. I'm suggesting that the people who are still
complaining about this need to get over it.

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barredo
Yes. I misunderstood you. Sorry :-(

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simonw
This will almost certainly blow over with a week or two. Remember when Flickr
added video and there were mass protests?

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look_lookatme
Even more, remember when Flickr transitioned to all users having to log in via
yahoo? A month after the drop date, no one really cared.

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roc
Does it even benefit Yahoo to put their finger-prints on Flickr?

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replicatorblog
It does let them show people who say Yahoo is lame, that they do have some
"hip" properties, that said, all their best stuff was bought not built.
However, I'm not sure most people care except some who read tech blogs.

