Update: The account has mysteriously vanished from Flickr. This suggests that it was either fake, or something that wasn’t meant to be as big of a news story as it was.

If you’re a fan of Flickr, then you’ll be happy to know that new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has apparently created an account on the photo sharing service. Granted, the page only features a single portrait of Mayer from her days as a Google exec, but it’s an important first step. Neither of Mayer’s two predecessors (Scott Thompson or Carol Bartz) bothered to join the service.
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Of the 5 people to take over the job of Yahoo! CEO over the last 5 years, Marissa Mayer is making the biggest splash. Maybe it’s because she’s six months pregnant and firing up the “working moms” debate, maybe it’s because she’s worth an approximate $300 million, or maybe it’s because she was Google’s 20th employee who’s been doing great work over there since 1999. From a photography perspective, however, the Dear Marissa Mayer movement isn’t hurting either. Read more…

There’s an overabundance of ways to share and organize your photos these days. From Flickr and 500px, to Facebook and Shutterfly, you can store and share your photos in many places. But according to Yahoo!, many people still use good ol’ fashioned e-mail. Yahoo!’s senior director of product management Dave McDowell said that over 500-million photos are sent through Yahoo! Mail every day, and so in an attempt to streamline that process and better cater to the needs of their 300-million users, Yahoo! has released a new photo sharing tool made just for Yahoo! Mail. Read more…

Over the last couple of days Google has been hosting the “Hangout In Real Life” Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, and if anything has come out of the conference at all, it’s that Google is intent on making Google+ the photo sharing service of the future.
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For those of us who remember it, Flickr was once an amazing place. More than just a website or a bucket of features, it was a vibrant community made up by professional photographers and amateur photo junkies alike. Before Facebook would even allow you to upload anything more than a profile picture, Flickr was the place you went to share your life in pictures. And then, at least according to an article on Gizmodo, Yahoo! happened. Read more…

After being spurned back in early 2008, Microsoft is supposedly on the hunt to acquire Yahoo once again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is working on putting a bid together with Silver Lake Partners, the company that Microsoft recently purchased Skype from. If the buyout succeeds this time, Microsoft will also become the owner of Flickr, which Yahoo purchased six years ago.

In other news, Google recently revealed that 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to Google+ in the past 100 days. Seems like the service is becoming a popular option for photo sharing.

(via WSJ via Mashable)

Matthew Rothenberg, the man who has led Flickr the past two years has Head of Product, announced today that he is leaving the service. In a message posted to his Twitter account, Rothenberg states,

Here goes: after 5 years, I will be stepping away from Flickr. Will miss working with such a talented, hard-working, and hard-drinking team.

Despite reassurances from Yahoo that Flickr is doing well, many will undoubtably look at this development and wonder whether the future for the service is as bright as the company would like us to think. TechCrunch also reported today that the situation inside the service isn’t too great.
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In case you’re wondering whether Yahoo still cares about Flickr (acquired in 2005), the answer appears to be yes. Chief Product Officer Blake Irving recently tweeted a short message affirming the company’s support for the popular photo sharing service, saying,

Q. Is Yahoo! committed to Flickr? A. Hell yes we are! We love this product and team; on strategy and profitable. #

How profitable? No one (except them) knows. Photography blogger Thomas Hawk estimates that it brings in about $50 million annually.

This should give loyal Flickr members some peace of mind knowing that even though they might sometimes feel unloved, Flickr doesn’t appear headed towards the same fate as Delicious, the bookmarking service also acquired in 2005 that Yahoo doesn’t love anymore.

(via Thomas Hawk)

Five years after acquiring the photo sharing service Flickr, Yahoo has finally obtained ownership of the domain name Flicker.com.

One of the common characteristics of Web 2.0 companies is the use of misspelled words in their name, since the correctly spelled words are typically too pricey for a bootstrapped web startup to purchase early on.

Flickr was one such company, settling for the now ubiquitous name after being unable to purchase Flicker.com.

As you might expect, the enormous popularity of Flickr has led to an absurd amount of traffic for Flicker.com, as people often type in the domain name either as a typo or being ignorant of the “correct” spelling”.
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If you’ve ever edited your Flickr photographs using the default image editor provided by Flickr, then you’ve used the web-based image editing software developed by Picnik.

Whenever you click the “Edit Photo” button above one of your photographs, it opens up the image in the Picnik editor.

Well, Picnik announced today on its blog that it has been acquired by Google. There aren’t many details available regarding the acquisition itself, but the web is abuzz now with speculation as to what Flickr will do.

Thomas Hawk suggests today’s purchase may signal that Google is trying to dethrone Flickr as image-sharing king of the web:

What else makes me think this? Google Buzz. While I consider Flickr superior in a lot of ways to Picasa today, the biggest advantage that Flickr has always held over their competitors is how strong a grip they’ve had on the social aspect of photo sharing. But now that Buzz has arrived on the scene (and your Buzz photos go into Picasa albums by default by the way), it would appear that Google finally has a viable social network to compete with Flickr’s own internal social network inside of Flickr. By combining the social power of buzz, with an enhanced version of Picasa, Google could mount a formidable competing offering to Yahoo’s Flickr.

It’s interesting that Flickr let Picnik slip into Google’s hands after partnering with them for so long.

What do you think today’s news means for Google’s Picasa and for Yahoo’s Flickr?