I agree with Doc, killing Flickr, the brand, would open the field up

November 20, 2006 By

Doc Searls is among the best marketing minds we have alive today and he warns Yahoo not to kill off the Flickr brand (in response to a thought-provoking post by Richard MacManus which was in response to the now-famous “leaked” memo).

Speaking of Flickr, tomorrow morning you might see us in San Francisco’s tea garden shooting photos with Flickr employee Heather Powazek Champ. Heather’s photography rocks, I’ve been looking forward to spending an hour or two with her and Thomas Hawk (who is CEO of Zooomr, which competes with Flickr).

Flickr is probably my favorite online brand. The fact that Thomas has been trying for months to get me to Zooomr and hasn’t been able to demonstrates how sticky that brand is.

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  • http://mickeleh.blogspot.com/ Michael Markman

    chiming in a note of emphatic agreement with you and Doc. It’s one of the strongest, cleanest, and most memorable and resonant of recent brands. Great name that fits a great service. Why, a person would be daft to abandon it. Daft, I say.

  • http://mickeleh.blogspot.com Michael Markman

    chiming in a note of emphatic agreement with you and Doc. It’s one of the strongest, cleanest, and most memorable and resonant of recent brands. Great name that fits a great service. Why, a person would be daft to abandon it. Daft, I say.

  • Podesta

    What the Peanut Butter Manifesto said is that Yahoo does not need the duplication of Yahoo’s longterm photo service and Flickr. The best idea would be to transfer the material from Yahool Photos to Flickr and then close the older service. Closing Flickr would be very unwise.

  • Podesta

    What the Peanut Butter Manifesto said is that Yahoo does not need the duplication of Yahoo’s longterm photo service and Flickr. The best idea would be to transfer the material from Yahool Photos to Flickr and then close the older service. Closing Flickr would be very unwise.

  • http://thechrisproject.com/ Chris Norris

    Killing of the Flickr brand would be a grave mistake. I like Flickr in spite of its association with Yahoo, which is a brand I’m not all that fond of. Flickr is one of the few areas that I think Yahoo shines head and shoulders above the rest. It kicks the crap out of Picasa Web galleries, that’s for sure. Other than Flickr, though, Yahoo hasn’t done a whole lot that is better than the competition, ie Google. Mail? News? Videos? Portal-like homepages? It’s all pretty close in those areas. But Flickr has a leg (or two) up on the competition.

    If anything, the rest of Yahoo’s divisions should learn from Flickr.

  • http://thechrisproject.com Chris Norris

    Killing of the Flickr brand would be a grave mistake. I like Flickr in spite of its association with Yahoo, which is a brand I’m not all that fond of. Flickr is one of the few areas that I think Yahoo shines head and shoulders above the rest. It kicks the crap out of Picasa Web galleries, that’s for sure. Other than Flickr, though, Yahoo hasn’t done a whole lot that is better than the competition, ie Google. Mail? News? Videos? Portal-like homepages? It’s all pretty close in those areas. But Flickr has a leg (or two) up on the competition.

    If anything, the rest of Yahoo’s divisions should learn from Flickr.

  • Pingback: DON’T KILL THE FLICKR BRAND! « Shawn Christopher

  • http://chezsmithy.vox.com/ Shawn Smith

    If anything, they should embrace Flickr and embed it even more deeply into the Yahoo experience. Jetason, yahoo photos. It is sorely out of date compared to Flickrs experience…

  • http://chezsmithy.vox.com Shawn Smith

    If anything, they should embrace Flickr and embed it even more deeply into the Yahoo experience. Jetason, yahoo photos. It is sorely out of date compared to Flickrs experience…

  • Chris

    The backlash from killing the flickr brand is terrible. It sucks that they’re going to force people to merge Yahoo IDs with their flickr accounts in the future. I don’t want to do that. I have a flickr account which I really don’t want to merge with my old yahoo account. This means I’ve had to create a new Yahoo account which I won’t use for e-mail. How pointless. I’m surely not the only person doing that.

  • Chris

    The backlash from killing the flickr brand is terrible. It sucks that they’re going to force people to merge Yahoo IDs with their flickr accounts in the future. I don’t want to do that. I have a flickr account which I really don’t want to merge with my old yahoo account. This means I’ve had to create a new Yahoo account which I won’t use for e-mail. How pointless. I’m surely not the only person doing that.

  • http://www.peat.me.uk RTPeat

    I certainly agree over the merging of accounts – although it is interesting to note that they haven’t done that as yet.

    With regards to killing the Flickr brand, whilst their assumption may be that all the Flickr users will dutifully swap over to Yahoo Photos, in practice I imagine that won’t happen. If anything, sites like Zooomr may be the ultimate beneficiaries – it might be the push people who are sticking with Flickr would need to switch…

  • http://www.peat.me.uk Richard

    I certainly agree over the merging of accounts – although it is interesting to note that they haven’t done that as yet.

    With regards to killing the Flickr brand, whilst their assumption may be that all the Flickr users will dutifully swap over to Yahoo Photos, in practice I imagine that won’t happen. If anything, sites like Zooomr may be the ultimate beneficiaries – it might be the push people who are sticking with Flickr would need to switch…

  • http://blog.zemote.com/ Jeff O’Hara

    Flickr is near and dear to my heart. I was an early adopter way back in 2004 and a paying customer before yahoo bought them. If they kill off the flickr brand I leave yahoo completely. They will piss a lot of people off with killing flickr.

    Jeff
    http://blog.zemote.com

  • http://blog.zemote.com Jeff O’Hara

    Flickr is near and dear to my heart. I was an early adopter way back in 2004 and a paying customer before yahoo bought them. If they kill off the flickr brand I leave yahoo completely. They will piss a lot of people off with killing flickr.

    Jeff
    http://blog.zemote.com

  • Chris

    I actually went to merge my accounts and it seems as if you’ll have to run it through your yahoo mail. Maybe I’m missing something but that appears to be the worst idea ever. There’s no way I want to do that. There’s no way I will do that. If they start enforcing that situation then I’m definitely switching to zooomr.

  • Chris

    I actually went to merge my accounts and it seems as if you’ll have to run it through your yahoo mail. Maybe I’m missing something but that appears to be the worst idea ever. There’s no way I want to do that. There’s no way I will do that. If they start enforcing that situation then I’m definitely switching to zooomr.

  • toivo

    flickr and yahoo photos could run on the same code. just add some spice for the blog-writing-flickr-fan-boys

  • toivo

    flickr and yahoo photos could run on the same code. just add some spice for the blog-writing-flickr-fan-boys