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Posts Tagged ‘Yahoo’

Verizon officially acquires Yahoo including Flickr

15 Jun

It’s been written on the wall for a while, but now US network operator Verizon has confirmed its acquisition of Yahoo in a deal worth $ 4.48 billion. This also means that Yahoo’s online image sharing platform Flickr is now in the hands of Verizon. With both AOL and Yahoo now owned by Verizon it seems the network giant is planning to combine the two companies and a few of its other subsidiaries into a new service called Oath.

“We’re putting together one of the largest companies on the planet that’s focused on brands,” says Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL. “Oath is our house of 50+ media and technology brands. We reach over 1 billion consumers around the world.”

In the process of merging Yahoo and AOL 2,100 employees will be made redundant but Flickr users should, at least in the short term, not expect any major changes to the service as Verizon says it has no immediate plans to change Flickr pricing.

It appears the Oath service has been structured to compete with other major ad platforms, such as Facebook or Google but it remains to be seen what the move will mean for Flickr. Under Yahoo ownership the service has not necessarily been developed in a way that users and photographers would have liked. We’ll have to wait and see if Verizon and Oath can increase the rate of innovation at Flickr and bring the site back to its former glory.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Yahoo discloses new data breach affecting 1 billion user accounts

16 Dec

Yahoo has disclosed a new data breach affecting more than 1 billion user accounts. According to the company, this data breach – which is different than and unrelated to the one disclosed this past September – involved an unknown third party stealing user account data in August 2013. The stolen data includes names, email addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, MD5 hashed passwords and both encrypted and unencrypted security Q&As.

Yahoo detailed the news yesterday evening in a Tumblr post. According to that statement, Yahoo was made aware of a possible data breach via an alert from law enforcement. A company investigation into the matter revealed the August 2013 data theft, though the company states it hasn’t figured out how the intrusion took place.

Affected Yahoo users are being notified of the data theft. The company has invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers, and is requiring users to reset their account passwords. The company further advises its users to monitor their accounts for suspicious activity and messages, and to avoid providing personal info or clicking links/downloads within suspicious emails. This security breach, of course, potentially affects users across all Yahoo properties that require a Yahoo account for access, including Flickr.

Via: Yahoo

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Flickr ownership changes hands as Verizon acquires Yahoo

25 Jul

Telecomm giant Verizon will acquire Yahoo and its web properties, including Flickr and photo blogging site Tumblr, for $ 4.83 billion. It seemed possible that Yahoo might sell its photo-sharing sites separately, as the company announced in March that it was accepting bids for its web properties. Today’s announcement confirms that both Flickr and Tumblr will remain a part of Yahoo as it changes hands to Verizon.

Verizon owns AOL and Huffington Post, a point that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer spins as a positive for her company’s outlook. In a statement published on Yahoo today, Mayer emphasized that joining forces with AOL could help strengthen Yahoo’s mobile offerings.

Regulators must approve the sale before it can be finalized, which is expected to be early next year.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Flickr may be up for sale as Yahoo Board of Directors looks to shed web properties

30 Mar

The future of Yahoo and its many operations, including the photo sharing behemoth Flickr, is uncertain. According to reports, the company’s board is now accepting bids for its web properties, with a deadline of two weeks to submit proposals.

While Yahoo has not specifically said which operations are up for sale, they have given hints to what a new, slimmed-down Yahoo might look like. According to Reuters, if the board’s restructure goes through as planned, Yahoo will center around Yahoo Search, Mail and Tumblr, as well as four ‘digital content strongholds,’ which include News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle.

This seems to indicate that at least according the company’s board, Flickr has no place in the future of Yahoo. But not so fast – there are several other factors at play that could put the kibosh on a sale altogether.

One of these factors is an attempted hostile takeover of Yahoo’s board by activist investor Starboard Value. Many shareholders, unhappy with financial results, have run out of patience with the current boards plan to turn Yahoo around. This is where Starboard Value comes in. Last Thursday, they announced their intent to overthrow CEO Marissa Mayer, and presented a list of nine alternative board members to replace the current board at the annual shareholder meeting in June.

If Yahoo is unable to get the ball rolling on sales of its assets before June, there’s a chance that a new board will be ushered in, and move the company in a different direction entirely.

On the other hand, more than 40 companies have expressed interest in owning a piece of Yahoo, including Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time and many more. Whether or not any of those companies specifically have an interest in Flickr is difficult to say. As of June 2015, Flickr had a formidable 112 million active users. That’s not quite the 400 million users Instagram claims to have, but its still a sizable community. For the record, Flickr was first purchased by Yahoo back in 2005, for $ 25 million.

All the while, Mayer is sticking to her plan for turning around the company, which includes laying off 15 percent of the company’s workforce, closing unprofitable ventures, all while spinning off Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba Group as well as Yahoo Japan into a separate company.

Needless to say, if you’re in the market for a photo sharing site, now’s the time to bust out the checkbook and make an offer. We just hope if Flickr does make its way into new hands that it goes to a good home.

Via Reuters and The Associated Press

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Internet Explorer 11 – Change the Default Search Provider to Google, Yahoo!, or Something Else

17 Apr

Tired of IE11 always searching the web with Bing? Learn how to easily change the default search provider to something else.

By default, when you search the web with Internet Explorer 11, the Bing search engine from Microsoft is used.

While some enjoy using this website, others would rather search the web with Yahoo!, Google, or another search provider by default….

Read more at MalekTips.
New Computer and Technology Help and Tips – MalekTips.Com

 
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Yahoo and Flickr Renege on Their Paid Advertising Free Accounts

03 Jul

The New Yahoo Advertising Tool Bar on Flickr is Ugly

One of the things that I’ve liked about being able to pay Yahoo and Flickr $ 24.95 per year, is that it comes with an advertising free experience. The deal between Yahoo and Pro accounts is simple, and can be summed up in Flickr’s own words: “No ads in your browsing experience.”

While new Flickr Pro accounts are no longer available, all existing Pro accounts were given an opportunity to grandfather in their Pro accounts and continue them ad free. If users want an ad free experience now, they have to pay double the price as the old Pro account, but it’s still an option.

In the past, when paid accounts on Flickr have complained about advertisements, Flickr pointed them to a toolbar that a user likely installed: “If you are pro, we don’t show you ads on Flickr, but you may have unintentionally installed a browser toolbar, extension or add-on that is serving them.”

I’ve always respected Flickr for offering this ad-free option, it’s a refreshing departure from Facebook, where we are bombarded with ads at every turn.

Unfortunately, today Flickr has reneged on their advertising free account by forcing a new Yahoo tool bar on all Flickr users, both those with free ad supported accounts and those of us with paid ad-free versions. It’s an ugly intrusion to an otherwise beautiful new Flickr. It also advertises at me on *every* *single* *page* on Flickr — a bunch of Yahoo services that I *do* *not* *want.*

Complete with a Yahoo logo, the forced real estate takeover also offers me Home, Mail, News, Sports, Finance, Weather, Games, Groups, Answers, Flickr, omg!, Shine, Movies, Music, TV, Health, Shopping, Auto, Travels, Home.

There is no way to disable this forced tool bar. Worse it follows you as you scroll down the page. It never goes away. As of right now it is impossible to be on any page on Flickr without having these hyperlinked ads in your face.

I think these advertisements are just awful. I think they are distasteful and I think it’s unfortunate that Yahoo is so greedy that they cannot be satisfied with our simply paying them for an ad-free experience. If Yahoo cannot make enough money off of Flickr, then increase the price, or give us an option to pay more and remove this intrusive forced advertising bar.

Flickr is supposed to be an elegant, paid, ad-free, photo experience — or at least one version of it is. Forcing advertisements like this on ad-free accounts is wrong. Flickr should give all paid accounts an option to x out this ugly marketing based tool bar and make it go away.

There are few things as annoying as having a toolbar forced on you with a bunch of advertising links to things that you do not want. You can follow user reaction to this new forced tool bar in the Flickr Help Forum here.

You can and should do better than this Flickr.


Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

 
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Yahoo Running Television Commercials for the New Flickr

05 Jun

Yahoo Running a Television Commercial Promoting the New Flickr

Lest anyone doubt Marissa Mayer and Yahoo’s new commitment to photo sharing site Flickr, apparently Yahoo is now running a paid television commercial for the photo sharing site — the first of its kind as far as I’m aware. Following some of the tweets on the commercial spot, it sounds like it may have begun running yesterday on NBC programming.

The advertisement, which features the Bright Eyes song, “The First Day of My Life,” shows a photo montage of pug dogs, among other images. You can watch the commercial yourself above from Yahoo’s corporate YouTube account.

The commercial comes out a few weeks after a successful new redesign of the site that gave all Flickr users a free terabyte of high res photo space.

I posted previously on an informal statistic of uploads being up 71% at Flickr since the redesign, these statistics would seem to be in line with other metrics that Yahoo is also seeing internally, according to Flickr Community Manager Thea Lampkin.

“[W]e have a lot of data already and are measuring traffic to all the new pages (don’t worry, it’s all anonymous),” writes Lampkin. “So far the metrics have been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re very happy with how Flickr members everywhere are interacting with the new site. Sets in particular are getting more traffic than ever before.”


Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

 
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Flickr: Yahoo CEO sorry for ‘no such thing as pro photographers’ comment, Pro accounts live on

23 May

marissa_new4.jpg

Much of the fallout surrounding Flickr’s massive updates this Monday continues to center around the legacy ‘Pro’ accounts and a contentious statement from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer: ‘There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because […] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore.’ She apologized today for her ‘misstatement’, and it appears that existing Flickr Pro account holders will now be able to take advantage of unlimited storage. Read all about it at connect.dpreview.com.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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