Yahoo! Photos is sooo Last Year
I've been reading this morning (via CNET and TechCrunch) that Yahoo! Photos, one of the most widely used photo sharing/storage websites is shutting down in favor of its sister site, Flickr. Yahoo! purchased Flickr in 2005, and since then, Flickr has been gaining massive popularity. Flickr's tagging and community features are unique services that users can't find on any other site. As a result of Flickr's popularity, traffic to Yahoo! Photos has been steadily decreasing since November of '06.
The transition from Yahoo! Photos to Flickr is coming in the wake of the Yahoo! "Peanut Butter Manifesto ", in which Brad Garlinghouse, SVP of Yahoo, stated that Yahoo! was spreading its services too think over too many opportunities.
"We want to do everything and be everything–to everyone. We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out…" the memo reads. "I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter."
For the record, I love peanut butter. But that's beside the point.
TechCrunch notes that Yahoo! is not going to force its users to switch to Flickr or to take their photos off the site. Yahoo! will, however, provide tools so that former Yahoo! Photos users can easily transfer their pictures to Flickr, Snapfish, Photobucket, Kodak Gallery , Shutterfly, or other services. In addition, TechCrunch reports this:
Poll: Should Candidates Maintain Official MySpace Profiles?
I think this is the big question raised by the whole Obama MySpace mess. Let us know what you think by voting in the poll below and by leaving your thoughts in the comments.
[Poll=8]
Print and Online Versions: Room for Both?
Mark Glaser over at MediaShift had an interesting post yesterday where he published an interview with "Mr. Magazine", magazine journalism expert Samir Husni. The interview really caught my attention because Mr. Magazine seems to be advocating the same strategies that we have been writing about here on TBR. The interview is definitely worth reading, but I will put some of the highlights here:
Glaser: I’ve noticed that the local newspaper here, the San Francisco Chronicle, is trying to make their paper more local and use more graphics, photos and color on the front page.
Husni: Two things we have to do. We have to use more narrative and more pictures. If you look at the Financial Times that was completely redesigned last week, a lot of their stories are a full page. But you read that story and you’ll get everything you need to know about that subject. More magazines are moving toward more narrative. I tell my magazine clients we have to deepen the story and chase the photographs. For the service part, send people to the web.
The biggest mistake we’ve made in this industry is that we send people to the web, and we’ve left them there. We offered them something that’s free, that’s like a blizzard that surrounds them with information. But at no website do they ever say, ‘By the way, you need to go back to the paper to read page 20 where we have this article that you’ll only find on page 20 today.’ There’s no two-way street, we’ve created a one-way street and people get lost in the jungle [online].
Glaser: So you don’t suggest that people put magazine content online at all?
Husni: No. The biggest mistake we are doing now, and I don’t understand why, is we are duplicating magazine content and putting it online. Why would I have the exact same thing on the screen if it exists in print?
Glaser: What is your suggestion to newsweeklies? Their circulation is going down overall. Do you think it was a mistake to put all their content online?
Husni: Definitely. The day I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek was when I saw in print a snippet of an interview, and below that it said, ‘For the whole interview go to msnbc.newsweek.com.’ I am paying money and you are offering me less in print than what I can get for free on the web. That’s why I was very happy when Time reinvented itself with more in-depth [stories] and more photography. They cover two or three topics, but I still need editors to figure out what my readers want each week.
One of the ideas that we stressed in our magazine study that we published last year is that newspapers and magazines should not publish their print content online. This sort of regurgitation of material isn't of interest to anyone. When magazines and newspapers duplicate content in their print and online versions, they are in essence forcing consumers to make a choice to either read the content online or read it in print. By publishing the same material in both outlets, news sources limit their readers' interest to either the website or the print version. However, by publishing unique content online that supplements the print content, magazines and newspapers can benefit from having their readers visit the website and purchase print versions.
With this in mind, I definitely agree with Mr. Magazine that newspapers and magazines should change their print versions from addressing the "four W's and the H (who, what, where, why, and how)" to providing more in-depth analysis on a select number of topics. The website can then be used to disseminate important bits of digestible information quickly. If media outlets can strike this fine balance, I think that Mr. Magazine's prediction that there is room for both print media and online media will be correct.
Republicans and Twitter
Way back in February, I wrote a speculative post about technologies I thought might impact the 2008 elections. One of the technologies I mentioned was Twitter. The Hotline (and David All) noted last week that House GOP leader John Boehner is twitterring (sorry). Today, I stumbled across the recently created profiles of House Whip Eric Cantor and the National Republican Congressional Committee (first committee on Twitter I think).
I know that Dem Presidential candidates have jumped on the bandwagon. Does anyone know if it is gaining traction among Dems in the House/Senate like it slowly appears to be doing with the GOP?
Bidding for President: The Democrats
You know those text ads on the right hand side of Google search result pages? I wonder who is trying to cash in the 2008 US Presidential race. Back in February Michael Bassik over at techPresident did an investigation into which 2008 Presidential candidates had purchased text-ads. I've decided to take a brief look at any site buying ads for searches for candidate names.
Let's see who is trying to cash in on the Democrats. Click here for the Republicans.
Read below for the ads that I found, but here's a few general trends I found: Continue reading “Bidding for President: The Democrats” »