Yahoo Photos Nixed in Favor of Flickr

While Yahoo's Flickr acquisition has been booming, the company's first-generation photo-sharing site has stagnated. Now it will see the ax in the name of progress.

The on-going battle between photo-sharing Web sites has produced its next casualty. Yahoo announced on Thursday that it will be closing Yahoo Photos in favor of Flickr, the Web 2.0 photo site which that the company snapped up in 2005.

After the initial acquisition of Flickr, Yahoo decided to keep both sites running at the due to the different audiences they attracted. Yahoo Photos focused more on uploading photos to print them, while Flickr was based around a social community that just wanted to share and discuss photos. Apparently, the social approach won out. Flickr has gained 22 percent more visitors in the last year, according to Hitwise, while Yahoo Photos has suffered a 60 percent loss in visitors.

Yahoo plans to offer Yahoo Photos users options for migrating their photos in June, with the site to be permanently closed a few months later. Oddly enough, Yahoo will not be pushing Flickr as the sole replacement for Yahoo Photos. Kodak Gallery, Photobucket, Shutterfly and Snapfish will all be recommended, and users will be able to transfer their photos to any one of them in a single click.