Yahoo enlivens Flickr with a Pinterest-esque redesign and 1TB of space

By Natt Garun May 20, 2013

new flickr UI yahoo

After finally confirming Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, Yahoo held a press conference today in New York City to announce a product completely unrelated to the micro-blogging service. Today, Flickr is getting yet another makeover in Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s promise to make “Flickr awesome again.”

In the conference hall filled with Flickr-themed walls and photo prints, Mayer and Yahoo SVP of Mobile and Emerging Products Adam Cahan announced the redesigned Flickr. The new UI will boast a larger grid design to highlight photo streams right on the homepage. The photo-centric interface aims to please the photography community and brands to make Flickr profiles more Facebook-esque than ever – minus, of course, the Timeline wall portion.

To lure users back to Flickr, the service will also offer a whopping 1TB of free space. “It’s about putting lifetimes of photos,” Mayer says. The Flickr profile boasts a cover page, full bleed, high-resolution pictures, and extremely minimal white space. No more geolocation data, comments, groups, or tags – those information are now hidden until users scroll downward for the data. Users can also share photos via other social media services, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and, of course, Tumblr. The service is also hopping on the multimedia trend by allowing users to share photo streams as a slideshow.

In comparison to the old Flickr, the new interface should appeal to Web users in the Facebook and Pinterest age. It’s more intuitive given the functionalities these social network sites share – a feature Yahoo hopes will make Flickr alluring again.

In addition to PC and iOS, the new Flickr will also come to Android (alas, no Blackberry love) – all iterations of Flickr are now live. Mayer says that a Tumblr and Flickr integration is highly possible, although since the acquisition is still so fresh, that venture is still an opportunity the team needs to explore further.

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An avid gadgets and Internet culture enthusiast, Natt Garun spends her days bringing you the funniest, coolest, and strangest…

Mobile

Yahoo finally rolls out Flickr for iPad

yahoo finally rolls out flickr for ipad 2

It's been a long time coming, but Yahoo has finally gotten around to launching an app designed especially for the iPad.

First things first, you'll need iOS 8 or above to run it, so if you're an avid Flickr user and own an iPad 2 or newer and still haven't updated to Apple's latest mobile operating system, now's the time.

Mobile

Another Flickr redesign on the way – slicker and waves bye-bye to Yahoo toolbar

another flickr redesign way

Flickr looks like it's about to get another redesign less than a year after it rolled out its last one.
While the reported revamp is unlikely to be in the form of a major overhaul, there are nevertheless likely to be some noticeable differences that should please the Flickr community.
According to a Re/code report Sunday that spoke to "numerous sources inside Yahoo," the company is gearing up to launched a cross-platform refresh "within the next few weeks."
The update reportedly makes the service a lot slicker than before, emphasizes sharing options, and sees the removal of the purple Yahoo toolbar that suddenly appeared in July last year, annoying many Flickr users in the process.
Re/code also says the new design brings the look of its Web and mobile offerings closer together, and features "a more seamless photo stream with no white space."
It sounds like the designers have worked to simplify the look as much as possible, removing words and buttons in a bid to further highlight images, leaving only "an indication of who your followers are and a few more pieces of info in a floating text."
Sources told Re/code that the update, for the app at least, is an attempt by the company to attract more users and compete better with other photo-sharing offerings like Facebook-owned Instagram.
Improvements
Although Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005, for years it pretty much neglected the site, a situation which saw its design grow stale and outdated. The Web version was functional but unattractive, while the mobile offerings were slow and rarely received updates.
However, when Marissa Mayer took the reins at Yahoo just over 18 months ago, all that changed. She clearly saw potential in the photo site and invested time and money in a complete overhaul.
In December 2012, the Web company pushed out an all-new Flickr app for iOS that was actually a pleasure to use, and five months later made a splash with a revamped website with a striking photo-centric interface understandably described by many as Pinterest-esque. The company threw in a whopping 1TB of free storage space, and there was even an overhauled Flickr app for Android users, too.
Mayer said a long time ago that she wanted to "make Flickr awesome again." Her team has certainly taken some big steps toward that goal, so let's hope the reported update continues to take the service in the right direction.

Photography

Flickr launches Photo Books, turn your images into a hardcover for $35

flickr photo books book

Custom-made photo books have been knocking around for as long as images have been appearing online, with plenty of companies now offering up an array of solutions to get your photos printed and bound as gifts for friends and family, or as something to place casually on your coffee table in the hope that a visitor might dip into it during a pause in the conversation, be suitably impressed by your photographic skills and offer up a compliment.
Just in time for the holidays, Flickr has announced that it, too, has decided to join the party, launching Flickr Photo Books for US-based users (an international rollout is coming soon).
Up to now, the Yahoo-owned photo site has been working with partner Snapfish to offer a number of printing services, including photo books, though it’s not clear at this stage to what extent Flickr’s new service steps on the toes of Snapfish.
In a blog post Tuesday introducing Flickr Photo Books, the company’s Rajiv Vaidyanathan outlined the basics of the new Web-based offering, stressing the tool’s ease of use – “your photos can go from Flickr to photo book in as easy as one click” – as well as the quality of the final product.
You can start building a book by hovering over one of your photo sets and clicking on the book icon that appears. Flickr will take care of the rest, laying out the images with its “intelligent” tools, though of course, you can have total control over the design too, if you wish.
The basic book comes with 20 pages of premium white proPhoto paper with a lustre finish, with your chosen images “wrapped in a sleek, photo wrap high-gloss hardcover complete with a matching dust jacket. No cramped formats, no awkward descriptions, no spoiled memories,” Vaidyanathan writes.
The basic hardcover book has dimensions of 11 x 8.5 inches, comes with up to 20 pages and costs $35. Additional pages can be added for $0.50 each. If your photo collection is massive and you feel all your images are worthy of inclusion, you can make one with up to 240 pages, leaving you with a brick of a book that may require you to perform some reinforcement work on your coffee table.
After years of neglect, Flickr has undergone many changes since Marissa Mayer took the reins at Yahoo in 2012, with the new Photo Book tool offering further evidence that the Web company is serious about continuing its efforts to develop the photo-sharing site.