The folks at Flickr have been rumored to be in discussions with Yahoo on a potential purchase. All rumors aside, the news became a reality Sunday when they announced that they had, in fact, reached an agreement with Yahoo for the purchase of Flickr (and Ludicorp). I hate seeing this happen to seemingly innovative startups with good products. I always feel as though the small business could become so much (just look at Yahoo so many years ago). But, being a part time business owner myself, I completely understand the need for capital and backing. Hopefully, Yahoo will continue to employ the Ludicorp staff to do the things they’re good at, rather than infecting Flickr with ridiculous Yahoo product notions. Darren at darrenbarefoot.com said it nicely:
Loyalty from Flickr users runs pretty deep, but they’ll drop it like monkey feces if they don’t dig how the tool is evolving.
I did read that they’re planning on giving some mondo add-ons to Pro accounts (time to upgrade!), and that they’re reducing the price for Pro accounts (on second thought…) – though I don’t know if that reduction is in contrast to the beta prices or the listed “retail” price.