It seems like Yahoo! still has an interest in Flickr after all, despite years of stagnation and the popularity of competitors like 500px and other takes on the original photo sharing site. Rumor has it that Marissa Mayer is not only now on Flickr, but that the Flickr team is set to grow substantially in the coming weeks and months.
I was pleasantly surprised today that when I did my usual search for Marissa Mayer on Flickr and up popped her brand spanking new Flickr account. As an added bonus, when I went to her first photo in her stream I found that I was both the first person to view the photo and the first person to fave the photo … Flickr is in fact *hiring*. Not only are they hiring, they are staffing up big time. Look at all of these jobs that they have open right now — everything from front-end engineers to community managers.
Given the fact that Mayer’s previous employer, Google, has gone all in on photo and multimedia sharing with Google+, it’s no surprise that she’s taken Google’s passion for social networks, and by extension photo sharing, with her to Yahoo!. Flickr is one of the only social networks that I’ve continuously frequented since signing up for an account back in 2005. I’m not a photographer, but seeing excellent photos from people, much like Thomas Hawk himself, has always kept me interested in the site, despite the site’s stagnation over the years.
Flickr already has a massive user base, and if Yahoo! can manage to revamp the site to compete with properties like Instagram, Facebook, and Google+, there’s a good possibility that Flickr could be the center of a Yahoo! renaissance. It’s not going to be easy, but when you have a cultural record like Flickr does with the ginormous photo library it possesses, there’s no doubt in my mind that Mayer’s doubling-down on Flickr is an excellent first step in turning the company around.
