DEV Community

Discussion on: How open-source will Tumblr become?

Collapse
 
jones1618 profile image
Stephen Jones • Edited

Yahoo made many of the same mistakes when it bought Flickr which used to be the premier photo-sharing site. They changed account terms and completely changed authentication which alienated a lot of users. They replaced the mobile version with something far worse. They downplayed the social aspects of a huge and thriving community and focused on making it just a photo dump site. Many of the leaders and most popular members wrote long, impassioned letters explaining their love for the platform and what Yahoo could do to keep or woo them back ... and they were completely ignored.
It was an enormous and bewildering squandering of customer loyalty. Flickr still exists but is not as vibrant a place since people can "dump" their photos elsewhere.

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet
gizmodo.com/how-yahoo-killed-flick...

Collapse
 
cathodion profile image
Dustin King

I'm surprised the degree to which Yahoo is still around. They had a directory that was nice and fun in the early days of the web, and a mail client that was pretty acceptable until Gmail showed up. But after that, it's just a bunch of acquired properties which they mostly run into the ground. I guess they have a news site?