Yahoo adds video to Flickr community

by Tristan O'Carroll, Media Week 09-Apr-08, 11:25

LONDON - Yahoo's photo-sharing community Flickr has launched a video-sharing facility - a move viewed by analysts as a belated attempt to take on Google's YouTube in the burgeoning online video market.

Flickr, which has grown from 27 million to 42 million monthly visitors worldwide in the past year, now allows users to upload personal video clips.

Kakul Srivastava, general manager of Flickr at Yahoo, said the addition of video on Flickr "is an extension of what Flickr is already doing" with photos.

He added: "Digital media has led to a new behaviour emerging in the market and people are much more likely to shoot short video clips, essentially 'long photos', with their digital still cameras and mobile phones."

The new video uploading feature will support up to 90 seconds of video footage captured with the video function of any digital video recording device, such as still cameras, camcorders and camera phones.

Flickr's move into video is Yahoo's latest move to keep pace with online rival Google by tapping into the small, but fast-growing, online video market.

Microsoft is seeking to capitalise on Yahoo's weaker market position relative to Google. This week it threatened to bypass Yahoo's management and approach its shareholders directly with a takeover offer in the coming weeks.