Flickr Not For Sale--Yahoo Confirms It

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Well, that’s pretty much it for the rumors that Yahoo was looking to divest the Flickr site that it paid $35 million for not so long ago–Yahoo’s gone on record that they’re not putting Flickr up for bids after all.

And what confirmed it? Oddly enough, reportedly, it was a tweet from Yahoo’s product chief Blake Irving that went like this:

“Q. Is Yahoo! committed to Flickr? A. Hell yes we are! We love this product and team; on strategy and profitable.”

Well, when big names start throwing out the mild profanities in Twitter posts, you know they’re just super-serious about whatever it is they’re talking about. Seriously, though, there was reason enough to be concerned about this sort of thing, especially given the recent dumping of bookmarking site del.icio.us, and of course, the recent dumping of 700 employees less than two weeks before Christmas.

And indeed, Flickr itself was looking a little less desirable of late, especially given the steadily growing popularity of Facebook. But considering how many cameras now offer options to upload directly to Flickr itself, chances were pretty good from the word go that Yahoo wouldn’t have dumped Flickr entirely anyway, as that would be pretty much the same thing as handing over a whopping glut of business directly to Facebook. And that would be doubly bad, as Facebook has recently (not to mention heavily) modified its whole handling of photos to make it all the more appealing and easy to use.

But then again, Yahoo certainly didn’t make matters any easier itself–promotion of Flickr by Yahoo has been somewhat sparse of late, apparently down to a few Tweets every so often, many of them not laced with mild obscenities–and Yahoo’s own performance has been falling off anyway.

It’s a difficult situation for Yahoo, who’s been losing ground for years, but hopefully they can turn it around. And by all reports, they’ll do it with Flickr in tow.