Mayer Gives Flickr A Makeover

By Elena Zanone

Yesterday Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer took to the stage at the company’s New York headquarters to debut a long awaited redesign for a majority of the Internet — the revamping of photography website Flickr.

The new and improved interface emphasizes high-resolution photographs, removing the wide open white space and clutter that once surrounded images. In addition to the aesthetic changes, the company is also generously giving all users one terabyte of storage free of cost. Yahoo! says that equates to an impressive 537,731 photos at 6.5 megapixels each.

“You can take all the pictures ever taken and upload them to Flickr . . . and there would [still be room].” Mayer said.

Yahoo! acquired Flickr back in 2005, but the photo-sharing service suffered under persistent mismanagement and Yahoo!’s inability to make Flickr better.

In fact, when Mayer took the CEO chair last year, a web campaign to redesign Flickr went viral. The website DearMarissaMayer.com launched and had one ask: “Please make Flickr awesome again.”

While Flickr suffered, Facebook and Pinterest became the dominant photo-sharing apps, and later, Instagram became the app of choice for photo sharing with friends and family.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer even acknowledged that the Flickr acquisition “didn’t go so well.”

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

Flickr users seem to agree. The petition site now reads, “Dear Marissa Mayer, Thank you for making Flickr awesome again” in bold all caps.