How those Yahoos! destroyed Flickr!
In one of the best articles of its kind for many a long day, Mat Honan of Gizmodo exposes corporate stupidity on a staggering scale in a piece titled "How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet". Money quote:
"There's a difference between a missed opportunity and a complete fuck-up. When Yahoo failed to capitalize on Flickr's social potential, that was a missed opportunity. But if you want to see where it completely fucked up, where it just butchered Flickr with dull knives and duller wit, turn on your phone and launch the Flickr app. Oh, what's that, you don't have one? Exactly.
Flickr had a robust mobile Web site way back in 2006 — before the iPhone even shipped. You could use it with your piece of crap Symbian phone, or the dinky screen on your Sony Ericsson T68i. But it was basically just a browser. If you wanted to get a photo from your phone to your account, you had to email it."
It may be too late in the day to fix Flickr, Honan says, and Yahoo! is probably too distracted now to take on the task because CEO Scott Thompson has just resigned after being tripped up by his academic record. Thompson had joined the company in January after previous CEO Carol Bartz was fired in September. Sadly, Yahoo! has become that kind of company.




"I am not a native speaker but I have an affinity for the English language. Once I heard an African say, 'The English language is a harlot — she will go with anyone who cares to use her.' (Me, I figured that just made her one of my Gang). What she was more like to me was the Fairy Godmother, finding me a ragged Cinderella without make-up, crying in the kitchen. She waved her wand but, alack and alas, midnight came all too soon. Yah, just thinking in English always made me calm down. It predisposed me to compromise and rationality, made me find nuance and ambiguity. Of course, I started like every other ungifted Siamese idiot with stuff like 'Him have cold same-same you before but now already sneeze littun-bit only.' But as with anything — tennis, ballet, rhythmic gymnastics: oh, to prance twinkle-toed with swirling ribbon and whirling hoop! — I who had the talent soon left everyone at the starting-line behind, even though for a long time my accent dogged me like a soi cur, made my farang friends, even Avril , wince. Maybe was my grating Tranny voice but , more, my lazy Thai tongue. You spoke Siamese without one but the farang needed the tongue to speak English, just like you needed a jack to change a car wheel. In the end to switch cultures or change languages was easier than converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius. When I spoke English I was an aristo, when I spoke native languages I was same-same everyone. No, worse and weaker than them."

