Yahoo Removing Flickr Sign-In Via Facebook and Google Accounts by June 30

If you used to access Flickr by signing-in through your Facebook or Google accounts, things are going to change for you from June 30 onwards.

Yahoo, the parent company of Flickr, has started informing users that it will remove the option to sign in with a Facebook or Google account by the end of the month. Users will only be able to sign in using a Yahoo account.

At present, users can sign-in one last time using their old Facebook or Google credentials, after which they will be prompted to create a new Yahoo account. Users can either use an existing Yahoo account, or create a new one, while keeping the same Flickr account.

"We're streamlining our sign in process. As a result, you'll need to use a Yahoo account to access your Flickr account," Yahoo noted on its help page.

The company also notes that this procedure won't affect any paid services used already, such as Flickr Pro.

Notably Yahoo had integrated these third-party logins three years ago in 2011. Back in March this year, the company had announced that it will stop letting consumers access its various online services, including photo-sharing site Flickr and Fantasy Sports, by signing-in with their Facebook or Google credentials. Notably the change has been already deployed to Fantasy Sports.

"Yahoo is continually working on improving the user experience," the company had said in a statement, noting that the new process "will allow [it] to offer the best personalized experience to everyone".

Flickr was created by a Vancouver-based company Ludicorp in February 2004, and which was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005 for an estimated $35 million. In March 2013, the website had a total of 87 million registered users and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily.

We Search More On Apps, Less On Google Now

We’re using apps on our smartphones and tablets much more to look things up now, according to a new report out from eMarketer. That means a serious drop in ad revenue for many of the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo.

According to the report, Google mobile ads saw a dramatic 17 percent drop in revenue from 2012. The search giant owned 82.8 percent of the $2.24 billion search market just two years ago. While the U.S. mobile ad market brought in a whopping $17.73 billion this year, mobile search spending jumped to more than half of that at $9.02 billion — but Google’s piece of that pie dropped to just 65.7 percent.

Basically, we’re on our smartphones a lot more when looking things up than we are on our desktops. And we’re fragmented in the way we search now as well. Google is all search for everything but can’t necessarily tell us in a click the best restaurant or what the price is on a coveted item. We use niche travel apps such as Kayak to look up travel info, Trulia to search for homes and local business search company Yelp to look up local businesses.

A Nielsen consumer report out earlier this year confirms the shift to mobile. We’re spending an average of 34 hours using the Internet on our mobile phones every month compared to 27 hours using the Internet on our desktop.

According to the eMarketer report, we’re really big on local search. Yelp is leading the pack here in terms of ad-revenue growth. Predictions for the local business search company are at 136 percent, or $119 million in mobile ad revenue this year. While that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the spend for Google, Yahoo or Bing, it’s a telling shift in consumer behavior. Revenues are expected to triple by 2016 for Yelp. Meanwhile, Google revenue is expected to drop to 64.2 percent of the overall market by then.

No word yet on what the “other” category is in the report. Also note that this report does not mean Google is losing revenue. On the contrary, it’s still growing — it’s just capturing less of the overall market than it was before. As mentioned above, the total mobile ad spend has jumped by nearly $7 billion in the last two years. That still gives Google close to $6 billion in mobile search ad revenue.

The bottom line here is that niche apps are taking over the way in which we search online, and they’re doing this because we are spending much more time looking things up on mobile devices than we are on our desktops.

Yahoo is Working on a YouTube Competitorthat Could Launch this Summer

Yahoo is coming on strong. They have been buying companies left and right, snapping up Google developers, and making some big moves to get back to a place of relevance in our lives. Their next move is going to be a video service to challenge YouTube, if a report from Ad Age is to be believed. The future of media is online video, as YouTube, Vimeo, and others have proven. Yahoo wants a piece of that action.

Yahoo is going to attract content creators by offering more money that YouTube does. They want to share more ad revenue with their partners. They’re also supposedly going to be offering a fixed ad rate that is 50-100 percent higher than YouTube’s current rate. Both of these sound great for content makers, but what’s the hold up? Yahoo wants too much control.

The company wants to get perpetual licensing for any videos that are shared on Tumblr. That would basically mean that Yahoo gets the rights to any video shared on their micro-blogging platform. Obviously, users aren’t happy about that point. Creators would be able to share their videos on multiple platforms, though. 

They wouldn’t be locked into just using Yahoo’s video service. Yahoo also wants to make videos downloadable so users of the service can watch them later. This is another point that is causing content makers some concern. These issues will all need to be fixed if Yahoo wants to launch the service by this summer.

Yahoo is also on the hunt for original content that they could broadcast on their own version of Netflix. Yahoo has been upping their app game, too, with new apps like News Digest. Yahoo News Digest takes the big stories and info from around the internet and condenses them into bite size pieces that you can intake quickly. Like their Weather app, News Digest is very well designed and aesthetically appealing. A Yahoo video service is likely to be just as well designed, but whether or not it will catch on with video makers and users is something that remains to be seen.

iOS 7 experience on Android via iLauncher

Not all Android users give a hoot about
iOS 7, but we know there are a few of
you out there that may be a little
intrigued about Apple’s new operating
system. We have come across an
Android app called ‘iLauncher’, which
gives you the iOS 7 experience on your
Android.
This app is fairly decent, there is one
feature within iLauncher iOS 7 users
would love Apple to add to its next
update, a few iOS 7 users experienced
motion sickness when using the new
operating system, but this Android app
allows users to disable the zooming
function that makes iPhone users a
little sick.
iLauncher provides a similar experience
as iOS 7, same design with a few added
extras. Once you have installed this app
your entire Home screen will look like
Apple’s UI.
Main iLauncher Android app features
include smooth scrolling, the ability to
uninstall apps from the Home screen,
you can edit exit mode by pressing the
back button, support 5 rows mode just
like the iPhone 5, 5S and 5C. The apps
have rounded corners and gloss
effects; it also includes a dock bar
and so much more. The app does cost
just a little over $2, for more
information about iLauncher, please
visit the Google Play Store .
If you do decide to install the app you
must be aware that you may lose the
ability to add widgets to the Android
Home screen, shortcuts can be added
still.
Not sure why Android users would want
to add iOS 7 to their devices, but hey
we are sure someone would like to give
it a go. If you do decide to install
iLauncher please give another app some
thought, this Android app is called
‘Espier Launcher iOS7 ’ and unlike
iLauncher this one is free.
Would you like iOS 7 on your Android
device?

Tumblr founder to get $110 million to stay at Yahoo for the next four years Tumblr founder to get $110 million to stay at Yahoo for the next four years Tumblr founder to get $110 million to stay at Yahoo for the next four years

Yahoo's recently completed acquisition
of Internet blogging service Tumblr
includes a $110 million payment to
Tumblr founder David Karp as long as
he remains on the job for the next
four years.

The retention payment disclosed in a
regulatory filing Thursday is part of
the windfall that Karp and Tumblr
investors realized by agreeing to sell
the service for $1.1 billion in May.
Karp turned 27 last month. He started
Tumblr in 2007, a few years after he
dropped out of high school in New York
to concentrate on computer
programming.
Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer has
pledged not to make any dramatic
changes at Tumblr in hopes that the
acquisition won't alienate the blogging
service's existing users, which includes a
substantial number of teenagers and
young adults.
As part of her promise "to not screw it
up," Mayer is allowing Karp to run
Tumblr independently in New York.
Yahoo is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Karp is believed to own a 20 to 25
percent stake in Tumblr, which means
he probably has already received a
windfall, which hasn't been disclosed,
from the sale to Yahoo. But he must
stay at Tumblr until June 2017 under
the provision disclosed Thursday to get
the $110 million retention payment.
The payment will consist of $70 million
in stock and options and $40 million in
cash, according to Yahoo's filing.
The documents also disclosed that
Yahoo paid a total of $44 million to buy
six other companies during the three
months ending in June. All told, Yahoo
paid about $1.15 billion to buy 10
companies, including Tumblr, during the
first half of the year.
Yahoo has bought several other
startups since the end of June. The
prices for those deals are likely to be
disclosed in another regulatory filing in
October and November

Yahoo results show mixed picture forCEO Marissa Mayer

Yahoo said Tuesday its second-quarter profit rose sharply from a year ago, but revenues lagged, offering a mixed picture for chief executive Marissa Mayer's turnaround efforts. 

Net profit rose 46 percent from a year ago to $331 million, slightly better than expected, but revenues excluding payments to partners fell one percent to $1.07 billion, the Internet giant said. 

"I'm encouraged by Yahoo's performance in the second quarter. Our business saw continued stability, and we launched more products than ever before, introducing a significant new product almost every week," said Mayer. 

Mayer cited the company's new Yahoo News, the new Yahoo Sports app , the redesigned Yahoo search , the new Flickr , the new Yahoo Mail for tablet, the Yahoo Weather app , and the company's new Yahoo app with Summly . "This quarter drove tremendous improvements in our product line and our users responded with increased usage and engagement," she said. 

She said the quarter was "one of the most productive in the history of Yahoo" The company's strategy is based on "people and products, then traffic and revenue," she said, and that traffic is now growing again. 

Mayer was hired from Google a year ago to help turn around the Internet pioneer, which had seen its fortunes fade. Since then, Yahoo has been on a buying spree, and has also sold shares in China's Alibaba to boost its cash. Its most publicized deal was a billion- dollar acquisition

Yahoo buys social Web browser-maker Rockmelt

Yahoo has acquired Rockmelt, a Silicon
Valley startup that built a Web browser
tied to Facebook's social network.
Terms of the deal announced Friday
weren't disclosed. It's the 20th
acquisition that Yahoo Inc. has
completed since Marissa Mayer became
the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's CEO
nearly 13 months ago.
Rockmelt has raised about $40 million
from venture capitalists and other
investors since its inception. That makes
it likely Yahoo had to be above that
amount to buy Rockmelt.
Most of Yahoo's purchases have been
for relatively small amounts of money.
There has been one notable exception
so far: Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition
of Internet blogging service Tumblr
.
Rockmelt unveiled its Facebook-focused
Web browser in late 2010, but it never
gained traction. The Mountain View,
Calif., startup later introduced a
version designed for smartphones and
tablets.
Some of that technology could help
Yahoo in its effort to bring in more
traffic and revenue from mobile
devices, one of Mayer's top priorities.
Most of the other startups snapped up
by Mayer also have been focused on
mobile computing.
Although small, Rockmelt attracted a
fair amount of attention because of
its pedigree. The company's financial
backer include Web browser Marc
Andreessen, who has established
himself as one of Silicon Valley's top
venture capitalists since first making
his mark as a co-founder of Netscape
Communications.
Two of Rockmelt's top executives, Tim
Howes and Eric Vishria, formerly
worked with Andreessen. Both of them
are joining Yahoo.