Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

TechCrunch has a post about Flickr doing video.  I recently did a small report for my company and tracked some of the latest online video sites.  The number came out to be roughly 24-25 sites where people could upload content.  This was out of about 100 sites that I reviewed online.  Now, Flickr wants to enter a dense game.

Certainly, Flickr can use their brand name and their user base along with some spiffy technology to add another dimension to their brand name.  However, this is the key point where I have a huge problem with Yahoo.  Yahoo already possesses a few video properties including Yahoo Live, Video and some of their partnerships to broadcast video via the Yahoo name.

Adding video to Flickr seems to come into conflict with these ideas!

There was a letter sent out a while back regarding the numerous redundant properties that Yahoo has.  When Yahoo terminated Photos, I thought it was a great thing because they could utilize the better product of Flickr and eliminate brand conflicts (even though I ended up just ditching both entirely and moving to shareapic).  Now, we might be seeing another situation where there's no brand unification, no vision of how to leverage the Yahoo brand with Flickr and vice versa.

It seems, according to the post, that there might be an intent to differentiate it from YouTube.  Well, they have to certainly do more than differentiate itself from YouTube, but Yahoo's own Live and Video as well as the other 100 sites or so that have some form of video related content!

If Flickr intends to move in this direction of adding video related content, my hope/advice to them is that they do not attempt to cross paths in the viral video space.  YouTube dominates and there are numerous other sites which already has the traffic and content available.  Video editing might be the way to go, but I would advise Yahoo to allow Flickr to be able to access content from their existing online video to create more of a themed cohesion between brands.  Call it "Yahoo Media" to not confuse users and to unify the products together.