Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3].
Seems like they're giving people a reason to use their products, and then making a play to have an OAuth-level relationship with the users. Maybe they want visibility into how a user authorizes third-party apps (FB gets an awful lot of insight from FB connect!) or maybe they just want to solidify their user lock-in.
Either way, I can't imagine they justified the engineering work for massive redesign on seemingly not-profitable properties like Weather/Flickr without having a solid long-term plan for how to capitalize on that.
Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3].
Actually, the recent changes made me quit Flickr. It's now an ugly mixture of new and old (especially if you use the organiser, etc.) and when you are logged in (which is likely when you use Flickr) you get an unremovable, ugly, purple Yahoo bar.
I was a paying user since 2009. Now Smugmug gets my (and my wife's) money.
The Flickr redesign has been the worst UI change I've ever seen on the web. I've been on Flickr since 2007 and really enjoyed its interface - much like reddit (pre- custom subreddit styles) it was clean and fast. Now it's ugly, confusing and very sluggish.
Actually, the recent changes made me quit Flickr. It's now an ugly mixture of new and old (especially if you use the organiser, etc.) and when you are logged in (which is likely when you use Flickr) you get an unremovable, ugly, purple Yahoo bar.
I was a paying user since 2009. Now Smugmug gets my (and my wife's) money.