Yahoo is taking a bold step in its battle against YouTube & Google with the addition of video content to Flickr, Yahoo’s popular photo sharing site.
According to Bloomberg‘s Ari Levy, Yahoo Video will be adding partnered content such as music videos, tv shows and sports highlights, but the big news will be the addition of user generated video to Flickr.
Yahoo currently integrates live Flickr Photo Streams into its Yahoo Image Search and the company may follow a similar path, integrating Flickr Video Streams into the Yahoo Video component.
Doing so would fortify Yahoo Video as a video search hub, while also helping Flickr keep its independence.
Mike Folgner, Yahoo’s general manager for video, who came to the company during the Jumpcut acquisition, had this to say; “One of our strategies is to put video everywhere you are on the Internet. We’re going to build a much better destination for you to access all this different content.”
Flickr purists may or may not adopt the new use of video in their still photo utopia, but the plans of integrating user generated video into a channel full of user generated photos makes perfect sense given the strength of the Flickr brand and its widespread usage.
Yahoo currently lags behind Google & MySpace as the third most popular video streaming site online, with 4.6% of the market share. Google currently enjoys 22%.
