Verizon sells Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing site to SmugMug

Monday, 23 April 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com): Verizon is shedding another asset from its Oath division: The telco has sold photo-sharing service Flickr – which had been part of Yahoo – to SmugMug.

Terms of the deal, announced late Friday, weren’t disclosed. SmugMug said Flickr will continue to operate separately, telling users that SmugMug and Flickr accounts will “remain separate and independent for the foreseeable future.” The sites had been rivals, both aiming to attract professional (and semi-pro) photographers to share their work.

According to the company, Flickr currently has over 100 million unique users. According to comScore, the site had 13.1 million unique visitors in March 2018.

“Uniting the SmugMug and Flickr brands will make the whole photography community stronger and better connected,” SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill said in a statement. “Together, we can preserve photography as the global language of storytelling.” News of the deal was first reported by USA Today.

Flickr was founded in 2004 and was acquired by Yahoo a year later. Last year Verizon closed the $4.5 billion deal for Yahoo and merged the internet company’s business with AOL to form Oath.

The Flickr deal comes after Verizon offloaded the Oath division’s Moviefone to Helios and Matheson Analytics – the cash-strapped parent of MoviePass – earlier this month. HMNY paid $1 million in cash for Moviefone, which had been acquired by AOL for $388 million, and granted Verizon a 9.3% equity stake in the company.

Also this month, Verizon sold Polyvore, a social/ecommerce site focused on fashion, to Ssense, which folded the website. Yahoo had acquired Polyvore in 2015 under then-CEO Marissa Mayer.

With Flicker’s acquisition by SmugMug, Flickr users have until May 25, 2018, to either accept SmugMug’s terms of service and privacy policy or opt out.

SmugMug released a video celebrating its deal for Flickr, which is really just a sizzle reel showing smug-mugged photographers snapping pics backed by a song called “Bring Your Camera” by Portland, Ore.-based techno duo Phone Call.