Yahoo! has agreed to buy Ludicorp Research and Development, owners of photo sharing website Flickr, for an undisclosed sum. Flickr enables users to personalise photo collections on the web, where they can store, sort, search and share their photos. Flickr will remain a standalone site for now. The company’s employees, however, will relocate to Sunnyvale later this year.
Earlier this week, Yahoo announced Yahoo 360. The service combines a new blogging tool, along with several longtime Yahoo products, including instant messaging, photo storage and sharing, and Internet radio. It also offers tools for sharing recommendations about places to eat, favorite movies, music and so on. Both the 360 move and the acquisition of Flickr and parent company Ludicorp Research & Development come as social networking and blogging draw increased interest from rivals. Microsoft in December added a blog product for its MSN Web service, called MSN Spaces. Google, meanwhile, owns Web log service Blogger and social networking site Orkut.