I have resisted the temptation of posting about the potential acquisition of Yahoo! by Microsoft. Articles and posts on this topic are dime a dozen, sprawled all over the internet like Heath Ledger tributes.
I was, however, interested to learn of a new Flickr group running under the title of Microsoft: Keep your evil grubby hands off our flickr! The group is enjoying moderate community growth with close to 3000 members already.
This is a great example of the power that communities now have thanks to web 2.0 technology. As most readers of half-geek will probably know, Flickr is a photo sharing site that is owned by Yahoo! Obviously, should Yahoo actually be acquired by Microsoft, Flickr will be the property of Mr Gates and his mates at Microsoft.
Microsoft have a solid track record of flexing their financial muscles and acquiring successful start-ups and in turn winding them up or effectively ruining them. During the dot com boom, Microsoft would often acquire new web start-ups and shut them down immediately in order to permanently halt their positive progress as a potential Microsoft competitor.
The difference with the potential Microsoft acquisition of Flickr (via Yahoo!) is an element that was non existent in most dot com boom web start-ups........an actively engaged community. You see the value in Flickr is not technology, but the community itself- and it's great to see that this small part of the Flickr community are fully aware of this fact.
A closer look at the discussions amongst the members of this new Flickr group/community reveals threatening topics such as "Alternatives to Flickr" & "Right Microsoft, you can have flickr as long as you meet our demands".
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