As part of an extensive series of cuts and closures at Yahoo!, Yahoo! Video is closing its doors, or as Yahoo! so sweetly puts it, is “changing.” So that’s thousands more people heading to YouTube for their online video, surely.
Yahoo! Evolving
is currently undergoing an extreme change, with those in charge, particularly CEO Carol Bartz, attempting to make deep cuts in order to save money and keep the company chugging along into the far future.
The last week has seen hundreds of staff told their soon to be out of a job, while various products under the Yahoo! banner are being closed or combined with others. Controversially, those being closed include De.licio.us and MyBlogLog.
And it looks as though Yahoo! Video is affected as well.
Yahoo! Video Closing/Changing
The official word from the company is that Yahoo! Video is “changing,” but it sounds more like a closure to me. What’s clear is that Yahoo! is getting out of the UGC business, with “videos, user profiles, ratings, favorites, and playlists no longer be available after March 14, 2011.” That is according to an email sent out to Yahoo! Video users.
The ability to upload a video to the site has already ended, and March 14, 2011 is the date when everything else ceases. Yahoo! Video users with videos on the site have until then to download their content because it will then be removed.
This comes almost three years after Yahoo! Video was relaunched with new features to help it actually compete with YouTube and the like. Well, that was the idea, but it never actually managed it. Still, it seems a little sudden to shutter it in this way.
YouTube, Surely…
Yahoo! Video users have various alternatives on offer, with Yahoo! most likely directing them to Flickr, which also belongs to the company. Flickr is mainly a photo-sharing service, but the ability to also share videos was turned on in 2008.
However, surely YouTube will gain the most out of this, because it is now the ubiquitous online video service and the only one that is universally known and recognized.
