After the tremendously successful emergence of Google, Yahoo! knew that they needed to expand their company and re-brand themselves in order to compete. Yahoo! is counter attacking full strength by focusing on user-generated "social media." Yahoo! launched a social network and blogging service this year called 360. They recently acquired Upcoming.org, a Southern California Web site whose events calendar gets assembled entirely by the public. They have plans to let people create and share their own audio podcasts, and they recently began including blog content into their news section. Through these practices Yahoo! is elevating grass roots journalism closer to mainstream media. However, Yahoo!'s primary investment in this innovation campaign was the creative enterprise Flickr, a company with the potential to create a huge wave in the internet market.

Flickr is an online photo management company that doubles as a sharing application. They go above and beyond their basic mission by delivering creative, community driven products and experiences to their users. Using Flickr means belonging to the participation culture â€"writing your own blogs, producing your own podcasts, and posting your personal photos for all to see - that's sweeping the web. Yahoo! is starting to see how crucial user-generated content, or "social media," is to their success. With more than 191 million registered users, Yahoo is on their way using lasting "Flickr-like" bonds to propel them.

Flickr's innovation results in a unique online community that acts as a vast theater of collective performance art. Flickr not only allows users to connect with individuals who have similar interests, it also provides space for groups, a feature that's uniting families and friends, by allowing them to post and comment on each others photos. Another function of the photo groups is to provide a place where people can post photos taken from a specific event, an option that would be particularly useful if you didn't get the best photos from the big game, wedding, or recital.

Perhaps Flickr's most significant innovation is "tagging." Tags allow users to describe specific photos making them easier to find. All of the photos that share a particular tag can be explored as a group (online researchers call this a "folksonomy"). Tagging has quickly gained popularity because it allows human beings-opposed to computer search engines-to bring intuitive organization to what otherwise would be largely anonymous entries in an endless sea of data. If Yahoo! builds off this innovation, they would be able to allow millions' of users to "tag" information in a way they can find it. By building off the community "feel", Yahoo! is striving to provide a place for reunion and collective sharing. We like Flickr because it's uniting and connecting people through innovation with an emphasis on the individual needs of their users.