It's a brilliant move. The site is able to detect the camera used as the photographs are uploaded, which opens the door for the company to graph usage and create camera-specific groups for users.
This isn't social networking -- it's better than that. Viewers impressed with the quality of a particular shot may be tempted to learn more about the camera. At that point, Flickr has no problem enlightening users before dropping them off at the Yahoo! Shopping site for a little price-comparison shopping.
As it stands, Canon (NYSE:CAJ) and Nikon (NASDAQ:NINOF) make the most popular cameras being used on the site. The site does offer information and pricing on nearly two dozen camera manufacturers, including Kodak (NYSE:EK) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ). Flickr explains that camera phones are usually harder to track, though it does have data on popular camera phone makers like Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and Motorola (NYSE:MOT).
It's not exactly a leap of faith to assume that the Flickr crowd appreciates digital cameras and cell phones with snapshot functionality. It represents a potentially lucrative revenue channel for Yahoo!, and it comes as a healthy counterargument to the thesis posed in the "The Peanut Butter Manifesto," which suggests that Yahoo! is spreading itself too thin. If there are more logical ways to grow and synergize the various Yahoo! subsidiaries like this, then such a strategy may prove to be the ultimate digital snapshot of the portal's future.
Yahoo! is an active recommendation in theMotley Fool Stock Advisornewsletter service.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a frequent Yahoo! visitor, but he does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. He is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.The Fool has a disclosure policy.
