At a time when Yahoo is struggling through job cuts, failed Google deals, and rejected ideas of the company still getting offers from Microsoft, at least one Yahoo property – Flickr – got some traffic juice as a result of the Presidential election.
One photographer who apparently has a somewhat close relationship with the President-Elect, was lucky enough to get some backstage shots before and after the historic speech Obama gave.
This will probably have a bigger impact on photographer David Katz’s career than it will on Yahoo’s future, but it will no doubt point a great deal of people Flickr’s way, and that isn’t a bad thing for them. Unless of course, if the site is crashed when you try to visit it, as Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider indicates that it has. He also notes that there are no ads present when you view the photos, so they’re not getting any money from that, but it still can’t hurt for branding purposes. This is the next President of the United States we’re talking about. Not to mention the historical significance of his election.
And like Ryan Tate at Gawker notes, “In some prior election year, the behind-the-scenes footage of a president-elect’s first moments might have been captured by a photographer for, say, Life, or at least distributed through a glossy magazine like that.”
A search for Obama on Flickr will bring up a great deal of other pictures too, though I doubt a very large percentage of them are exclusive, and of the ones that are, there is probably not one that captures such a personal moment as some of Katz’s, which took place just around the time Barack Obama achieved the greatest victory of his life. If you can get there, check out Katz’s gallery.
All things considered, Election day was a good boost for Yahoo Traffic. Yahoo News was also the top site for the day.
