• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 30, 2005

Large online portals increasingly find themselves torn between the pressures of advertisers who demand ever more consumer information in order to better target their ads, and users protective of their online doings and personal information.

At Yahoo!, a recent policy shift requiring all Flickr members to register as members of Yahoo!'s network by the end of 2006 has attracted resistance from a vocal minority. At "Flick Off," a Flickr group where both critics and defenders of Yahoo!'s plans have gathered, Flickr's co-founder Stewart Butterfield is busy responding to the objections and fears of members.

Responding to Purplezebra's concern that a Yahoo! ID will now be visible to Flickr users, Butterfield corrected: "Your Y! ID will not show on Flickr (unless you want it to). All that changes is the page where you go to log in (and, eventually, more payment options, integration with other services, etc.)" And unfortunately for Butterfield, there is currently no end in sight to these types of concerns.

Yahoo! spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said that the key reason to get everyone a Yahoo! account is to create a simpler, more streamlined user experience, so that Yahoo! can integrate other services with Flickr at the appropriate time. Flickr's 1.2 million member-base is too small to affect the behavior of the marketers who advertise on Yahoo!'s sites, added Stevens.

"It's absolutely in our interest to offer advertisers information they can use to target their ads, but these numbers wouldn't have an effect on our aggregate data," she said.

Some outside observers agreed that it is in Yahoo!'s interest to totally assimilate Flickr members with Yahoo!. "Yahoo! is trying to leverage several points of entry into its network and cross-market and better integrate services," Kelsey Group analyst Greg Sterling said. "Flickr is obviously a popular service, and perhaps a way for Yahoo! to gain some new users."

Indeed, any opportunity for Yahoo! to grow its membership and/or subscription base is a positive for the company, according to analysts. PiperJaffray, for instance, reiterated its outperform rating on Yahoo! last week following the relaunch of its co-branded high-speed Internet service with Verizon. One of the most important benefits for Yahoo!, the report reasoned, could be found in the estimated 800,000 to 2 million new subscribers the deal is likely to add.

JupiterResearch analyst David Card added: "Definitely, the more data Yahoo! can collect, the better." What's more, he said, consumer fears are "overblown" because it's not cost-effective to monitor users on a one-on-one basis.

"Yahoo! is already close to 200 million registered users--we're not trying to pump up the numbers by getting Flickr users in there," Butterfield said in a post on the Flickr blog. The motives behind the change, he explained, are increased convenience and future integration with Yahoo! services such as Yahoo! 360.