Yahoo has begun testing what it calls the most significant upgrade to Yahoo Photos since its launch in 2000, but only a "limited"
group of U.S. users has access to this revamped photo sharing site, the company said Thursday.
Yahoo has retooled the user interface to make it behave more like a desktop PC application with drag-and-drop functionality
to simplify photo management and organization.
Another new feature is the ability for users to tag photos with descriptive labels and comments, and thus make it easier to
find and share pictures. The site's new Smart Albums functionality detects tags and files photos accordingly in their corresponding
albums.
Yahoo is also making available APIs (application programming interfaces) to allow external developers to add to and extend
the site's functionality.
Some of these sharing and tagging features have existed for years on other photo sharing sites, including Flickr, which Yahoo acquired last year and which is maintained as a separate site.
Yahoo, of Sunnyvale, California, will open the beta program to users worldwide in the coming months.
The practice of releasing unfinished online services in beta, or test, form to the public has become popular among companies
like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft's MSN unit, which say that user feedback helps them refine the products.
This practice is common among IT vendors, which for decades have enlisted customers to test drive their products before they
are finished.
However, a big difference is that IT professionals, who understand they need to conduct the trials in controlled environments,
test IT vendors' beta products.
Some have questioned whether mainstream users of Google, Yahoo, and MSN services truly understand the implications of trying
out online services that may malfunction, leading to data loss or PC problems.
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