Yahoo photo service gets touch-up
Yahoo Inc. is touching up its online photo-sharing service so it’s easier to sort and distribute digital pictures, continuing a recent overhaul of the world’s most trafficked Web site.
The changes announced Wednesday evening follow last month’s makeover of Yahoo’s front page, described by the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company as its most extensive redesign in a decade.
Although Yahoo has long drawn the Internet’s largest audience, it is facing tougher competition from online search engine leader Google Inc. as well as News Corp.’s MySpace.com, a Web magnet among teens.
With its stock price down by 22 percent so far this year, Yahoo also is under pressure to boost its profits. Those earnings hinge on the advertising attracted by the size of Yahoo’s audience.
The latest upgrades include new tools to categorize photos so they are easier to find under specific keywords like “baby,” “baseball” and “barbecue.” This “tagging” concept was pioneered by Flickr, another picture sharing service acquired by Yahoo last year.
“Media personality Martha Stewart said she believes to be close to settling an insider trading lawsuit brought against her by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
During a segment on NBC Universal’s “Today” show on Wednesday, Stewart said, “I think we’re close to a happy settlement” in response to a question from one of the show’s hosts.
A Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm if a settlement was at hand, noting the New York-based company isn’t a party in the lawsuit.
“McClatchy Co. said Wednesday that it has reached agreements to sell five of the six remaining Knight Ridder newspapers it plans to divest for about $450 million.
Together with two other transactions announced previously, McClatchy has now made deals to sell 11 of the 12 Knight Ridder papers it doesn’t plan to keep. McClatchy said the sales have generated just over $2 billion in proceeds, which it plans to use to reduce some of the debt it is taking on to acquire Knight Ridder.
The deals announced late Wednesday involved five newspapers: the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio; Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota; Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota; The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel in Indiana and the American News in Aberdeen, S.D.