Yahoo Enters the Photo-Filter War with Its New Flickr App

A day after debuting its new mail apps, the company has just released a Flickr app for iPhone, that — surprise, surprise — has Instagram-type filters. This comes just days after Twitter released its own filters and Instagram unveiled a new one.

Yahoo is on an app rampage: a day after debuting its new mail apps for Android, iOS, and Windows 8, the company has just released an updated Flickr app for iPhone, that — surprise, surprise — has Instagram-type filters. This, of course, comes just days after Twitter released its own filters and Instagram unveiled a new one.

Many had hoped that CEO Marissa Mayer would update Flickr as part of her efforts to revive Yahoo, and the decidedly mobile-first executive took that as an excuse to fix the phone version of her once dominant photo site. This week's upgrade has two stand-out features that Flickr lovers should appreciate:

Yahoo has entered the Twitter-Instagram photo war: Adding 16 of those ever-popular filters might not seem like the most original move, but people still love to dress up their photos in retro veneers.

Yahoo has given in to instant login. The Flickr app makes it (really) easy for users to sign on — something that, as Mat Honan explained over at Gizmodo, has plagued the service for awhile. One of Flickr's first "community problems" emerged when the service decided everyone needed a Yahoo account to sign in, he explains. That drove a lot of people away — especially casual sharers,. The new app allows you to sign in with either a Yahoo log-in or a Facebook ID (or a Google account, though it's a bit trickier to find).

Other than that, the app looks a lot like the company's Android offering. The photo-filter sharing aspect might attract those who don't already use the site to store their stuff. (That seems to be the hope.) Then again, Yahoo is kind of late to that game.

Update 9:25 a.m.: Yahoo has also redesigned its website. Finally