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Yahoo: Miss Flickr during the outage? Try Tumblr!

The photo-sharing site tried to make the best of a data center upgrade by getting its users to share what they're doing during the outage.

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stephenshankland.jpg
Stephen Shankland principal writer
Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science Credentials
  • I've been covering the technology industry for 24 years and was a science writer for five years before that. I've got deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and other dee
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Stephen Shankland
Flickr showed its traditional "bad panda" image during an eight-hour outage for maintenance on Thursday and Friday.
Flickr showed its traditional "bad panda" image during an eight-hour outage for maintenance on Thursday and Friday. screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

Trying to make lemons out of lemonade during an eight-hour Flickr outage, Yahoo tried to rally its fans to engage on Twitter and Tumblr instead.

The photo-sharing site planned an outage from 9 p.m. PT Thursday to about 5 a.m. PT Friday, publishing its traditional "bad panda" outage notice. In the meantime, Yahoo fired up the WhileFlickrIsDown Tumblr and the #WhileFlickrIsDown hashtag on Twitter.

"Check out http://whileflickrisdown.tumblr.com/ and let us know what you are doing #WhileFlickrIsDown," Flickr tweeted, pointing to a form to submit entries for the Tumblr blog.

Why the outage? "After five years with only minor updates to our infrastructure, we are performing important upgrades and moving equipment to highly energy efficient data centers," Flickr said.