Windows Live Photo Gallery And Flickr
Kip noted yesterday about WLPG getting an update from Windows Update and included a Microsoft KB link, but what that link doesn't contain was what else might have come with that update. You might remember last month we hinted that WLPG might support...
Context & Ripple Effects
Windows Live Photo Gallery has been in public testing since mid-year — LiveSide covered its beta alongside Microsoft's Live Drive plans in June, and the Windows Live Folders beta in May showed Microsoft building out the storage side of the same consumer stack. Last month LiveSide hinted that WLPG might gain Flickr support, and today's item picks up that thread: Kip flagged an update arriving through Windows Update with a KB link, but the KB doesn't say what else shipped with it.
So the Flickr question stays open — the relationship data marks it as rumored, not confirmed. What is confirmed is the delivery mechanism itself: Microsoft is using Windows Update, its highest-reach distribution pipe, to refresh a consumer creative app rather than waiting for users to seek out installers.
First-order effects
- WLPG users get the update pushed to them through Windows Update rather than pulling it manually, which puts the gallery app in front of the general Windows installed base instead of just the beta audience that followed the June beta coverage.
- If the Flickr hooks LiveSide hinted at are in this build, WLPG owners can publish photos straight to Yahoo's service from the desktop — though until Microsoft confirms it, that remains unverified.
Second-order effects
- A Flickr pathway from a bundled Microsoft desktop tool makes Yahoo's photo service more valuable to Windows users while deepening Microsoft-Yahoo interdependence at exactly the moment the two compete in web mail, where all three major portals are adding social features to email.
- Microsoft's own Windows Live Folders sits in tension with any third-party publishing support: every photo pushed to Flickr is one not stored in Redmond's own beta storage service.
Third-order effects
- Desktop update channels are quietly becoming distribution for web services — the client app turns into a front end whose value depends on which services it connects to, not just its editing features.
- Steve Ballmer's confirmed Web 2.0 pledge to acquire roughly 20 companies a year for five years points the same direction: expect Microsoft to keep wiring Windows-bundled clients to whatever web services it builds or buys, with Flickr-class integrations either partnered or replicated in-house.
The trend: Consumer desktop applications are being repositioned as front ends to web photo and social services, with Windows Update serving as the delivery pipe for that shift.