“I have never seen so many people with cameras,” says Jerry Yang. “It is kind of scary.” It's a perfect September evening at Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Yang, co-founder and chief Yahoo (YHOO ), decked out in a giant foam sheriff's hat, is surrounded by roughly 250 photographers. But these are not paparazzi here to profile the billionaire. They are, in fact, far more interested in taking digital snapshots of one another.

What Yang envies is the community of 1.5 million rabidly loyal users Flickr has cultivated and the vast amount of content they've created. Of the 60 million photos uploaded to the site so far, more than 80 percent are public, meaning that anyone can look at them. More than half have been “tagged” with user-created labels, making them searchable. To use Flickr is to belong to the culture of participation sweeping the Web -- where you write your own blog, produce your own podcast, and post your personal photos for all to see. If this is where the Web is going, Yang wants to make sure Yahoo gets there first.

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