Loom Jumps Ship to Dropbox, Flickr Reboots Mobile Apps (Yes, Again)

The cloud photo storage sands shifted this week as one popular option regrouped under the ever-expanding wing of Dropbox, while the granddaddy of them all tries again to make another go of mobile.

Cloud-based photo service Loom announced Thursday that it's packing its bags and joining forces with Dropbox, closing up shop on enrolling new users and giving existing customers one more month to enjoy the service.

Loom customers are encouraged to move their data over to Carousel, the new Dropbox app for iPhone and Android the cloud storage giant recently debuted. On the good news front, switching to Carousel will give free Loom users an equivalent storage bump on the Dropbox side, while paid users will be able to use their quota for the next year, at which point they'll have to pony up for Dropbox storage.

"We know this is a big deal," Loom wrote on its blog. "This decision was made with great care. We have worked hard on our product and feel that our vision aligns perfectly with Dropbox’s vision for Carousel."

Speaking of aligning visions, Yahoo took yet another stab at getting mobile right on Thursday with the debut of Flickr 3.0 for iPhone and Android. The new version is a complete reimagining of the venerable photo service, which appears to be adopting more of an Instagram look and feel than the previous version.

The new iPhone app includes 14 live filters that work will full-resolution photos as well as up to 30 seconds of HD video. Flickr has also beefed up the app's search and discovery features, and photos can now be easily shared right to Tumblr, Twitter or Facebook as well.

Curiously, the Flickr iOS app is still not a native build for the iPad, which has become something of a glaring oversight with the passage of time. Otherwise, the refreshed design seems worthy of a download, especially when Flickr serves up 1TB of free cloud storage for all, which the company claims is enough space for more than half a million photos.

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