Yahoo continues to swing the axe through its staff, this time lopping off three members of the highly regarded Flickr.com team, including George Oates who was primarily responsible for for the site's highly-regarded minimalist design.
Flickr has always been one of the few bright spots for Yahoo, together with Delicious.com, Flickr seemed to mean that Yahoo might, somewhere deep down, get it. But Flickr was of course an acquisition and part of its success under Yahoo stems from the fact that Flickr still looks and feels like separate entity.
Unfortunately the loss of Oates is yet another blow to Flickr community. With Founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield already departed, very few of Flickr's original employees remain with Yahoo.
Given that the cornerstones of Flickr's success were its thriving community and its very clean, simple-to-use interface (largely designed by Oates), laying off Oates is akin to amputating a leg — something Yahoo seems to be good at having thus far amputated it's own head, twice, and rebuffed Microsoft's offer to cauterize the wounds.
Even those who balked at the idea of Flickr going to Microsoft would probably agree that, in hindsight, the idea doesn't sound so bad any more.
So the question for Flickr fans is can site somehow extract itself from the headless, bleeding mess that is Yahoo? Or will the life slowly drain out of the Flickr? Be sure to let us know what you think Flickr's fate will be.
No comments:
Post a Comment