The Biz of Coding

Stewart Butterfield Resigns from Yahoo!

by Ujwal Tickoo on June 17th, 2008

Stewart Butterfield has left a comment on TechCrunch which confirms that he and co-founder wife Caterina Fake are leaving Flickr and Yahoo! Kakul Srivastava will take his place as GM of Flickr. Stewart's Resignation letter at Yahoo! is at the end of this post (via Valley Wag)

I have had the pleasure of working with Stewart (and Kakul) during my Yahoo! days — very closely during Yahoo! Image Search's Integration with Flickr and the broader integartion of Flickr in Yahoo! Web Search. Through long emails and Yahoo! Messenger chats over several months, I figured the fierce passion that Stewart carried for preserving Flickr's unique identity and trust of its users. I am sure he will be missed by the Flickr team and at Yahoo!

Last year in October ValleyWag had posted a story that Stewart was leaving Yahoo! while he was only taking a paternity leave — which he himself clarified through a blog comment both on ValleyWag and on the Flickr Blog:

Aaaaaaaactually, I'm going on paternity leave, not leaving Yahoo! (I took some of my leave in July and found that I rushed back a little early.) I am actually going to be changing more diapers and coaxing more burps for a while (thanks for getting that right - I do love her!) but have no plans to give up the paycheck just yet — and I even have an uncomfortable number of meetings planned for when I'm supposed to be out on leave :)

From his resignation letter it seems Stewart doesn't feel he has a role at Yahoo!. That is sad because Flickr is actually a solid social network and could have been expanded & leveraged for a broader Yahoo! foray into Social Networking by creating a more Facebookesq platform. Flickr Video was launched couple of months ago and was booed by the passionate social photo-sharing core audience of Flickr.

Stewart's resignation letter from Valleywag. Valleywag calls it bizzare. However, when I read the letter it looks as coming from someone who is very weary and sad. Good Luck Stewart.

POSTED IN: Yahoo