Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

Dear Ms. Bartz,

I just finished reading your demoralizing letter regarding recent layoffs at Yahoo over at All Things Digital. Although I’m only a Yahoo user, not an employee, I am a heavy user of your Flickr product — a product that I’ve enjoyed and loved for many years now. As such, I watch how Yahoo is run with keen interest, mostly because I’m worried about how your corporate leadership will affect that site which I love so much.

For your first year of your reign at Yahoo you gave yourself a grade of B-, this past year you seemed a little more defensive and gave yourself a grade of simply “pass.” You’ve had the you know what kicked out of you, of course, by most of the tech and financial press over the past few years and have come back swinging yourself in odd ways. Telling Mike Arrington to “f*** off” for instance.

The market, we know, is frequently one of the most efficient graders of all. There is no grade inflation there.

On the day that you were announced as the new incoming CEO of Yahoo, January 14, 2009, Yahoo’s stock price closed at $12.41 per share. Now on the one hand that price vs. today’s price of $16.46 looks pretty good. In fact that’s over a 32% return since you’ve been at the helm. But the thing is that you took charge coming off the worst year in the stock market in recent history so we can’t really credit all of that to you.

In fact while Yahoo has been up +32% since you took over. Your competitors have been up quite a bit more. Google is up almost +100% in the same time period. Apple is up +275%, even the old slowpoke Microsoft is up +51%. The Nasdaq Composite is up +79% and the S&P 500 is up +53%. In short, Yahoo’s stock performance under your tenure thus far has been a laggard — but you already know this.

I suppose I wouldn’t really care about the stock price of Yahoo except for the fact that I think you’re just letting one of the best products at Yahoo, Flickr, languish. In your letter to your employees you say, it’s “no secret that we’re cutting investment in underperforming and non-core products so we can focus on our strengths (like email, the homepage, search, mobile, advertising, content and more)”

Email? The homepage? search ? mobile? advertising? Yawn.

You know what I don’t see in there? Flickr. Photos. I’m assuming that you consider Flickr one of those “underperforming and non-core products.”

Do you even realize what you have with Flickr? It’s the largest well organized library of images in the world. Not only that, it has a very strong social networking component. In fact, Flickr may represent (if managed correctly) your single biggest opportunity to launch a much larger and more lucrative social network (and stock photography agency as well). Have you spent any time in any Flickr groups? They are addicting. People live in them. They play games in them. All kinds of activity goes on in them every day. And if you took the time to really explore the social side of Flickr, you’d learn this, and figure out a way to grow it.

But you know what? You haven’t taken the time to really explore the social side of Flickr. Hell, you don’t even have an account yourself on Flickr. One of the most highly visible and trafficked Yahoo properties and you don’t even have an account there. Would it be so hard to have your assistant set up an account for you and post some photos of some mountains from a family vacation two years ago?

I listened in on your first analysts conference call. On the call you mentioned that your daughter was using Facebook to share photos. There was an opportunity right there for you to plug your own photo sharing site. Flickr needs you. They need you to be a cheerleader for the site. It would be good for morale to hear you mention the site once in a while. It also seems like a no brainer from a PR perspective. I know if I were CEO at Yahoo I sure as hell would have a Flickr account. In fact I’d set up accounts really on all of the services that I was commander and chief of and I’d actually use them from time to time to build a familiarity with what works and what doesn’t.

Now here’s what really galls me. Despite the overall dismal performance of your stock price. Despite the fact that your competitors are building traction when you are not. Despite the fact that much of your best talent is leaving in droves (I know Stewart Butterfield left before you got there but you really should read his resignation letter). Despite the fact that you won’t come down out of your ivory tower to actually get down in the trenches and work with us (your users) to figure out how we can make your products better. Despite all of this. You, yes you, were the highest paid CEO in the Standard & Poors 500 last year.

That’s right. At least according to this report you made $47.2 *million*. Now in addition to paying you all that dough, you also wasted $100 million on a stupid ad campaign saying that the “internet was under new management, yours.” Carol, if the internet was under new management “mine,” I sure as hell wouldn’t be deleting my own Flickr group with over 3,000 members now would I?

Imagine what an insult it is to your Yahoos when you send them out a memo saying that their unit is an under-performing and non-core product. That they get to watch their co-workers laid off just before Christmas while you reap in amazing piles of dough personally. This is not leadership. Leadership would be you coming out and saying you feel their pain and that you will be working for a $1 salary next year and will continue to work for $1 per year until you can get the company turned around. Do you really need more and more millions of dollars anyways? I guarantee you it’s not going to be a thin Christmas at the Bartz household this year.

And your complaint about the fact that your layoffs were leaked ahead of your actually axing people? Get over that. Your acrimony towards bloggers, your iron clad commitment to containment and secrecy within the Yahoo ranks isn’t working. People want honesty and transparency these days. So be transparent. Be human.

I’m sorry to be so blunt and so harsh on you in this letter. I dispute both your grades of B- and “pass.” I’d give you a fail for your first two years. A failure to grow the stock price. A failure to inspire the troops. A failure to innovate. I wouldn’t care so much except for the fact that you currently own what is one of the most important and significant cultural treasures of our lifetime. Flickr. And Flickr holds so much promise and so much could be done to innovate there and it just doesn’t feel like you give a damn.

Flickr will be here long after you are and its cultural significance to our world will outlast your quarter to quarter financial results. While not being your most profitable unit by any measure, understand what it is that you have. Use its strengths. Be its cheerleader. Figure out how you can harness the social networking potential there. I’d be happy to talk with you about ways that you could improve it if you had an interest.

Best Regards,

Thomas Hawk

Update: This letter to Carol Bartz is also now syndicated over at Business Insider here.

Last month I had a unique opportunity to spend two days shooting the newest property on the Las Vegas Strip, the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The Cosmopolitan, on the strip between Bellagio and City Center, opens for business today and I uploaded a bunch of new photos of the property to my Flickr account this morning. I’ve been uploading some photographs of the property over the last week and will continue uploading shots in the future with my regular daily uploads.

All in, over two days I took over 7,000 frames of the new property. I ended up finishing a little over 1,200 photos of those and have almost 100 of the best uploaded to a set on flickr now. To view this set as a slide show click here. It was an amazing experience to have access to this site before the general public.

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas consists of two towers which hold almost 3,000 rooms total. One of the towers is finished while a second tower is complete up to about the 42nd floor or so. They are still developing the second tower and construction was in progress while I was visiting. While visiting the property I was able to take some wonderful photographs from the 61st floor of the second tower still under development.

photos, clockwise starting upper left: The columns at the lobby check in featuring rotating plasma art, the in room kitchen in one of the corner suites, a long canyon hallway at the new spa, an exterior photograph of one pools overlooking City Center

I was impressed that almost every room in the new hotel had a full open air balcony with *amazing* views (bring your tripod and DSLR). The corner suites were the most luxurious and elaborate and featured dramatic wrap around balconies with brand new views of the Las Vegas Strip. Some of these units were originally intended to be luxury condominiums and feature 2 bathrooms, include large master bedroom/baths and full functioning kitchens including stoves and sub zero refrigerators. The rooms also included large Samsung plasma televisions which included an interactive menu to access various hotel and entertainment features.

In addition to the two towers, the property features a large naturally lit casino floor with a grand hotel entry which includes huge columns of plasma screens which were displaying library books while I was visiting. I was told that the art on the plasma screens would be rotated including different photos at different times. There are numerous nightclubs and bars throughout the property as well as many elaborately decorated escalators.

The property, which reportedly cost $3.9 billion to develop and is owned by Deutsche Bank, also includes a number of high end restaurants, a nightclub called Marquee (run by Tao), as well as large theater and convention space.

photos, clockwise starting upper left: Inside the new three story chandelier bar at the Cosmpolitan, an exterior photograph of one of the two towers, a photograph down one of the long corner suite balconies which overlooking the Strip and Paris, Las Vegas, a view down the strip from one of the open air balconies over looking the Bellagio Fountain.

The centerpiece of the casino floor includes a three story bar wrapped entirely in the largest crystal chandelier I’ve ever seen. Another bar downstairs, called the Queue bar, includes the line to the main nightclub Marque. I thought it was a great idea to wrap the nightclub line around a bar so that people could order drinks while they waited in line for the nightclub (it would certainly make waiting a bit easier if you could drink while waiting). Another ground floor club featured elevated platforms where gogo dancers will be able to dance and be seen from the strip.

Everything about the property was very decorated and elaborate — even down to the underground parking garage. The parking garage includes a light above every parking stall. If there is a car in the spot the light turns red. If it is open it is green. This allows you to easily drive down the rows of the underground garage and spot open spaces where you can park. Four floors of the parking garage also included custom mural graffiti art done by some of the prominent street artists out there today including Shepard Fairey and Kenny Scharf.

The property also features three large swimming pools with bars as well, a relaxing pool, a dayclub pool and a nightclub pool. There is also a full spa in the second tower leading out to one of the pools.

One of the things that I really liked about the property was that in the hallways to the hotel rooms and in the hotel rooms themselves there were big beautiful oversized framed fine art photographs. It seemed that everywhere you went you kept seeing big beautiful photographs.

A black and white photograph of the new crystal chandelier bar, a detail photograph of one of the Shepard Fairey murals int the parking garage.

The hotel already has booked some major talent and is promoting a New Years Eve package which includes a concert featuring Jay-Z and Coldplay. Brandon Flowers from the Killers will be performing there poolside for the opening.

In addition to the parking garage street art, the hotel includes many other pieces by prominent artists. The arts will be a big focus of the property and they will have an artist-in-residence program where various artists will spend a month at a time at the hotel working on their art in a hotel studio.

Thanks to David Scherer from The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas for showing me around, to Miiko Mentz at Katalyst Films for helping to arrange the shoot, and to my wife for modeling for me. I had a blast and look forward to shooting this property more in the future. To learn more about The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, click on the link at the top of this post to get to their website, or check out their page on Facebook here or their Twitter page here.

I’m photographing Las Vegas as part of my series on the 100 largest cities of America. You can check out that series here and my specific set on Las Vegas more broadly speaking here.

Reports are circulating and tweets are being sent out today that indicate that layoffs are happening at Yahoo’s Flickr.

The layoffs at Flickr were first rumored by TechCrunch who posted about Flickr employees not showing up to a meeting a few weeks ago. After that TechCrunch post Flickr Staffer Eric Gelinas posted to Twitter “Just in case you don’t know “wolf” when you hear it cried, Flickr is fine, I am fine #sensationalist, #techcrunch, #cryingwolf, #flickr, #yahoo, appearing to refute the initial report of layoffs.

But today at least two other Flickr staffers, Cris Stoddard (who did community tech support) and Tara Kirchner (Flickr’s Senior Marketing Manager) tweeted that they would be leaving the company — and other tweets from other Flickr staffers seem to confirm that layoffs are happening there today. Stoddard later deleted her initial tweet but a screen shot of it is above along with various other tweets related to today’s layoffs.

Many news outlets have been reporting the past few days that Yahoo is laying off roughly 5% of their employees mostly focusing on various U.S. based Yahoo product areas.

More from business insider on today’s Yahoo layoffs here.

Another update from TechCrunch here.