Flickr Chief Stewart Butterfield made comments in a Flickr forum yesterday suggesting that recent rumors of a Yahoo! Photos Flickr consolidation are off the mark.
In the now famous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse had suggested that consolidation was needed at Yahoo! in order for the company to regain it’s footing and cited by name Yahoo! Photos and Flickr as potential consolidation targets. Garlington said that Yahoo had “ended up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.”
Although Butterfield didn’t go so far to say that the press was full of shit, he did single out Valleywag specifically saying that they have gotten a lot of stuff wrong.
In response to a post on the consolidation of Flickr and Yahoo! Photos Butterfield wrote,
“I betcha Flickr keeps going more or less on the same path (always evolving, sure, but more or less the same) for a long, long time to come.”
Adding,
“It’s interesting to hear all the different perspectives on this (you’re totally right lisanne001 – everyone’s a pundit). Very different from the inside, but it’s mostly stuff I can’t talk about. However, I can say that I’m really, really happy about all the recent changes. Valleywag has a lot wrong (just factually wrong, but it shows up in their interpretaions) so I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in it. All good! And in particular, all good for Flickr and it’s future :)”