Image sharing community Flickr has already been eulogized in the media, but its users haven’t given up hope.
Since Yahoo announced its new CEO pick, Marissa Mayer, on Monday, users have been downright optimistic. Google’s 20th employee and first female engineer, Mayer is no ordinary executive.
Or as user Jayel Aheram wrote in the Flickr Central forum: “Yahoo to be headed by someone who probably knows the value of Flickr.”
“Let’s hope the ship will be turned around by the Googirl,” one commenter wrote.
Tina Roth Eisenberg, Flickr user and author of Swiss Miss, one of the world’s 50 top design blogs, shared the sentiment.
“I was beyond excited when I heard that Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer is pregnant with her first child,” Eisenberg wrote. “That means she will take thousands of photos of her little son and upload them to Flickr and realize that it could be vastly improved and then she will make it happen! Right?”
The central hub of Mayer-related optimism, however, is the anonymously created Dear Marissa Mayer website, whose message is simply signed, “The Internet.”
“Dear Marissa Mayer, please make Flickr awesome again,” it says. The website, which has its own hashtag, #dearmarissamayer, has been shared thousands of times.
“#dearmarissamayer When you acquires something, please don’t shove it into a corner and allow it to collect dust (i.e. Delicious),” @jreckseidler tweeted.
Is it too late for Flickr? Its largest forum, Flickr Central, has been pronounced dead by its users. Plus, Mayer is already Yahoo’s third CEO in a year—and with her due date in October, she may not be around long enough to initiate any major change before taking maternity leave.
For users, however, she’s the only hope.
“We’re all going to see Yahoo and Flickr improving by the hour,” personne.de.chandigarh wrote in Flickr Central. “Let’s all be optimistic.”
Photo via Tiziano
