WebProNews

We've moved from embarrassing to scary to ludicrous.  Like it or not, Yahoo's VIPs keep on departing, and Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, the married cofounders of Flickr, are the latest well-known employees to quit the company.

Butterfield appears to have sent a rather strange resignation letter to explain (and/or obfuscate) his reasons for exiting.  Reprinted by Valleywag, it focuses on the production of tin, discusses his pre-WWII work with Yahoo, and slips in a reference to alpacas.  Yet in any case, the date of departure mentioned in the letter - July 12th - matches with what TechCrunch reported.

Fake ended her employment on Friday without leaving behind any similar oddities.

The Flickr community has reacted strongly to both events.  Aside from the obligatory well-wishing, concerns about Flickr itself - which were already strong during the talk of Microsoft's takeover - came up in conversation.  But Kakul Srivastava, its general manager, is set to take over, and Butterfield writes, "No need to worry about the future of Flickr - it's well-protected from the uppings and downings of YHOO and will continue to be awesome.  Kakul is actually better than me anyway - ask anyone on the team."

This morning, by the way, is a definite "downing" for Yahoo, as its stock has slipped 2.41 percent so far.