Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005, according to a LinkedIn post recounting the company's origins. The source does not disclose the amount Yahoo paid.
The post states that Flickr began as a side project. Stewart Butterfield started building an online game called Game Neverending in 2002, and the game never launched. While working on it, his team developed a photo-sharing service, which became Flickr.
The same account says Butterfield then returned to game development, raising millions to build a multiplayer game called Glitch with a team that grew to 45 people. Glitch shut down in 2012. The team had built an internal communication tool that was turned into a product and launched publicly in beta in 2013, drawing 13,000 signups in its first week. That product was Slack, which Salesforce acquired in 2021 at a $27.7 billion enterprise value, according to the post.
The source presents these details as a narrative about Butterfield's career and does not include comment from Yahoo, Flickr or Butterfield.