A new photo-sharing app from former Silicon Valley darling Marissa Mayer has been slow to catch on since it was announced last week, drawing criticism for its bare-bones design, according to reports.
Mayer, Google’s first female engineer and former CEO of Yahoo, currently runs startup studio Sunshine, which is designed to automatically share photos taken by users at events they attend together. released the app “Shine”.
The app reached around 1,000 downloads as users criticized its poor design. This is a product of Mayer’s chaotic management of his engineering team tasked with building the app. According to a report in the technology newsletter “Platformer”.
And despite raising $20 million in seed money from investors including Mayer, whose five-year tenure as Yahoo’s chief executive was largely considered a failure, the app was riddled with bugs. It was launched.
The newspaper reached out to Mayer for comment.
Meyer reportedly alienated Shine staff by telling him at a Halloween party at his home that the new app was modeled primarily on now-defunct colors. Color was a service that collected photos and videos taken by her family and friends at the same event and automatically loaded them into the system. A gallery that can be viewed by groups.
When someone leaves a party or gathering, they no longer have access to the Color Gallery.
But the Color app failed because strangers near the group could also see the photos.
Some trolls took nude photos and uploaded them to the Color app.
Released in 2011, the app was discontinued a year later and its engineering staff was hired by Apple.
However, Platformer said Mayer thought Color could provide templates for Shine.
“We do color, but it’s not color because there’s a nude filter,” Mayer allegedly told employees at a Halloween party in October.
Shine engineers also noticed bugs in the system, including an inaccurate tracking mechanism that was supposed to monitor a user’s location but could result in photos being inadvertently shared with others.
According to the platform, one of Shine’s employees discovered that her daughter’s photo was placed in an album and shared with colleagues because Google’s tracking technology mistakenly placed her photo near a group. It is reported that he found out.
Shine employees also complained of a lack of direction from Mayer, who did not listen to their advice and made decisions based solely on his own experience with the app. It is said that this decision alienated them.
Employees who send questions to Mayer through Slack are often told that they would like to have the question answered directly, resulting in delays in workflow.
Mayer is also frequently late for all-hands meetings that employees say are scheduled for Fridays at 5 p.m., causing their workloads to extend into the weekend, the platform said. reported.
Adding to the confusion, Enrique Muñoz Torres, who co-founded Sunshine with Mayer and worked with him at Google and Yahoo, left earlier this week.
“Startup life is not easy, but it has definitely been the most rewarding experience of my professional career, which is why the decision to leave was a very difficult one,” he wrote on LinkedIn. Ta.
