This image was lost some time after publication.

In what seems like another age, my predecessor once wrote about companies' "blogger appeasement groups" — units dedicated to generating buzz, not bucks. With Chad Dickerson leaving Yahoo Brickhouse, the troubled company's troubled incubator for new ideas, I think we can declare the delusion of blogger appeasement groups safely over. The self-appointed punditocracy of the blogosphere never was a real customer — nor even a twisted proxy for a real customer. Playing to the echo chamber only generated noise — a specialty of former Brickhouse head Salim Ismail.

Dickerson, his successor, was a solid if stolid executive best known for greasing the sticky wheels of Yahoo's bureaucracy. He has been replaced by someone even more unremarkable. Brickhouse was Yahoo's corporate version of an attention whore, an object we pay attention to because it demands we pay attention to it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's shuttered soon. If it is, will we even notice? (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)