Attack of the Purple People Meeters: An Ex-Yahoo Helps Other Ex-Yahoos

Here’s an interesting site, created by an ex-Yahoo for ex-Yahoos to help them find jobs.

Launched today by Ryan Kuder (along with a non-Yahoo, Jonathan Tarud), it’s called the Purple People Collective.

Purple, of course, is the main color at Yahoo (YHOO) and “bleed purple” is one of its more unfortunate favorite expressions.

Kuder, if you will recall, did a very funny Twitter stream about his own layoff in February. My favorite tweet: “Last free triple non-fat latte from Beantrees. Sniff.”

Kuder explains the new project on the site:

When I was laid off in February, one of the frustrating things was that the daily professional contact that I had with my co-workers evaporated. There was Facebook and LinkedIn and IM and Twitter, but what I really wanted was a way for us fellow ex-Yahoos to find each other and help each other find work. There were lots of referrals for freelance work, but they all happened peer to peer. If only there was a place where we could all get together and proudly say, ‘We got laid off, and we can help you!’ it would be a hell of a lot easier for the recruiters to find us.

So when Yahoo went through its second round of layoffs on December 10, the Purple People Collective was born. Hopefully it can help match up some folks in need of short term work with some folks who need short term work. We know there are lots of people getting laid off these days, not just Yahoos, so it’s open to anyone who’s recently out of work.”

BoomTown likes any lemons-into-lemonade project, like a lot, so go take a look (especially you Yahoos who were laid off last week).