Well, I think the important is not to lose the focus about publication and dissemination of research outputs. Rankings, IF, and other metrics are useful to estimate the impact and quality of our works, but as always, not all fall into these metrics. There is a plenty of rich and useful grey literature that does not fit within metrics. If the journal is Open Access, is very specialised and has a concrete but robust audience, I think its IF does not count to much. 

Impact Factor is definitely a criterion for future prospects but to me it should not be the sole guiding factor. I feel one can also publish papers in quality periodicals without Impact Factor.

I do not recall where I saw but a Nobel laureate said that instead of waiting for a very long time to get his findings published in a periodical of Impact Factor 100 he will try to get them published quickly in comparatively low Impact Factor periodicals.

The "Impact Factor" is a business. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. There are many academic journals in the world of quality, very good and with standardized processes that have refused to be part of that world of Scopus or Web of Science. In addition, the publications are validated with their own scientific communities and among their peers. I reject the impact factor. It is a currency that I believe (my humble opinion) has commercialized scientific knowledge and created barriers (costs) to access it. These "initiatives" are creating research mercenaries.