Reposting a comment from Fred Wilson's blog, on which he says they need new management and a few folks are replying:
Others here are saying that if Yahoo had the team of 1997, they'd do great. Yahoo had a lot what's currency today before it was currency: social networking (Yahoo 360), bookmarking (MyWeb), email and, of course search.
The problem, from my perspective, was in the execution and sometimes the marketing. The email product was good for its time, but hasn't been updated in ages, and is still very glitchy. Small business email, paid, doesn't have the functionality of Gmail or many other services.
Web building services are more expensive and less functional than others who've overtaken Yahoo in functionality as a host. (A site I have there recently was very slow and it was only after I called -- 45 minutes on hold! -- that I found out they'd been having server issues. Then the told me they'd escalate the site.)
I don't know what team it was in '97. But I do see tons of great ideas and opportunities that were not seized on.
Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts
Is Yahoo Messing Around with MyYahoo?
I use Yahoo for a few things, including some of my business (the main site for TeemingMedia is hosted by their Small Business service), an old personal email account, a MyYahoo page I don't look at as often as some other aggregators, a MyWeb account that dates from before DIGG and Delicious got traction, Flickr, and I'd use the Overture keyword finder if it still existed. I sometimes use Yahoo Groups, which is still, I think, superior to Google groups, although it requires users to have a Yahoo logon. (A flaw with a lot of the Yahoo services; they essentially require you to become a Yahoo to use them.)
Twice today, and a couple of other times in the page week or two -- using Macs with OSX and a Safari and perhaps Firefox browser -- I've been redirected from the Yahoo service I wanted to the new Beta MyYahoo page. One time, I was trying to access the business emails to set up a new email account, another time, I was trying to log into my business email. Both times, I landed on cm.my.yahoo.com. (I was able to access my mail from that page.) In the bad old days of jacking up numbers, I would have put this off as an attempt to drive people through a certain page to jack up its numbers. Couldn't be that. Could it?
Twice today, and a couple of other times in the page week or two -- using Macs with OSX and a Safari and perhaps Firefox browser -- I've been redirected from the Yahoo service I wanted to the new Beta MyYahoo page. One time, I was trying to access the business emails to set up a new email account, another time, I was trying to log into my business email. Both times, I landed on cm.my.yahoo.com. (I was able to access my mail from that page.) In the bad old days of jacking up numbers, I would have put this off as an attempt to drive people through a certain page to jack up its numbers. Couldn't be that. Could it?
Yahoo, Microsoft and Google
Ian Schafer has it about right: What Microsoft sees in Yahoo is the chance to increase its ad serving reach, cover more of the market, and improve not only reach and frequency but also the third all-important, beyond “GRP” component in today’s ad sphere: targeting. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have been in furious competition with Google and AOL (and each other) to build or buy ad platforms like Blue Lithium and aQuantive that have a variety of ad-serving, targeting and amalgamating solutions for a networked society.
One thing Schafer hopes for (and Henry Blodget calls for) doesn’t seem likely: that Microsoft will let the Yahoo brand live separately and distinctly. Not only does that not seem to be the Microsoft way, it also would make it hard to achieve some of those efficiencies Microsoft keeps talking about. Ask yourself, if Microsoft buys Yahoo:
Blodget talks a lot about the different cultures and the difficulties of integrating the two companies, how Microsoft is already battling on many fronts and is unlikely to be able to fight all these battles and make itself into a GE-like conglomerate. He also talks of Google’s play to help Yahoo stay out of Microsoft clutches and in his post and another alludes to Google’s “Ahabian” desire to sink Microsoft’s Office products with cloud computing Web software.
All that cultural stuff is big, and important, and he’s right that senior execs at Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Internet division, will be working scared for the foreseeable future. But, as said above, the real rubber and the real road here is advertising reach and targeting. That’s what has to work for this deal to be worth Microsoft’s while.
One thing Schafer hopes for (and Henry Blodget calls for) doesn’t seem likely: that Microsoft will let the Yahoo brand live separately and distinctly. Not only does that not seem to be the Microsoft way, it also would make it hard to achieve some of those efficiencies Microsoft keeps talking about. Ask yourself, if Microsoft buys Yahoo:
- Will they subsume their Hotmail (integrated with Passport and .msn) into Yahoo’s mail? Or are they more likely to migrate Yahoo’s mail over to MSN?
- Are they likely to let Yahoo’s small business and Web hosting area live on its own, or try to migrate all that small- and medium-sized business over to Microsoft (encouraging it all the while to buy Microsoft Office products)?
- Will they let Yahoo’s social networking and blogging and tagging and bookmarking properties live separately, or try to integrate them into Microsoft’s properties, trying to get some long-missing traction for Microsoft’s initiatives?
Blodget talks a lot about the different cultures and the difficulties of integrating the two companies, how Microsoft is already battling on many fronts and is unlikely to be able to fight all these battles and make itself into a GE-like conglomerate. He also talks of Google’s play to help Yahoo stay out of Microsoft clutches and in his post and another alludes to Google’s “Ahabian” desire to sink Microsoft’s Office products with cloud computing Web software.
All that cultural stuff is big, and important, and he’s right that senior execs at Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Internet division, will be working scared for the foreseeable future. But, as said above, the real rubber and the real road here is advertising reach and targeting. That’s what has to work for this deal to be worth Microsoft’s while.
Yahoo Accepting Open ID is Big
Joseph Weisenthal, with whom I'm friendly, of PaidContent, for which I've worked, writes that the list of sites accepting Open ID is "spare." True. But that Yahoo, which claims close to half a billion registrants, has signed on and bumped up Open ID's potential base an order of magnitude or so, is big news. If people can use one logon, or ID, and log on to myriad sites, such as Six Apart blogs and the contact storing software Plaxo, it bring a utility to the Web that's not there today, allowing one logon and more seamless execution across registered platforms.
With a genuflection to another friend, Daniel Gross, I say this is one of those little things that could prove to be of big import. Whether Open ID or another scheme, open, cross-platform utility is only going to progress geometrically, when it's fast and easy. Now, let me try the thing once it launches and see if it actually works (!).
With a genuflection to another friend, Daniel Gross, I say this is one of those little things that could prove to be of big import. Whether Open ID or another scheme, open, cross-platform utility is only going to progress geometrically, when it's fast and easy. Now, let me try the thing once it launches and see if it actually works (!).
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