Dear Yahoo, hire me as your next CEO
stu.mp
stu.mp
They had Geocities and Yahoo webhosting.
They had Flickr and Yahoo Photos.
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Their current problem is poor execution.
They've wanted to go into social media for a long time, and failed in many efforts.
Years ago Yahoo Profiles existed with explicit tie in with Yahoo Messenger.
Then Facebook came onto the scene and social became the new 'in thing'.
Yahoo Profiles was redesigned.
Then Yahoo Buzz was launched and poorly integrated with the above.
At the same time they had a stealth platform with its own social networking features.
They shut down the above stealth platform and redesigned Yahoo Profiles as Yahoo Pulse.
Now they're shutting down many of the features of Yahoo pulse--guest books, photos, blogging. Yahoo Buzz is gone as well.
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I question:
1. Why didn't Yahoo Profiles integrate with Flickr?
2. Why didn't they integrate with delicious? At one time Yahoo Profiles allowed you to add links to other pages, but these bookmarks were never replicated to delicious.
3. Why is Yahoo Profiles poorly integrated with Yahoo Groups? Will Yahoo groups get the axe next?
In the end, Yahoo's problem is though they have all the pieces of the puzzle , they have no clue how to put it together. Their divisions compete rather than provide synergy for one another.
They're not a vertically or even horizontally integrated product. Rather they are more like an amorphous conglomorate that sadly locks down its own internal products so that they aren't allowed to integrate even where it would be useful.
1. Roadmaps. It wasn't high on Flickr's roadmap. Profiles integration provided little to no value to them. Plus the way Yahoo! works it would have taken months just to figure out what an "integration" meant. It was talked about (several times).
2. Probably similar reasons as above. This wasn't really talked about. Delicious was kind of a red headed step child internally. Not sure many execs realized it's value - hence the dwindling of the team and eventual selloff.
3. Roadmaps. Yahoo Groups! is huge and understaffed. Even if both sides wanted to do an integration it would take months to decide what that would look like. Given the rate of attrition the people involved might not even be around long enough to see it through.
Interesting blog post but Yahoo!s problems run real deep. You almost have to gut the company to salvage it. Makes me sad :(.
Then we can have mashups created by the public, and then Yahoo can pick and choose.
(There's always a risk when integrating with third-party services, but Yahoo! seems is a bit too shaky and capricious for my liking.)
Are you kidding? I get Gruber is a popular blogger in some circles, but in what way does he have the kind of insight, ability, or experience needed to run the new york times and yahoo news?
Big companies have big company issues because managing huge groups of people is a complex process. I like startups and bloggers as much as the next g(uy|al), but startups are not wonderful tonics that larger companies can buy to cure their ailments. One of the exact reasons lots of folks like startups is that we can avoid those issues. The post suggests that you can take a bunch of people who probably don't want to work in a big company, pull them in to a big company and have everything go well...
[1] http://www.quora.com/If-Yahoo-owns-40-of-Alibaba-and-thats-w...
Read the bottom of the page.
Doesn't look like he's even remotely qualified to be CEO of a startup, let alone a $20B publicly traded corporation. Never mind the 'strategy' he outlines, which sounds like something out of a Starbucks brainstorming session.
Key among Yahoo's bad decisions: let's abandon search and become a 'media' company (based on 30 year old concepts of 'media' from a 'media' insider, all of which were rapidly becoming obsolete even 10 years ago).
Failing to get the internal groups to cooperate. Yes, it's hard. So what? That's what a CEO's job should be - do the hard stuff. The example about "well, integration wasn't on Flickr's roadmap'. Probably 110% true, but so what? Yahoo bought Flickr. Flickr's roadmap should have been Yahoo's roadmap, and Yahoo needed a coherent roadmap.
It's been so disheartening to see Yahoo move from an innovative company to "the place companies get acquired then die at".
Yahoo needs someone like Joe far more than it needs another Silicon Valley "insider board member" type. Yahoo's had a decade plus of "business types" who were going to "turn things around" and all that typical business BS. It's time for a real change. Not saying Joe specifically, but they need an outsider. I fear the shareholders are just too timid to demand real change.
The only place I'd disagree with Joe on in his list is the '100% autonomy' bits. It's the "100% autonomy" which got Yahoo in to problems, with no department being forced to integrate with another. I suspect with the right people in place, "100% autonomous decisions" may still mesh nicely with a focus on across the board integrated experiences, but I'd still want that to be a priority.
Yahoo unfortunately doesn't let Flickr innovate so they've fallen behind now adays.
It's like he wants to solve problems by throwing money at them. If this works, then the previous CEO would have probably done the same and the start-ups he mentioned would have already been acquired by some Big Names.
Does he really think you can just waltz around and "buy" companies? Remember...Morin and Dorsey are already rich. Why would they sell to you?
CEOs also do way more than just buy things. This post just shows how naive and sheltered the poster really is.
If only Yahoo would give autonomy to their own (I bet also pretty talented engineers); it would go a long way to a better Yahoo.
If you can, take in some of the great talent (not just individuals) and rebuild! And the idea that
"They would have 100% autonomy over the entire “Yahoo! [Photo, Mobile, Social, News]” division."
seems great! Especially from the AOL/TechCrunch content posted here about who has the upper hand.
on the other hand i do agree that they could have done better if they'd remained an operations level leads type of company, kinda like all the cool cats are doing right now.
Yahoo has $1.5Bn in cash. Companies usually get bought for cash and stock that the company owns, or they can issue more stock if it's a merger that gets broad approval. YHOO doesn't have $20Bn to buy companies with, and if they did, they still couldn't make the investments you're talking about. Twitter alone is worth $8.5Bn on the secondary market... It would sell for more than $10Bn. And buying the New York Times for $1.5Bn would incur another bil in debt.
Mark Cuban became a billionaire from his Yahoo stock he got from the acquisition of broadcast.com.
Edit: Suking is right, they could issue new shares... IF people actually wanted Yahoo shares and a target company would actually accept them. (would not happen)