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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

wsj.com

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Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#141

Post by [deleted] »

roymurdock wrote: post #15
jonesb6 wrote: post #10

Couldn't read the article because it appears to be behind a paywall. On the topic of Marissa Mayer though, has any analysis been done that's an overview of Meyer's major decisions/actions? I seem to see pieces come out almost monthly on things she's been doing at Yahoo, but as someone who doesn't follow executive movers and shakers too much, I don't want to come to an early judgement without fully understanding what…

Click the "Web" hyperlink under the title of the post. It saves you going to google and typing in the name of the article.

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#142

Post by nickpsecurity »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #99
Bud wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs could come back from the dead and he would be utterly helpless to revive the abject piece of crap that is Yahoo.

Warren Buffett once wrote: With few exceptions, when a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in.

It unfortunate she took the reigns of this business. I hoped her talent could pull off something big but Yahoo was really run too hard into the ground for her to have much of an effect. Sad given where it started and the potential it had.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#143

Post by EdiX »

zanny wrote: post #87
DannoHung wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I object only on the grounds that Flickr is the only good photo site for people who really care about their photos. Having tried to use 500px for a few months, they cannot even manage to do album privacy correctly.

I just use imgur. Am I doing something wrong?

Imgur will aggressively recompress any image above 5MB. A few years ago it used to be even worse.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#144

Post by cli »

akg_67 wrote: post #116
vonklaus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't come across any other sites that even come close to [sports and finance] on Yahoo! You haven't been able to find any other sites focusing on finance or sports on the internet? To be clear, yahoo does a decent job curating finance and sports sections, but it is extremely trivial to find sites similar to Yahoo. Here are a few, I found: Finance: ======== Marketwatch[0], is very similar to yahoo finance. Owne…

I was pretty sure someone will make a comment like yours. You didn't disappoint. You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo! Can you get Bleacher Report articles on ESPN? I will suggest comparing Yahoo! Finance and Sports with the sites you mentioned. You might be surprised that most sit…

>You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo!

What? No. He/she meant that any of those sites can replace Yahoo by themselves, not that all of them are required.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#145

Post by toephu2 »

emcrazyone wrote: post #126
christinecha wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this is definitely the ideal move under different circumstances. But that wouldn't be a viable solution for Yahoo. Currently, even at its 'dying' state, Yahoo has huge traffic from extremely loyal users who are mostly in the higher income (30+) age range. To dump that out the window would be an incredibly irresponsible business move. It's easy for a small, young company to pivot, but an old giant like Ya…

"Yahoo has huge traffic from extremely loyal users who are mostly in the higher income (30+) age range." Is that statement a fact? If so, care to substantiate it. I work for one of the largest companies in the world and we no longer use Yahoo; we use too. Every year in the US, the Superbowl pulls in HUGE dollars in advertisements. I have to plan for this every year and have been doing this for the past 10 years. Arou…

why not just say what company that is?

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#146

Post by kristianc »

vonklaus wrote: post #124
akg_67 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty sure someone will make a comment like yours. You didn't disappoint. You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo! Can you get Bleacher Report articles on ESPN? I will suggest comparing Yahoo! Finance and Sports with the sites you mentioned. You might be surprised that most sit…

I meant each site is as good as yahoo! not that you would have to go to each one, but I don't really care about sports. The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo finance. As for sports, if you want the same information but the caveat you seem hung up on is that it must come from different domains, just go to a reddit like aggregator. I get it, you like yahoo. Yahoo does a good job, and I al…

It's also going to get more difficult for Yahoo to differentiate itself as a curator/creator as it gets more difficult to survive on the Internet producing differentiated content.

Within sports, Grantland tried producing content that was different, and died. GigaOM tried focusing on enterprise tech, and died. FiveThirtyEight served policy wonks, and is struggling to attract a meaningful audience. The verdict is out on Vox, but they also may go within 18 months.

Yahoo has tried to solve this problem by hiring 'star names' but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle. People are happy to take the commodity churn article from Bleacher Report.

Oh, and to top all that off, it's unclear that there's really any serious money to be made from online content / eyeballs anyway.

Which is to say that even if they could execute on the 'trusted source of content' business model, it may not be enough to save them anyway.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#147

Post by datashovel »

phamilton wrote: post #122
datashovel wrote: post #109

Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that Yahoo took a chance on Marissa Mayer. The thing that I can't overlook is none of the stories I have read indicate this was a matter of a perfect vision that was just poorly executed. All of the stories I've read lead me to believe there has been a somewhat muddled vision and less than spectacular execution on top of that. Then again it was only mid-2012 that she was appointed…

I'm not sure that "perfect vision that was just poorly executed" is worth much. If execution is the hard part, then any sort of vision that didn't include execution is just nonsense.

In terms of assessing a CEO's impact on an organization I think it could play an important role.

For example if people are trying to knock down the doors to purchase / use what Yahoo is working on but they're abandoning because of scalability issues or buggy systems or continuous delays in delivery timelines, this sounds to me like we're dealing more with execution issues.

On the other hand, if the site / products hum along without glitches, yet are receiving little to no attention or traction from the outside world, this could be a sign that the company is on the wrong track in a more fundamental way. Perhaps more directly linked to the "output" / "work product" of Marissa Mayer as CEO.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#148

Post by tikhonj »

toephu2 wrote: post #145
emcrazyone wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yahoo has huge traffic from extremely loyal users who are mostly in the higher income (30+) age range." Is that statement a fact? If so, care to substantiate it. I work for one of the largest companies in the world and we no longer use Yahoo; we use too. Every year in the US, the Superbowl pulls in HUGE dollars in advertisements. I have to plan for this every year and have been doing this for the past 10 years. Arou…

why not just say what company that is?

Some companies have onerous restrictions on employees using their names in public, but hinting obliquely is fine. It's a matter of not appearing to endorse random, unvetted public posts by employees, not a matter of secrecy.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#149

Post by rodgerd »

Animats wrote: post #113
akg_67 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? Should I guess that you were not adult yet when Yahoo! started? When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo! filled that vacuum. It was the go to place for finding the sites in your area of interest. Some of the sections of Yahoo! for example: Finance and Sports are still go to places for me and I am sure countless othe…

"When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo! filled that vacuum. ... IMO, Yahoo! need to go back to their roots which was portal of curated information." Yahoo's Directory was shut down December 27, 2014. What's left of Yahoo does some photo storage, some email, some video streaming, some finance and sports reporting, and some ad serving. They also resell Bing search. All those things…

> All those things are done better by others.

It's highly debatable whether anyone does flickr "better". 500px, for example, have descended to suddenly announcing that they'll give away licenses for the photos you pay them to host and reward you with "exposure".

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#150

Post by danieltillett »

anon8418 wrote: post #76
shostack wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having watched way too much "House of Lies" where consultants often seem to be brought in to back-up the viewpoint of a given executive and make the case for whatever that person's agenda is...what would such consultants likely be doing in this case in "the real world?" I admittedly haven't had the experience of working with any consultants, so I'm curious for opinions from those who have what happens when they come…

I spent a few years as a management consultant. Consultants are almost never hired to provide truly objective analysis. In most cases, they're hired to "back-up the viewpoint of a given executive". This is done by the executive to hedge the political risk required to go through with their action. They can point to McK when they defend their strategy to the board and then throw them under the bus if things don't pan o…

I wonder why if this is the case that someone hasn’t tried to create a “discount” management consulting service which aims to give management cover, but without all the first class travel and high living. It can’t cost that much to put together a flashy powerpoint presentation.
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