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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

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Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#161

Post by mtgx »

christinecha wrote: post #121
PhilWright wrote: post #82

Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone. So they need to build a new business from the dying…

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…

They don't need to kill it, but they need to create new businesses. And they can't just acquire them either, unless they let them completely independent, but continue to fund them.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#162

Post by rconti »

gelatocar wrote: post #47
mmaunder wrote: post #28

You can bypass the paywall with this link: http://bit.ly/1XdzZgO (Google search the original URL in quotes in future) Sounds like she's in a tough spot. You're pretty much forced into a situation of focusing on the good numbers when you're a public company or you'll get beaten up by the shareholders and shorts. So it's difficult to shine sunlight on the bad stuff to disinfect because that's not what public investors…

You can also bypass the paywall by clicking the 'web' link under the post title on HN.

THANK YOU. WSJ is the one site I see regularly linked that has such an intrusive paywall, and I've previously avoided them entirely for this reason. No "10 free articles", no interstitials. Just blocked.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#163

Post by yeukhon »

pjzedalis wrote: post #130

Marissa comes from Google so I'd like to see more developer focus. Here are some ideas: - Buy Joyent. Get's you into the cloud game and you gain SmartOS and Node chops. - Buy BitTorrent and capitalize on its growth and the new sync technology. - Make YUI popular again in the responsive web era. Tumblr, Flickr, Develpr? - Probably should stop trying to out-Netflix Netflix. Community was never going to work but I under…

I say none of these.

* Too many "cloud" competitors, enough with trying to squeeze a margin.

* I wouldn't want to compete with Box, DropBox, GDrive, S3, OneDrive, or BitTorrent Sync. To support enterprise customer at this level, I think is something Yahoo! not too familiar with.

* Another Javascript framework to resurrect, probably time to rethink about how many JS developers you have to hire to to maintain the high visibility and demand from the community.

* Community was a good show, but Yahoo's UI for their video content is just bloat. Too much information, graphic wise not too appealing. They have a shot, but so few people in my circle know about Yahoo video. But I think it still has a shot.

* Why would Microsoft sell Xbox Music?

I think the best thing for Yahoo to do, is to do sports and finance. They can continue to build contents around it. Yes there is ESPNSport, MLB, NBA etc but Yahoo can probably do better if they focus on building a community. They already have a huge sport community, why not use it? They already have content makers so make finance more attractive, try to go after Bloomberg.

Social is dominated by Facebook and Twitter (and their acquired products like Instagram and Vine), but there is still much to explorer around social, not just adding friends.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#164

Post by cscurmudgeon »

pgodzin wrote: post #136
ianamartin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that Google has search wrapped up today is about like saying that BlackBerry had the smartphone market wrapped up in 2007. The space is ripe for upheaval.

Where exactly do you see search going that Google isn't already super invested in (NLP, speech recognition, Google Now integration)?

Really? The thing is with stuff like SnapChat, Facebook and Tumblr, I find myself actually using less and less of any web search. The only thing I search for is programming related questions. Nowadays I go directly to Stackoverflow.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#165

Post by jinst8gmi »

DannoHung wrote: post #86
PhilWright wrote: post #82

Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone. So they need to build a new business from the dying…

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.

That, and I'd be disappointed that my email account would vanish, along with years worth of mail.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#166

Post by 1024core »

perryh2 wrote: post #46
akg_67 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daily fantasy has very annoying pop up on Yahoo! Sports. Also, I guess daily fantasy product resulted in killing of NCAAF and NFL picks against Yahoo! Experts and Yahoo! Users. The Picks link goes to message "something went wrong, we are working on it" page now for several weeks. Instead it Should be 404 and Picks link removed.

don't know why this is broken, but I'll file a bug. thank you! One of these days, I'm going to run a bot that crawls all pages on yahoo.com and reports non-200 responses...

Why write a bot? Doesn't yapache log such events? Just run a Hadoop job on the error logs.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#167

Post by mheiler »

jsnathan wrote: post #91
PhilWright wrote: post #82

Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone. So they need to build a new business from the dying…

I think a good idea would be to host an innovation challenge. They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey, but in this day and age, how about turning to the crowd for help? If they posted significant cash prices (say $1m total) and let their users vote on the best ideas, I bet they could find some fresh directions. Also bet it would cost a fraction of what they pay McKinsey. Edit: In fact, why stop…

I didn't know that McKinsey knows Tech.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#168

Post by deepGem »

vonklaus wrote: post #111
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…

> 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…

Hands down, Yahoo Finance is a much better site than Marketwatch. I'm picking on Marketwatch since you say that it can replace Yahoo Finance.

Here are a few data points:

Interface - YF has all the three indices information (S&P, Dow and Nasdaq) right in front of you. MW has this in a small box on the right. While this may seem trivial, over a period of time - YF sticks but MW doesn't.

Content - All the content above the fold on YF is related to the markets. If you look at MW , for instance there is an article filling up which airline features you should pay for - totally unrelated to markets and in the main view of the fold. This is not a one time phenomenon, but happens all the time. One of the reasons I stopped using MW.

Quote lookup - The quotes are all on the left and the lookup bar is right below the quotes. Also if you look up a stock and revisit the home page, that information is stored - without requiring you to sign up. SO you can just build a portfolio of stocks without even signing up. (Of course, if you clear your cookies this will be lost). Try doing this on MW - The quote look up bar isn't even obvious ( you have to hit on the search button to make it visible).

I can go on and on about feature comparison but what I'm trying to get at is - Yahoo Finance is one of the most usable sites when it comes to market information for a vast majority of users interested in the markets. They have carried over the same interface to other geographies as well. For example yahoo finance India isn't drastically different from Yahoo Finance US. So it wouldn't be really wise for a company to just abandon that user base.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#169

Post by profeta »

PhilWright wrote: post #82

Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone. So they need to build a new business from the dying…

Their clients are paying them still. They are the advertisers, which I take you are not.

Doesn't the talk about "when you are not the consumer yada yada" does not apply for the convenience of your argument?

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#170

Post by niccaluim »

karma928 wrote: post #135
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 think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how people actually use the web today. "Portal" is an amazing video game and a 1990's buzzword. Why would anyone rely on a single "portal" for content? A "portal" like Yahoo(!) was relevant when connections were slow and the potential of the internet was still nascent. That was 20 years ago. These days, just open a new tab with a new site. Open 10 new tabs with 10 di…

Yahoo is the fifth most popular website in the world. People actually use it.
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