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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

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Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#211

Post by trhway »

ksec wrote: post #202

From my extremely limited knowledge, and mainly from reading, and reading between the line on others people's view. I think Marrissa will be a great COO, but she lacks the vision. Even people who used to work with her ( Eric Schmidt) had said she is the most quantitative CEO in silicon valley, if not the world. And from many other pieces of information she likes to measure everything, from colour, design or human asp…

>I think Marrissa will be a great COO, but she lacks the vision.

Remember Fiorina? The same situation of a midlevel absolutely mediocre exec getting lucky at catching a huge wave bringing her straight to the top. Just a female, ie. charming, version of a "Yes"-man.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#212

Post by sireat »

visakanv wrote: post #177
cft wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on who is trying to resurrect it: Marissa Meyer or Steve Jobs. Imagine a reality show: Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around, and the rules were that they would only have access to Yahoo's internal resources and cash. I would bet with my money buying Yahoo stock that they would reverse the curves.

> Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around Assuming either of them was actually given the mandate to do so by the board of directors, etc, I imagine they'd fire like 50-80% of the staff, get rid of anything that's not profitable, and produce one highly refined product at a time, something that hasn't been done well before. Source: Am both a Jobs and Musk fanboy and have done an unhealthy amount of readin…

That was a really good video and I say that as someone who is no fan of Jobs.

Did NEXT manage to execute the plan and sell 50k workstations in 1991?

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#213

Post by trhway »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #164
pgodzin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it sounds like Google is doubling down on search - a very natural thing for a BigCo to double down on what they already have success in - while missing on "discovery"/"guidance"/"curation".

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#214

Post by trhway »

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 think a good idea would be to host an innovation challenge.

>They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey

i think these 2 things are incompatible to say the least. McKinsey indicate completely different stage in a company lifecycle.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#215

Post by jamespo »

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…

facebook is a portal. People spend a lot of time on facebook you may have noticed

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#216

Post by codexjourneys »

visakanv wrote: post #177
cft wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on who is trying to resurrect it: Marissa Meyer or Steve Jobs. Imagine a reality show: Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around, and the rules were that they would only have access to Yahoo's internal resources and cash. I would bet with my money buying Yahoo stock that they would reverse the curves.

> Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around Assuming either of them was actually given the mandate to do so by the board of directors, etc, I imagine they'd fire like 50-80% of the staff, get rid of anything that's not profitable, and produce one highly refined product at a time, something that hasn't been done well before. Source: Am both a Jobs and Musk fanboy and have done an unhealthy amount of readin…

Along these lines, here's an interesting quote about Steve Jobs' focus from a documentary photographer who had access to NeXT:

"...it seems to me that, in general terms for Steve, he was so passionate about the goal and trying to invent something impossible that everyone had to be on this mission to Mars, and if you weren’t on the mission you didn’t need to be here. It was really a focused approach, so it wasn’t about me or you or hard feelings or anyone. It was about the thing and making the thing better."

Read more at: http://nextshark.com/doug-menuez-who-spent-3-years-with-stev...

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#217

Post by PhantomGremlin »

jinst8gmi wrote: post #194
kev6168 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost 4 years' emails (1998-2002) because my account was inactive for a mere 6 months! Contacted Yahoo in 2002 but couldn't get my emails back.

Ouch! Do they have any facility that I can use to back-up/archive my email externally?

I also have a Yahoo account, but i haven't tried to back it up externally.

Previously their paid product was called Mail Plus, and that was the only way you could get mail out in bulk. But a while ago they made a change. From an article I just found:

   What Yahoo does not mention is that Pop3 access
   is now available as well. While I cannot say if
   it was enabled previously for free users, I know
   for a fact that it was limited in the past to
   paying Yahoo Mail users.
That doesn't say anything about IMAP, but I know that is also possible nowadays. I think they had to add that feature. E.g. my wife accesses her Yahoo Mail from her iPhone. Without IMAP, how could she get her messages? (Rhetorical question. Rhetorical answer: she couldn't!).

http://www.ghacks.net/2013/10/08/yahoo-mail-plus-turns-yahoo...

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#218

Post by simonswords82 »

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…

I don't think Google has wrapped up the search space but Yahoo's search has been laughable for so long now that they would struggle to take on search under the Yahoo brand.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#219

Post by porsupah »

rodgerd wrote: post #149
Animats wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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".

Could you expand on that? I'd be quite concerned to find my photos being licensed for commercial use without my consent.
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