Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

capitalnewyork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 199 posts

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#91

Post by jonknee »

hga wrote: post #83
jorgecurio wrote: post #46

Let's just recap what happened to Yahoo since Marissa took over: - wasn't able to turn the company around - wasn't able to monetize tumblr - wasn't able to capitalize on Alibaba shares - wasn't able to deliver return to investors - was able to parachute out of Yahoo with hundred million dollars+ Someone tell me, what CEO out there actually does anything that justifies their insane pay grade because often it looks lik…

Taking a gamble on a turnaround CEO is in theory warranted when you have a situation like Yahoo back then (or now), and a "hundred million dollars+" is just the price you pay to get someone who just might have what it takes for a job where they'll both likely fail and have their career seriously curtailed. There aren't many alternatives for a board of directors when just selling the company isn't much of an option.

A "turnaround CEO" with no CEO or turnaround experience is rich. She is a famous person and that's about the extent of her qualification for a $100m pay package.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#92

Post by fieryeagle »

jorgecurio wrote: post #57
dingo_bat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that most CEOs are simply irrelevant. The company does well if it does, and doesn't if it doesn't. It is rare that any one person is able to turn around the fortunes of their company. The only example that comes to mind right now is Steve Jobs.

Carl Icahn put it the best as he described his encounter with a CEO when he asked the question, what does a CEO actually do in a corporation? His answer was that it was a pretty pathetic one based on his observation. The CEO would take him to different floors and explain stuff but nothing that had any substance or material understanding of operating the country. Carl Icahn's view isn't alone. Nassim Taleb also blasts…

This Dilbert strip says it best http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-04-14.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#93

Post by PhasmaFelis »

I can never figure out what it is Yahoo _does_. Their original core business (search) was demolished by Google many years ago. Their website looks exactly like any of a thousand different sketchy, clickbaity news aggregators, and all of the couple dozen "content verticals" in their sidebar are the same thing, only focused on a specific topics. They've also got a few services that other companies do substantially better (Mail, Weather, Flickr...) The only thing I see that's really relevant is Tumblr, which I hadn't even known was owned by Yahoo.

Is that what Yahoo is these days? Clickbait news and Tumblr? How are they still regarded as a major tech company?

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#94

Post by hga »

jonknee wrote: post #91
hga wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a gamble on a turnaround CEO is in theory warranted when you have a situation like Yahoo back then (or now), and a "hundred million dollars+" is just the price you pay to get someone who just might have what it takes for a job where they'll both likely fail and have their career seriously curtailed. There aren't many alternatives for a board of directors when just selling the company isn't much of an option.

A "turnaround CEO" with no CEO or turnaround experience is rich. She is a famous person and that's about the extent of her qualification for a $100m pay package.

Yeah, that's the first place where the "in theory" ran into the hard problems of practice.

On the other hand, in this narrow sub-domain of "high tech", how many turnaround experts are there? Worse, even with the "$100m pay package", how many of them, or just plain CEOs with some experience in with adversary, would be willing to take on the job? Maybe she was about the best they could get.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#95

Post by zem »

cft wrote: post #42
snorrah wrote: post #30

What the fuck is a content vertical?

The development of such language ("content verticals") indicates the transition of a maturing industry from the founders/builders to the executives/gate keepers. They create such language to inflate the value of their executive work which is necessary in corporate politics, as opposed to the value creation process of founders who build new things and call them simply.

how is "content vertical" any more a sign of the apocalypse than, say, "threaded tree" or "responsive site"?

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#97

Post by jonpaine »

jonahx wrote: post #87
jonpaine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that specific. It's everywhere. I see it all the time in programming terminology. There are technical terms that annoy me when I first hear them. It appears people are trying to inflate their worth by using unnecessarily specific or complicated terms. Then on some random night when I'm bored I'll familiarize myself with the term and all its' nuances and from that point forward it's more efficient to use the…

I've had the same experience. I'd add that after you learn and internalize the slang, you can usually see it falling into one of three broad categories: 1. It's a genuinely useful term, descriptively named, for which no good succinct alternative exists: eg, "outrage porn." 2. A genuinely useful term, poorly named, but excusable because it already has an entrenched history and community using it: eg, "monad" in functi…

Very well put!

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#98

Post by tptacek »

cft wrote: post #42
snorrah wrote: post #30

What the fuck is a content vertical?

The development of such language ("content verticals") indicates the transition of a maturing industry from the founders/builders to the executives/gate keepers. They create such language to inflate the value of their executive work which is necessary in corporate politics, as opposed to the value creation process of founders who build new things and call them simply.

On a typical day, this site does a pretty good job of inflating the irony aneurysm building up in my psyche, but I'm afraid that if I read a comment from a tech nerd complaining about how "executives" use jargon to obscure what they do, that aneurysm will certainly rupture.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#100

Post by Pxtl »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #93

I can never figure out what it is Yahoo _does_. Their original core business (search) was demolished by Google many years ago. Their website looks exactly like any of a thousand different sketchy, clickbaity news aggregators, and all of the couple dozen "content verticals" in their sidebar are the same thing, only focused on a specific topics. They've also got a few services that other companies do substantially bett…

Half the world still has Yahoo mail accounts, for one.
Post reply on HN