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

131–140 of 199 posts

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

#131

Post by msellout »

laughinghan wrote: post #112
cft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I completely agree. That's why we founders, who are much better at using simple language, should ideate a way to pivot our unicorns to disrupt this space. These executives will discover they're not a culture fit in this paradigm shift where sweat equity is properly valued. (Can I get some help working in 'gamification', 'bootstrapping', and 'dogfooding'?)

It seems that the adjective 'completely' can be used to mean 'dis-'.

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

#132

Post by larrymcp »

laughinghan wrote: post #112
cft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I completely agree. That's why we founders, who are much better at using simple language, should ideate a way to pivot our unicorns to disrupt this space. These executives will discover they're not a culture fit in this paradigm shift where sweat equity is properly valued. (Can I get some help working in 'gamification', 'bootstrapping', and 'dogfooding'?)

Don't forget "leverage" instead of "use", "orthogonal" instead of "unrelated", and "onboarding" instead of "training"!

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

#133

Post by smcnally »

bksenior wrote: post #65
cft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you prefer them say "categories of content on the site that tend to deal with a central topic or theme." Content vertical is a pretty standard term. These kind of judgemental blanket statements have no place on a site like this,and worse show a lack of experience working in any large company. Please try to be more productive when contributing.

Interesting, as "content" on its own has been / can still be a somewhat dirty word in this context. Some folks who write stories, take photos, or shoot video don't appreciate their works referred to as content. Some still prefer author, photographer, film maker to "content creator." But it's a handy, encompassing term.

When multiple authors, photographers, videographers create works around similar topics and themes, "content verticals" can be a useful term. Still some have little love for it.

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

#134

Post by msellout »

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…

> monad ... poorly named.

Depends on your study of history. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology#The_metaphysics_of_...).

... on second thought, I guess that's exactly what you were saying.

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

#135

Post by smcnally »

skewart wrote: post #111
tomc1985 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the world need yet another social network?

I'm defining "social network" pretty broadly, including websites that have a strong social component, like HN, reddit and imgur. These kinds of online communities tend to make people happy, and they let them form friendships and exchange ideas. If a new one emerges then it's probably making some critical mass of people happy. I would guess that Yahoo's audience might not have a ton of exposure to all the different so…

They've done Buzz! (very Digg/reddit/HNews-like) and a handful of other social net products since their founding. Executing that well -- like with most things -- takes focus and willingness to get behind something particular, rather than everything, and Yahoo's often spread their peanut butter a little thin. http://www.wsj.com/public/article/SB116379821933826657-0mbjX...

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

#136

Post by jonahx »

tptacek wrote: post #103
snorrah wrote: post #30

What the fuck is a content vertical?

"Content vertical" is the term Yahoo uses to describe the major sections of the programmed content (as opposed to search, or mail, or Tumblr, or whatever) on their site. It's tricky for Yahoo to communicate about how its business works, because Yahoo is the oldest and largest "portal" site, and so by design it tries to do (and milk revenue from) everything it can. Their business is complicated at a fundamental level…

Thanks for the additional context.

> Since they're a huge public company, they have to communicate facts about their business to investors, with some precision, and so they expose you to terms like these.

Isn't a term like "content vertical", though, used with investors precisely for its imprecision? That is, it imparts of flavor of mysterious business strategy and arcane MBA knowledge to the most mundane of activities: creating multiple sub-websites that focus on different content.

To extend your analogy, if a publishing company wants to precisely communicate the decision to publish new magazines, they'd say "this quarter we added four new magazines on the topics A, B, C, D to our roster." If they wished to make it sound like something deeper was going on, they might say, "we're deepening our reach into multiple markets by adding new content verticals."

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

#137

Post by said »

tptacek wrote: post #103
snorrah wrote: post #30

What the fuck is a content vertical?

"Content vertical" is the term Yahoo uses to describe the major sections of the programmed content (as opposed to search, or mail, or Tumblr, or whatever) on their site. It's tricky for Yahoo to communicate about how its business works, because Yahoo is the oldest and largest "portal" site, and so by design it tries to do (and milk revenue from) everything it can. Their business is complicated at a fundamental level…

Great explanation. Thank you!

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

#138

Post by jonesb6 »

laughinghan wrote: post #112
cft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I completely agree. That's why we founders, who are much better at using simple language, should ideate a way to pivot our unicorns to disrupt this space. These executives will discover they're not a culture fit in this paradigm shift where sweat equity is properly valued. (Can I get some help working in 'gamification', 'bootstrapping', and 'dogfooding'?)

You forgot to pivot a second time.

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

#139

Post by jonesb6 »

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…

Isn't it just a PR stunt? When she took over everyone was praising Yahoo and I'm sure investor confidence went up. Now that Yahoo is spiraling anyways it looks bad in retrospect, but if Yahoo had even managed to hold steady somewhat I think the hire would've been viewed as a total success.

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

#140

Post by radlad »

derefr wrote: post #109
stormbrew wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a disaster of epic proportions. Tumblr has a rabid user base that's not interested in any of that and would scream bloody murder if it happened.

Does that matter? Those users aren't paying. Yahoo could very well kick 9/10ths of Tumblr's userbase off the site while retooling to make a profit from the other 10%, and it wouldn't change a single thing about their financials. To put it another way: right now, Tumblr is making no money for Yahoo. Destroying the site and its reputation to make it into something profitable is actually the sensible move, compared to j…

Tumblr is a content machine. Killing 90% of your userbase means killing most of your content.
Post reply on HN