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Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

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

#141

What about Yahoo Answers? I hate seeing their results show up in the top 3 when I do a Google search. They're always low quality and not useful.

Blast Yahoo Answers back to hell by installing a Chrome extension called Google Search Filter: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-search-filt... Add Experts-Exchange to the blacklist while you're at it.

Thanks for this! Firefox alternative: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/hide-unwanted...

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

#142
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 activit…

It's just a term of art specific to media. There is no conspiracy here.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hardest thing about building a social network is getting users Going by the trainwreck that was Google+, I think you're completely wrong on this one.

I disagree. There's a big difference between "users" and active, engaged users. Google+ may have had a lot of users on paper, but relatively few people actually spent much time using it. The hard part about building a social network for a company like Google, or even Yahoo, isn't getting user accounts. It's making something that people actually want to use.

I don't think you're arguing with me, because that was exactly my point as well?

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

#144
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 activit…

It's just a term of art specific to media. There is no conspiracy here.

I don't think there's a conspiracy. I get it's a totally normal thing for in-groups to use slang, and that everyone in the business world does it, and all that. I'm not saying they're evil or out to get us. They're just people doing their thing. But it's still a bullshit term.

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

#145
post #77
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo circa 2000 was a social network, with your yahoo account connecting messaging, chat, games, websites, and loads of other stuff.

It was a bunch of siloed social mini-networks who's only common factor was the account, and given its "media company" form, and who called the shots, I doubt there was ever a realistic prospect of connecting them into something combined and semi-coherent like Facebook.

That common factor enabled YCHT/YMSG which allowed for ad-hoc communication in and out of those silos. That friends list could chat, play sports, send emails, play chess, probably other things (those are all I did). It wasn't formal in that there wasn't an activity stream (as far as I remember; I didn't work there and I was like 13 at the time) in each silo, but people I met playing chess moved to chat and then to other games.

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

#147
post #117
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a subsection of the larger site, dedicated to a specific type of content. Vertical refers to them being fully-featured sites or application by themselves. For example, a real estate vertical might have search options dedicated to housing (number of bedrooms, square footage, etc), whereas the general site would only have generic search operators, not tailored to a specific use case. Hope that helps!!

Then it's pretty silly to shutdown verticals as they most likely share the same source code as the rest. When you consider most SW companies try to establish as many revenue streams with as little people possible, cutting verticals is the last thing you want to do. Instead they should figure out how to share as much code as possible. But hey, it's Yahoo!

When I left Yahoo travel in 2011, and there wasn't much shared source between verticals. We shared the same software stack (mostly), where that includes os, web server, PHP, MySQL, yui, a search engine, sometimes a PHP framework, but all of the pages were pretty specific to the vertical. Generic pages wouldn't work very well -- details for a hotel aren't really that similar to details for a car; and genericizing it means more process to make changes and a less compelling site.

When I left they were working on a unified data processing system for this group of verticals, which didn't really work. Two years later, they just got rid of most of the content, in favor of big pictures and articles. I'm guessing that's why there's no traffic and they're shutting them down.

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

#149
post #98
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.

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.

I don't think it's as simple as that. The complaint is about the vulgarity of executive jargon. The underlying problem with it all is the belief that they are at the top of a non-meritocratic hierarchy. Positions that have been attained largely bullshitting and politicking (and of course hard work, just not necessarily productive hard work). The jargon is just a small part of that.

Fundamentally if someone can program well they will get hired. Whether one is suited to run a large company or not well its complicated and the outcomes often make the world (and indeed their companies) a worse place. At least that is the at least somewhat justified belief.

That said, personally I think it is reasonably descriptive. What I do object to is when it leaks into normal life. Get new 'content'... my you have got good taste in content (points to bookshelf)

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

#150
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 activit…

I think every field has its own subset of language that makes most sense to them. I am sure a lot of words that make perfect unambiguous sense to tech people, would confuse non-tech people who would say "why don't you simply say it like..."

The term "vertical" seems to be common amongst executives. I first came across the term when my father asked about the verticals of companies I was applying to. It appears to mean "line of business" or "field of work" or "subset of market". For example a company catering to textile industries, banks, pharmaceuticals, would have these "verticals".

So "content verticals" immediately made sense to me as "subsets of the content they produce".

PS: "we're deepening our reach into multiple markets by adding new content verticals." makes perfect sense because executives really do see the move as moving into multiple markets (or market segments) as each new magazine caters to a different class of people

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