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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

#161

Post by JonnieCache »

jonahx wrote: post #136
tptacek wrote: post #103

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 makes some sense in comparison to horizontal when looking at the structure of an organisation: you can either slice it at seniority level, so all the workers together in one layer, all the managers, all the upper management, all the executives and so on.

Or, you can slice it vertically, into departments, with all the levels of seniority together grouped by what they're actually doing. You could call them departments, you could call them markets, but those terms are already taken.

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

#162

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #150
jonahx wrote: 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…

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…

A vertical in MBA-speak is a specialised niche market which typically has plenty of competition.

It's eccentric to consider - say - food journalism as a vertical, because it really isn't.

But then "We're closing some of our online magazines" wouldn't sound nearly as decisive and strategic-y.

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

#163

Post by feintruled »

lsd5you wrote: post #149
tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 progra…

Also, people referring to themselves as consumers, rather than customers. "Doing anything nice this weekend, Bob?" "Just gonna sit in, consume some content."

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

#164

Post by wodenokoto »

smegel wrote: post #13

This might be the first good move Yahoo has made since Mayer took over. I can't think of a better example of a company that needs to shed worthless baggage and focus on high value propositions. And I am gobsmacked Yahoo has not at least made an attempt at a real social network. They have hundreds of millions of users, at the point they are in giving all their users an automatic account on Yahoo Social might be a dick…

They have made attempts at social network, with plans just the way you propose.

They had a major backend overhaul called OpenSocial, that was supposed to bring social networking to Yahoo. I think the overhaul took 5 years and the way I understood, their plan was to start build outward facing social networking once OpenSocial was completed.

When it was finally done, they had been through something like 2 CEO's and nothing came of it.

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

#167

Post by appleflaxen »

crackpotbaker wrote: post #165

I'm interpreting that the moment when Yahoo started falling apart was when they fired their whole vowpal wabbit team. If you can't value the state-of-the-art research being done in your labs, then you don't really value a thing.

> If you can't value the state-of-the-art research being done in your labs, then you don't really value a thing.

that's a bit simplistic. vowpal wabbit is cool, but if the corporation can't figure out a path from the research to revenue, then it's smart to spin it off or shut it down.

maybe the more amazing thing is that they couldn't find a competitive advantage in the vowpal wabbit project.

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

#168

Post by atrudeau »

radlad wrote: post #141
atrudeau wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Ah, nice! Only downside is that it doesn't support highlighting certain results. For example, Google Search Filter highlights Wikipedia and StackExchange results for, while removing cruft like Yahoo Answers.
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