Live data from Hacker News

Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

bloomberg.com

31–40 of 111 posts

Re: Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

#32
post #30

Why didn't Yahoo focus on further developing businesses around these services (Finance, Fantasy etc.) that people love?

How do you monetize that? But they were adamant that they were a 'media company', so your point is very valid.

For financials? Charge for better data. Its a pretty solid industry, and seems to make Bloomberg lots of money.

Re: Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

#33
post #17

The oil traders could move to WhatsApp or somesuch but I'd be kind of sad if they went. The other day I was trying to get free historical stock data via an API and Yahoo Finance was about the only thing that did it ok. Yahoo could assure their financial future by going massively long oil futures and then putting out false messages about Saudi Arabia having been nuked by ISIS or some such. A tad illegal perhaps but an…

Can you record your conversations (I think you can)? But most importantly, can you use WhatsApp without a cell phone number? It has to be tied to your email address and not a cell phone.

Re: Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

#34
post #10

When an industry is so reliant on one service, it's very difficult to shift an entire industry to a new platform. Segmentation is a real thing. A good example I'm familiar with is within electronic sports (competitive video-games): almost every executive, player, personality, etc has been using Skype since ~2010. Unfortunately, Skype has a large number of security vulnerabilities and users can be subjected by DDOS at…

What you're thinking of is product lock-in, not segmentation.

Besides, many superior solutions exist and have for a long time: TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble. Skype is laggy, buggy, and high memory overhead, without mentioning the DDOS risk (exposes IP).

Re: Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

#38
post #27

This article seems ridiculous both because Yahoo messenger isn't going anywhere. And if it did, moving to another service would be a small hiccup.

I don't believe the article to be ridiculous at all.

I work in physical trading and use yahoo on a daily basis to trade swaps, execute physical deals, and chat with customers. If yahoo were to drop support unexpectedly, there would be a pretty large problem.

We have already been briefed by our IT departments that we are moving to another service with the front end being one of the following - IceChat(from the ICE exchange), Reuters, Bloomberg, Trillian. Although Yahoo will be the back-end in protocol sense, I believe that will be phased out once the trade migrates to another service.

It's a bigger problem than most imagine and can't be executed at a drop of a hat due to legal compliance in logging all communications in the case something went awry or other similar situations.

Re: Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

#39
post #8

Sounds like an opportunity for someone to buy yahoo messenger, make it work the way the oil industry wants it, and sell it to them as an industry specific chat service. No need to bring the rest of Yahoo along for the ride.

Definitely the best way to ease the transition between chat services.

Google Pivot, Cloud9. Those are the competitors trying to swoop in on this.

FWIW, nat gas traders still use Aol Instant Messenger.

Re: Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive

#40
post #21

> In Geneva, the epicenter of Switzerland’s $21 billion commodity-trading industry, accounting for about one-third of the world’s daily oil transactions That's pretty impressive for a country that has never even been visited by an oil tanker.

Tax rates for commodity transactions are low in comparison to other countries. Starbucks executes all their coffee trading out of Geneva.

The commodity trade in Switzerland is as old as the hills.

Post reply on HN