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The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

economist.com

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Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#111

Post by ec109685 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #96
ec109685 wrote: post #95

> Facebook could end up paying dearly for mediocre employees to stay on (as its share price falls, it has to hand out more in stock-based compensation to keep people). Does this passage make sense? With a high flying stock, Facebook would be paying more for mediocre employees while the rsu’s vest than if their stock is lower. If Facebook increases rsu’s to even out the employee’s comp, then the net cost to Facebook w…

I think it does, because with many of these companies you're granted X shares vesting over 4 years and if the share price causes you to drop below your total "target comp" they issue you more shares to make up for it, so it's an additional grant out of FBs pocket.

But Facebook takes the expense when the rsu’s vest.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#112

Post by pavlov »

nothis wrote: post #109
pavlov wrote: post #88

Facebook is not Yahoo — it's much more like Windows. It's ubiquitous, everyone has their pet peeves, and the actual user communities are wildly heterogenous yet tech commentators tend to assume they themselves represent the only kind of user that matters.

Windows doesn’t have true competition. Facebook has. Even if they’re clever and buying lots of it. Still, Instagram has nowhere near the amount of neatly categorized personal data as Facebook which is interesting.

> Windows doesn’t have true competition. Facebook has.

Care to elaborate? I can't think of anyone.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#113

Post by unrealhoang »

trasz wrote: post #17
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

> A senior marketer for a large American bank says Facebook has made mistakes on measuring engagement, reach, views and other data for no fewer than 43 products. All of the mistakes, he notes, worked in the social-networking giant’s favour. “If these were true errors, wouldn’t you expect at least half to benefit marketers?” he asks. He expects to reduce how much his firm spends on Facebook and predicts that other mar…

Wait, Facebook has over 43 products? What are they?

Wait, I thought they have 2.3 billions products.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#114

Post by pier25 »

dkrich wrote: post #75

This seems implausible precisely because it’s the crowded view. But can anyone recall a time that the crowd correctly predicted the ascent of an unpopular product or the descent of a popular one? I’m old enough to remember Yahoo’s rise and fall. There was a time people thought Zuckerberg was a greedy fool for turning down a $1 billion bid from Yahoo. Oh yeah did we forget about that? Yahoo failed because they were ou…

> Yahoo failed because they were out-innovated

Their most popular property ended up being Flickr, and they let it rot when smartphones and apps started being popular 10 years ago. Instead pro users fled to 500px and other communities, and social users wen to Instagram.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#115

Post by itsbits »

vasilakisfil wrote: post #94
jillesvangurp wrote: post #92

It's easy to predict that companies will fail, because most do in the end. It's very rare for companies to survive for long periods of time. Just look at the fortune 500 over time. It changes, massively, from decade to decade. If anything that trend is accelerating: companies grow faster and disappear faster as well. So, predicting that neither e.g. Google nor Facebook will be around a decade or two from now is not t…

Facebook should have provided a Gmail alternative a long time ago. I am surprised how narrow minded they are in terms of long term revenue.

I think they did try by providing @facebook.com to all users but via FB platform only. They should have gone for a new UI rather placing in FB itself although I can understand why.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#116

Post by adventured »

lowercased wrote: post #105
nolok wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yahoo failed because they were out-innovated The worst part is that Yahoo innovated a lot ... In incubators, side projects, etc ... But they failed to bring their innovations to their main products, or to turn their side things into full blown products. They had no plan, neither overall or per product. Take emails for exemple, for the longest time (and still now, although not as dominating) THE key to user identity…

>They had no plan, neither overall or per product. I seem to remember some leadership there being adamant that they're weren't a tech or internet company, but a 'media' company. I can't remember which one (or ones?) but this embrace of hollywood/media vs technology seems to have been a key factor in their perpetual slide.

That was the big premise during the Terry Semel years. He was a high level executive with Warner Brothers for 25 years.

They had no idea what they were doing or what being a media company in the Internet age meant. They flailed about for a decade with confusing ideas of what their strategy and end goal was.

How did they go about pretending to be a media company for so many years, while watching others dominate streaming music and video? Incompetent leadership. How did they miss the numerous opportunities to acquire a real Internet media business like Netflix, for relatively cheap? They could have picked it up for most of 2007-2013 for $2b to $4b (early 2007 being when they launched their streaming service).

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#117

Post by nolok »

wybiral wrote: post #108
nolok wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yahoo failed because they were out-innovated The worst part is that Yahoo innovated a lot ... In incubators, side projects, etc ... But they failed to bring their innovations to their main products, or to turn their side things into full blown products. They had no plan, neither overall or per product. Take emails for exemple, for the longest time (and still now, although not as dominating) THE key to user identity…

> The best non-yahoo similarity I can find is what Google is doing with Blogger. That's a good point. But to be fair everything "social" that Google has touched has died with the exception of YouTube. In fact Google really hasn't done a great job holding onto many other arenas than their main ones. Blogger has been blasted by Medium. Knol was outlasted by Quora. Google Code was beat by Github. Their "shopping" attemp…

Yeah Google doesn't get social (you forgot Buzz in your list) but at least they try, and keep trying in different ways, like it different fields, until one sticks (you forgot Chrome in your success list - it doesn't bring money, but it allows them to partly dictate where the web goes and how it works, something that is a lot of value for them). When they get something that looks cool, they try it.

Yahoo didn't even try, when they got something cool, they went "ah, nice" and then closed it or forgot about it.

> EDIT: I use and love Google Photos but I can't remember the last time I heard someone talking about it. Instagram did it with a social spin.

Same, but as the same time, I would wager pretty much every android users uses it, and has more photos on it than on instagram. It seems the value of google photos for google is not to monetize it directly, but as a way to 1. have data to mine, 2. know more about each user to improve their other revenue source and 3. to keep the user tied to his google account and ecosystem. From that point of view, it's a massive success (and it explains why they went that route and pretty much killed picasa instead of the opposite).

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#118

Post by pier25 »

King-Aaron wrote: post #16
Lordarminius wrote: post #15

Facebook is dead. It's just taking a long time for this to become apparent.

There's around 2.23 billion active users you might want to pass that message on to.

Yeah, but it's really a matter of time. Facebook has become the social network for grandmas and aunties.

Facebook has expanded to new countries in the last decade which has brought these millions of users, but younger generations in countries that have had Facebook for a long time are not using it anymore.

In the US most Facebook users are between 25-34. There are barely any teenagers.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/187041/us-user-age-distr...

This trend is a bit less pronounced in global demographics, but I think it's clear that younger generations don't like Facebook.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/376128/facebook-global-u...

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#119

Post by nolok »

lowercased wrote: post #105
nolok wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yahoo failed because they were out-innovated The worst part is that Yahoo innovated a lot ... In incubators, side projects, etc ... But they failed to bring their innovations to their main products, or to turn their side things into full blown products. They had no plan, neither overall or per product. Take emails for exemple, for the longest time (and still now, although not as dominating) THE key to user identity…

>They had no plan, neither overall or per product. I seem to remember some leadership there being adamant that they're weren't a tech or internet company, but a 'media' company. I can't remember which one (or ones?) but this embrace of hollywood/media vs technology seems to have been a key factor in their perpetual slide.

I understand but hey if it's pre 2010 and you're holding one of the big three king of emails I don't care what you think: you're a tech company, deal with it.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#120

Post by jiscariot »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #92

It's easy to predict that companies will fail, because most do in the end. It's very rare for companies to survive for long periods of time. Just look at the fortune 500 over time. It changes, massively, from decade to decade. If anything that trend is accelerating: companies grow faster and disappear faster as well. So, predicting that neither e.g. Google nor Facebook will be around a decade or two from now is not t…

I believe much of the turnover in the major stock market indexes comes from mergers and accusations, rather than companies failing. Sometime it is a floundering company that is acquired, but often it is companies seeking to expand their markets or vertically integrate.

I had a profitable petroleum refining company in my equities portfolio that has been gobbled up and issued a new ticker symbol four times in about five years.

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