Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Employee" Wow, that's a kick in the balls.
I don't follow. Also: Marco calls himself an "employee" as well.
Everywhere else, he's described as a cofounder. Being shrugged off as an employee would be insulting.
Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
71–80 of 120 posts
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be smart for Yahoo to do things to attract talent, but Tumblr is probably the wrong company. Tumblr is adored by people with zero tech talent and is based in New York* . That being said, your comment has made me conflicted. MM has made a ton of insane acquisitions, but the net result is that I would actually now consider Yahoo as an employer. I suppose a series of decisions that I find stupid leading…
The acquisitions are not the only thing Marissa did.
That is cryptic. What else are your referring to? Dismissing the remote employees, or free lunches, or something else?
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
even better would be to keep tumblr a separate entity like slideshare and LinkedIn and really sell that fact to recruits. slide share stresses their small company dynamic +big company resources, and I think that's an attractive proposition for many.
But is it more cost-effective to use Tumblr for signaling for HR purposes, or to just pay the recruits more to get them anyway?
I'd hypothesize that Yahoo can (potentially) get hires who they wouldn't have been able to hire with just money by having a different value proposition subset through Tumblr.
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are buying the potential for profit. Not exactly the same thing, but in a way it's similar to buying a broadcast license. Companies pay millions/billions for the right to project some media onto eyeballs.
Except a broadcast license is protected and inherently limited by the govt. Tumblr's position in the world is neither (ask all the tumblrs that have come before). It's really nothing like buying a broadcast license.
Please read my comment again. I never said it was the same thing.
> It's really nothing like buying a broadcast license.
Both provide access to eyeballs, and both are bought with the intention of monetizing that somehow... usually with advertising. That's a similarity in my book.
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#75With tumblr as a curation hub and Flickr as a pool of images, maybe yahoo will next aquire a video pool (Vimeo?), a sound / music pool (soundcloud?) ... Having a small network of creative sites each with their own communities, tied by a single hub would be pretty cool.
[deleted]
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#76If the deal goes through Yahoo would now own the Tumblr audience, so Yahoo would have a product with a young audience, the audience Marissa Mayer wants for Yahoo, however, how would they move that audience over to other Yahoo products? An acquisition of Tumblr seems very much like the acquisition of reddit by Advance Publications. They both have huge audiences that are passionate and growing fast but have great diffi…
"how would they move that audience over to other Yahoo products?" The way the article is phrased (though we must remember it's third-hand at best) leads me to believe the strategy may be to go the other direction, to meld core Yahoo strengths (whatever that may be) into Tumblr. That is, integrate Yahoo offerings into Tumblr rather than the other way around.
This is exactly the idea that popped into my head the instant I read the title. If executed well, it would make everybody happy. It would be a great business move.
Just got to hope they can do a good job of it. I have no particular attachment to Yahoo!, but the sentimental side of me would like to see some old giants make worthy comebacks.
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is, since when eyeballs started being worth so much? Isn't it proven already that users are like butterflies in the hand (you can't squeeze them, but let loose they fly away)? Myspace is there to prove that being king today doesn't say s * about your position in ten years. This year Facebook lost 1.4 million users, first deficit since launch.
How much of that 1.4 million is due to people dying? Global churn affects your userbase when you have a userbase as insanely massive as Facebook's.
[deleted]
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
how to do this without wrecking the tumble user experience is a huge challenge. One of the great things about tumblr timelines is information purity (and great curation by its users). iirc yahoo's strongest services are sports, news, finance, and mail. these would all seem to disrupt the feel and information purity of tumble if done carelessly. maybe encouraging sharing/linking and extrapolating on yahoo assets by me…
Would you say you've noticed how the YouTube user experience has changed over the past five years? I don't mean whether you like it personally or not, but whether the overall YT-as-site UX has been ruined in their acquisition by Google. I think we're all inured a bit to site shutdowns through acquisitions, meaning that acq's have taken on a largely negative set of assumptions, but it doesn't have to be that way.
> Would you say you've noticed how the YouTube user experience has changed over the past five years? I don't mean whether you like it personally or not, but whether the overall YT-as-site UX has been ruined in their acquisition by Google.
1. Stupid pre-rolls everywhere.
2. DMCA takedowns / country restrictions.
3. Weak community.
4. Nagging for Google+ integration.
The UX is pretty horrible. They just get away because content is king and are 1st movers. Nowadays I increasingly find more, or higher quality, stuff on Vimeo though.
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow. Also: Marco calls himself an "employee" as well.
Everywhere else, he's described as a cofounder. Being shrugged off as an employee would be insulting.
Interesting question - would you rather be a cofounder with 5% equity or an employee with 6% equity. (In the tumblr case, worth about $10mm more).
Given that most (everyone?) would rather be the employee with 6% equity, it brings into focus what's really important at the end of the day.
All else equal, the founder/cofounder label might be worth something to the ego, but, having been one of 100 or so "founders" of Opsware, and also having worked at a company where the "Founding CEO" joined almost a year after I did, I've grown to recognize that "Founder" is nothing more than a label, doesn't really signify that much.
Total Compensation Package (inclusive of equity) is what's important.
[Edit: I guess some people might consider "Founder' of a successful company to be a proxy for their reputation, and reputation is very, very important, as it can be leveraged during salary negotiations, or, raising money/hiring. So, from that perspective, being known as the "Co-Founder of Tumblr" might be relevant]
Re: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1B, All-Cash Deal for Tumblr
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The acquisitions are not the only thing Marissa did.
That is cryptic. What else are your referring to? Dismissing the remote employees, or free lunches, or something else?
The free lunches, no longer requiring BlackBerries, and other things Marissa did to change the culture.