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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

#191

Post by baq »

tasuki wrote: post #160
titzer wrote: post #69

Personally I haven't been able to muster empathy for people who amassed a thousand lifetimes' worth of personal wealth and then are suddenly threatened with the potential of being left with...only a few hundred lifetimes' worth.

Well, perhaps you'd like to try harder? Or do you think they don't deserve your empathy? In the end, people with infinite money have to deal with many of the same issues we deal with: relationship/personal issues, health problems, death of close ones, etc.

I don’t empathise with drug lords and I don’t empathise with Zuck in particular.

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

#192

Post by malvosenior »

dspillett wrote: post #51
throwaway2048 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo bought plenty of other "next big things" Geocities, tumblr, flikr, viaweb, Broadcast.com, del.icio.us, zimbra, and hundreds of others besides. It wasn't clear at the time Google would be any kind of success, you are looking at things with hindsight.

A key problem with some of Yahoo's acquisitions is that they missed the right point of the curve: buying things once they were already Quite A Thing. While this may look like a safer gamble than buying something small that might be a thing and the next big thing eventually, but might be nothing at all next month, getting in late can have two key problems: already being a thing means it commands a high price, and you…

I don’t think any of the properties Yahoo! bought were very big (by today’s standards). Del.icio.us was great but it was a hobby project compared to Instagram/WhatsApp.

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

#193

Post by mygo »

jacques_chester wrote: post #169
nolok wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Chrome is and was a fortress intended to defend the approach to their river of gold: advertising. A dominant browser controlled by another technology company is an existential risk to Google as it would provide a point at which their advertising could be entirely disintermediated. Android exists for the same reason.

We’ve already seen this with Safari blocking all auto-play videos and making attempts to disable cross-site tracking.

I would agree

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

#194

Post by kbutler »

adventured wrote: post #116
lowercased wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 stream…

I think nobody knew what being a media company in the internet age meant. For another example, see AOL/Time-Warner. Being a media company was perceived (and compensated) as more valuable than a tech company. Just the opposite of the perception now.

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

#195

Post by prewett »

na85 wrote: post #106
chewz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to analogy with big tobacco. Facebook is used exactly ina way that cigarretes are used. People at work or during commute look at Facebook instead of taking a cigarette break. And then they go back after their business. As more and more democracies realize that Facebook and the likes are toxic for them [1] (democracy is people taking informed decisions not 'engaged' decisions) Facebook will get regulated…

The idea that Zuck will end up in jail is laughable. Laws don't apply to the ultra-wealthy.

This victim mentality (we are victims of the immune rich) is not helpful to society, especially since it isn't true. Bernie Madoff and the Enron executives absolutely were prosecuted. But you have to actually break the law to go to jail in the US. Being immoral and unethical, being sociopatic and manipulative isn't illegal. Those characteristics aren't limited to rich people, either, they are just the most visible people.

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

#197

Post by jillesvangurp »

dkrich wrote: post #107
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…

> Google has more of a chance of diversifying their business enough that they may survive. Had to laugh a little at this. Alphabet made $9 billion in profit in three months.

Yep, most of it from ads.

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

#198

Post by damontal »

nolok wrote: post #81
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 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…

That reminds me of yahoo pipes. Cool idea but I don’t think it went anywhere.

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

#199

Post by dkrich »

hodder wrote: post #154
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…

Blockbuster's demise was fairly widely predicted - at least among the tech crowd.

Not at the height of its popularity

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

#200

Post by gnicholas »

nefitty wrote: post #125
celrod wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this article fascinating: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.130... The jist is, people are extremely bad at basic logic. Unless it's really in their best interest within the context of the story (ie, catching someone cheating you) to be good at them. It makes the difference between 90%. Presumably, everyone wants to get these logic puzzles correct. It just so happens that we're convenie…

You can try this logic game here: https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/wason/Default.aspx

An interesting test — thanks for posting! They really need to mix up the order of correct answers though.

For me (spoiler alert), all of the questions had the exact same correct answers. Given the number of permutations, it seems highly unlikely that the test is randomized and I just happened to get this arrangement.

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