Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#231

Post by wlesieutre » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #125

wlesieutre wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree with flickr having a lot of good photography, but did they actually fix the community? When I used it, all I remember is that 90% of comments were sparkling banners saying "YOUR PHOTO HAS BEEN AWARTED BEST FLICKR OCEAN SUNSET AWARD MAY 2010! CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR GROUP! JOIN JOIN JOIN!" to the point where it interfered with anyone trying to have an actual conversation. Which was a shame because outside of…

I just tired of most of the community aspect of flickr aside from folks I already knew IRL. I found a lot of groupie-ism and, as you note, group stuff that was at least spam-ish. As with other things about flickr, I guess I'm not really sure what the "right" flickr looks like and how you achieve that at profitable scale. And, to be honest, I've never had a lot of interest in community photo meetings and so forth loca…

True, I doubt it's possible to have much of a community at the scale that Flickr is aiming for. You can do it with a niche little photography site, but anything operating at mass-market sizes will eventually turn into a lot of people spamming groups and internet jokes at each other because that sort of behavior feeds on itself and gets you more active users to generate money from.

I hadn't checked it out recently, but it looks like they're still doing fine as far as having a ton of great photos posted. As long as the "community" aspects don't bug you, maybe it's a winning strategy?

OTOH I have no idea if they're profitable or not.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#232

Post by sremani » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

Ms.Mayer took a very difficult job. There is no sense in feeling for her, she knew what she was getting into and she was paid highly as if she already accomplished a turn around. Every thing said and done, Ms.Mayer will have $400 Million, even if Yahoo as we know is Kaput. It is a demonstration that C-level execs do not have skin in the game any more, they are paid like they already accomplished the task they have set to.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#233

Post by sporkland » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

richmarr wrote: post #162

MrApathy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an even older millennial (35), I have very fond memories of Yahoo. I remember receiving a two-disk copy of Netscape Navigator from a local ISP at a computer show in early 1995 and setting the home-page immediately to Yahoo. At the time I remember seeing hard copies of "The Internet Yellow Pages" at the local Barnes and Noble, but most search was through Yahoo or Alta Vista. Back then AV had several fewer orders of…

> As an even older millennial (35)... cough Dude, give up the skinny jeans :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X "Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western Post–World War II baby boom. Demographers and commentators use birth dates ranging from the early 1960s to the early 1980s."

dude give up the pedantry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

"Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation[1] or Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates when the generation starts and ends; most researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s."

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#234

Post by samstave » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #73

ghaff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say. There isn't a lot of direct competition. Smugmug probably comes closest (and I see their current pricing structure again makes it reasonable for non-professionals which it wasn't for a time). It really depends on how many people pay for a premium ("pro") flickr account which Yahoo seems to have been fairly ambivalent about collecting over the past few years. Personally, I'd find it something of a bummer…

I've been running my own site for displaying images; for backup, I have a dedicated server + synthing. It's the archives I'd really, really miss, from people who more or less stopped taking photos. If Flickr was to offer what Smugmug and 500px does for pros ( like direct upload from Lightroom, eyecandy portfolios, etc. ) instead of focusing on an app that uploads every picture it finds by default, I believe they'd se…

I was really excited when Flikr relaunched and offered a TB of space... but the upload feature ALWAYS failed for me. I could never upload lots of images (I have many thousands) -- so I finally gave up.

Then "Origami" was supposed to launch and solve that - but they shut down before they could even go live!

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#235

Post by apalmer » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #213

wooger wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's clear she's great at product design and not so good at people skills. Can you remind me which great products she's designed?

google.com She was in charge of the design of the front page of the search engine, as far as I know. From what I understand, our mental image of the Google brand—bright primary colors on white—came straight from her.

I dont know, seems kind of skimpy for qualifying someone as a CEO.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#236

Post by rchaud » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #124

rchaud wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd that Yahoo's stake of the fantasy sports market constantly goes unmentioned while daily fantasy startups like Draft Kings is currently bathing in VC cash and media coverage.

> daily fantasy startups like Draft Kings is currently bathing in VC cash and media coverage. They're currently bathing in legal battles and will probably be out of business in very short order. It's a liability for Yahoo, not an asset to brag about.

That depends. I thought the same thing would happen to Uber, but they've used their rapid growth and VC money to fund lobbying efforts to change the laws around taxi regulation. As I understand it, these FF startups are attempting to exploit similar loopholes in Internet gambling laws as a short-term fix while they lobby to change the law in their favor.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#237

Post by rchaud » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

epmatsw wrote: post #123

rchaud wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd that Yahoo's stake of the fantasy sports market constantly goes unmentioned while daily fantasy startups like Draft Kings is currently bathing in VC cash and media coverage.

You know, that is strange. Yahoo has a much much larger share of the traditional fantasy market, as well as a daily fantasy product. Not sure how the money aspect of it compares with FanDuel or DraftKings, but you would think they'd be able to leverage that in some way. Maybe a smaller spinoff company would be more likely to do something with that

That's the point I was trying to make. Yahoo has first mover advantage in having their own infrastructure for calculating scores and player statistics, not to mention a large base of users. Surely their fantasy sports products would be of value to companies looking to get a piece of the online sports gambling industry?

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#238

Post by crudbug » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

Zuck - If you are here .. Buy Yahoo for Max,

Trust me, you will thank me later. :)

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#239

Post by nickpsecurity » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

sirkneeland wrote: post #170

aswanson wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the body language, positioning, phrasing....her constantly referring to what the board was going to do..it was just a bad look.

She probably IS really tired (between the demands of pregnancy and the late-night boardroom fighting). And she's probably dealing with a lot of anger around not getting to do her turnaround. Whether they were working or not, she was surely emotionally invested in her efforts to rebuild Yahoo as a company and now that is being rejected. It's devastating when you are pouring your heart and soul into something and then…

That's how Im reading it. She put up a great fight and did better than I expected her to do. Every aspect of the job would've been a fight. I'd have only done it if I was paid plenty on entry and exit. She's gonna need quite a vacation after this.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#240

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

drgath wrote: post #89

username223 wrote: post #82

When Yahoo finally dies, my main concern is what happens to the @yahoo.com email address I've had for a couple of decades, and which now lives next to my name in countless address books. Does it perpetually forward to an address I choose? Does Yahoo try to charge for this? Do Russian identity thieves buy the domain and make my life hell?

Entirely dependent on who decides to buy Y! Mail. Safe to assume it'll be around for a while though, since straight killing Y! Mail doesn't make much business sense.

If Yahoo could find a way to start charging for legacy Yahoo email addresses without enraging a sufficient portion of the installed base, they could have a pretty lucrative business right there.