4 ms·

I think they fucked around too long in hiring her, to the point where even people who initially supported Product-Led-Yahoo would have preferred to keep the Med

by rdl 11y ago

I think they fucked around too long in hiring her, to the point where even people who initially supported Product-Led-Yahoo would have preferred to keep the Media-Led-Yahoo of Ross Levinsohn. Personally, I think it was obvious what Yahoo! should have done, at least from ~2005 onward: become a brand/site for a specific cohort of people as they moved through life. No young people use Yahoo!, nor should they be pursued; just have Yahoo! provide an evolving set of products for their existing userbase. Yahoo! might have gone back even more and taken the even-older-people market who were on AOL still, or found other sites targeting 50-80 year olds vs. Yahoo!'s core 40-50 market. Buying Tumblr (which I dislike, personally; maybe too "young" for me?) was Mayer's dumb move. Everything else was either good or benign. Building decent mobile apps, maybe a mobile platform or other platform, etc. around existing Yahoo! services to support old Yahoo! users would make sense. My other strategy would be: Yahoo! for rural/small-town/etc. people in the US, and Yahoo! for black (older; not youth culture/urban culture, but middle class older black people), hispanic middle aged/family/etc., or other minority groups outside the mainstream. Yahoo! for black people, with an HQ in Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, etc., and Yahoo! Lat Am in South/Central America (and/or Miami) would be a way to move forward with new-to-Yahoo! people. Don't go after the silicon valley tech crowd (hyper competitive, tech based); a media strategy around other groups would have been viable. (and still might be) Mayer was totally the wrong person for that strategy. Oprah Winfrey would be the ideal "Yahoo! for black middle-aged people" leader; I'm sure there were other people. (My first move if I bought Yahoo! today would be to relocate the headquarters to either the midwest or Atlanta; anywhere but SFBA. Las Vegas might even work, but somewhere like Branson or St. Louis would make sense. Also makes it easier to do the mass layoffs. The Bay would be full of purple blood, unfortunately.)

dragonwriter 11y ago
Being a brand for a specific cohort is a slow-death strategy, not a growth strategy. I don't think many people invested in Yahoo would prefer that to a high-risk strategy with a plausible upside.
- rdl 11y ago
  That age cohort doesn't have the same Internet penetration as 20-30 year olds today. Even if boomers are declining in numbers now due to death, you can get a larger percentage of boomers on the Internet, and they can make more use of it. (The racial/ethnic minority markets, especially older people, are also dramatically under-saturated, so there's a huge amount of growth opportunity there.) And at some point slow-death while maximizing profits from each user actually is the right strategy for a business. I suspect Netflix DVD-by-mail business is largely operating on that model now.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    I am a very happy customer of Netflix's DVD service, because I can get movies and shows that aren't easily available any other way.
dragontamer 11y ago
> Personally, I think it was obvious what Yahoo! should have done, at least from ~2005 onward > No young people use Yahoo! No one here used Geocities when they were younger? Yahoo! Chess? Yahoo Games? Yahoo was incredibly relevant with the young crowd in 2005. Indeed, Yahoo still owns the young crowd as the steward of Tumblr and Flickr. Internet comments these days. I can't even...
- rdl 11y ago
  Geocities was shuttered before "young people" today started using the Internet (and was dying for years before that). I also doubt most 0-22 year olds today ever played Yahoo! Chess or Yahoo! games -- they were popular with people my age and slightly younger, about a decade ago. Tumblr was an acquisition, and a very expensive one, which would not have been made by non-Mayer person following my strategy. Young people do not, generally, use Flickr (at least in the US); they use Instagram or Vine/etc. (In 2005, what Yahoo! should have done was different than what Yahoo! should have done in 2013 -- in 2005, it still had a reasonable array of options. By 2013, the olds strategy was probably the most viable operating strategy, although even then, massive cost cutting and redistribution of Alibaba winnings to shareholders might have been the most preferred outcome.)
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    > Geocities was shuttered before "young people" today started using the Internet (and was dying for years before that). Yeah. Because young people in 2005 are now like 20 to 30 somethings today. That was 11 years ago man. A 35 year old today who was really into Geocities back in its prime was a 24-year old young person (although Geocities prime was really closer to early 2001 or 2002). In any case, I fondly remember the awful Neopet communities with awful gifs and everything that I used to browse on Geocities. Anyone remember "Webrings" ?? Now I admit, 2005ish was when Xanga and MySpace started to take over (Facebook was a "college" thing, and not really relevant to high-schoolers at that time). But Geocities was still relevant at that time.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Yahoo was incredibly relevant with the young crowd in 2005. As a college freshman in 04-05, I have no idea what you're talking about. It could be true, but it certainly isn't obvious.

by rdl 11y ago

dragonwriter 11y ago

Being a brand for a specific cohort is a slow-death strategy, not a growth strategy. I don't think many people invested in Yahoo would prefer that to a high-risk strategy with a plausible upside.

rdl 11y ago
That age cohort doesn't have the same Internet penetration as 20-30 year olds today. Even if boomers are declining in numbers now due to death, you can get a larger percentage of boomers on the Internet, and they can make more use of it. (The racial/ethnic minority markets, especially older people, are also dramatically under-saturated, so there's a huge amount of growth opportunity there.) And at some point slow-death while maximizing profits from each user actually is the right strategy for a business. I suspect Netflix DVD-by-mail business is largely operating on that model now.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  I am a very happy customer of Netflix's DVD service, because I can get movies and shows that aren't easily available any other way.

dragontamer 11y ago

> Personally, I think it was obvious what Yahoo! should have done, at least from ~2005 onward > No young people use Yahoo! No one here used Geocities when they were younger? Yahoo! Chess? Yahoo Games? Yahoo was incredibly relevant with the young crowd in 2005. Indeed, Yahoo still owns the young crowd as the steward of Tumblr and Flickr. Internet comments these days. I can't even...

rdl 11y ago
Geocities was shuttered before "young people" today started using the Internet (and was dying for years before that). I also doubt most 0-22 year olds today ever played Yahoo! Chess or Yahoo! games -- they were popular with people my age and slightly younger, about a decade ago. Tumblr was an acquisition, and a very expensive one, which would not have been made by non-Mayer person following my strategy. Young people do not, generally, use Flickr (at least in the US); they use Instagram or Vine/etc. (In 2005, what Yahoo! should have done was different than what Yahoo! should have done in 2013 -- in 2005, it still had a reasonable array of options. By 2013, the olds strategy was probably the most viable operating strategy, although even then, massive cost cutting and redistribution of Alibaba winnings to shareholders might have been the most preferred outcome.)
- dragontamer 11y ago
  > Geocities was shuttered before "young people" today started using the Internet (and was dying for years before that). Yeah. Because young people in 2005 are now like 20 to 30 somethings today. That was 11 years ago man. A 35 year old today who was really into Geocities back in its prime was a 24-year old young person (although Geocities prime was really closer to early 2001 or 2002). In any case, I fondly remember the awful Neopet communities with awful gifs and everything that I used to browse on Geocities. Anyone remember "Webrings" ?? Now I admit, 2005ish was when Xanga and MySpace started to take over (Facebook was a "college" thing, and not really relevant to high-schoolers at that time). But Geocities was still relevant at that time.
thaumasiotes 11y ago
> Yahoo was incredibly relevant with the young crowd in 2005. As a college freshman in 04-05, I have no idea what you're talking about. It could be true, but it certainly isn't obvious.