5 ms·

This is very relevant now because rumors are that Yahoo is about to buy Tumblr for over a billion dollars. If they only took care of Geocities they would not ha

by hristov 13y ago

This is very relevant now because rumors are that Yahoo is about to buy Tumblr for over a billion dollars. If they only took care of Geocities they would not have to buy it all over again in Tumblr form.

eurleif 13y ago
Geocities worked quite differently from Tumblr. How would you transition from one format to the other, without pissing off current users?
- Svip 13y ago
  Because closing Geocities doesn't piss off current users? If you ask me, Yahoo! should just have done it and damn the consequences! In fairness; regardless of what Yahoo! did with Geocities, they'd still end up buying Tumblr.
  - etha 13y ago
    What users? If Geocities had users to piss off, they wouldn't have needed to shit it down.
    - jychang 13y ago
      Users != revenue. It still had users.
- prawn 13y ago
  This wouldn't be perfect, but it would at least leverage Geocities a bit more than shutting it down: Start Tumblr-style side venture. Pitch it to existing Geocities customers in various ways with advantages like shared logins and some semblance of import tool easing adoption. Let Tumblr roll on from that kick start. Eventually phase out or shut-down Geocities.
pavs 13y ago
How is this relevant? Different era. Different CEO. Different corporate culture. Different demography. Different way people use the internet. Vastly different size of users. Tumblr could very well die on its own without anyone's help. Last I heard it was not making any profit yet, and took huge amount of money from investors. In the long term, investors don't care how many users you have if you are not making much money. I personally want tech industry to get away from 2-3 companies dominating. I want a new challenger, that could be yahoo (we don't know yet), but I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt; and a chance to prove themselves under new leadership.
- duaneb 13y ago
  Relevant and different are not mutually exclusive.
  - pavs 13y ago
    Its not relevant because there are different circumstances. Not because they are different.
- iSnow 13y ago
  Please, not Yahoo! - the company that buys out great focused sites and stifles them, dilutes their focus and kill them through neglect.
- coputersaysno 13y ago
  Culture is same nevertheless, the top-level management culture ie.
untotal 13y ago
For the history books, Yahoo's M&A has been more trend-defining than anybody else. Geocities in 1999 -- spawned the dot com rush Flickr (2005) -- the official web 2.0 start date! Tumblr (2013) -- ???
- encoderer 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by the "dot com rush" but if there was a singular "dot com" starting-gun, it was the Netscape IPO a few years earlier.
  - nolok 13y ago
    And "web 2.0" was mostly "started" with gmail in 2004
jacquesm 13y ago
Geocities time came and went, and I don't actually blame Yahoo for that (though I do blame them for the way in which it was shut down, lots of people lost their content forever, we didn't get everything out in time). As a portal it failed because the basic concepts of free accounts and uploading made it a haven for spammers, as a commercial concept it failed because bulk display advertising rates dropped through the floor during the .com bust and in spite of losing money Yahoo kept it running for many years. To 'fix' geocities would have meant grandfathering in a few million accounts, re-inventing the service in a way that would make it profitable against the rise of the new homepage provider: facebook. I personally don't think that is something that they could have done, not with Yahoo's image and the legacy they were still hauling along. It needed a clean break with the past and ditching Geocities gave Yahoo an opportunity to do just that (which they then subsequently mostly wasted). Yahoo did the right thing, but they went about it in a terribly callous way. All they had to do was to deny google crawling access to geocities, freeze the uploads, allow account archival and deletion in an automated way (easy for them to do). That way we wouldn't have this gaping hole in the web today, and we wouldn't have desperate people trying to find their old stuff through whatever means possible. I'm sure 1 fte and a few hundred bucks worth of bandwidth would have been a price worth paying for Yahoo given the dent it gave their image, it definitely was worth paying that much to me to try to keep it running.
coputersaysno 13y ago
intention = funny; I really don't want Tumblr to be bought by Yahoo! Last time a startup went in and was killed. Rumour has it that they halt the progress of things till it's no longer relevant to the real world and then kill it.
loceng 13y ago
That's a pretty big rumour - though it would give Yahoo a better foothold.
untog 13y ago
It would be really quite amazing if Yahoo acqui-hired Tumblr. I know it'll never happen, but it's just funny to think, given their current trend for acqui-hires.

by hristov 13y ago

eurleif 13y ago

Geocities worked quite differently from Tumblr. How would you transition from one format to the other, without pissing off current users?

Svip 13y ago
Because closing Geocities doesn't piss off current users? If you ask me, Yahoo! should just have done it and damn the consequences! In fairness; regardless of what Yahoo! did with Geocities, they'd still end up buying Tumblr.
- etha 13y ago
  What users? If Geocities had users to piss off, they wouldn't have needed to shit it down.
  - jychang 13y ago
    Users != revenue. It still had users.
prawn 13y ago
This wouldn't be perfect, but it would at least leverage Geocities a bit more than shutting it down: Start Tumblr-style side venture. Pitch it to existing Geocities customers in various ways with advantages like shared logins and some semblance of import tool easing adoption. Let Tumblr roll on from that kick start. Eventually phase out or shut-down Geocities.

pavs 13y ago

How is this relevant? Different era. Different CEO. Different corporate culture. Different demography. Different way people use the internet. Vastly different size of users. Tumblr could very well die on its own without anyone's help. Last I heard it was not making any profit yet, and took huge amount of money from investors. In the long term, investors don't care how many users you have if you are not making much money. I personally want tech industry to get away from 2-3 companies dominating. I want a new challenger, that could be yahoo (we don't know yet), but I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt; and a chance to prove themselves under new leadership.

duaneb 13y ago
Relevant and different are not mutually exclusive.
- pavs 13y ago
  Its not relevant because there are different circumstances. Not because they are different.
iSnow 13y ago
Please, not Yahoo! - the company that buys out great focused sites and stifles them, dilutes their focus and kill them through neglect.
coputersaysno 13y ago
Culture is same nevertheless, the top-level management culture ie.

untotal 13y ago

For the history books, Yahoo's M&A has been more trend-defining than anybody else. Geocities in 1999 -- spawned the dot com rush Flickr (2005) -- the official web 2.0 start date! Tumblr (2013) -- ???

encoderer 13y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by the "dot com rush" but if there was a singular "dot com" starting-gun, it was the Netscape IPO a few years earlier.
- nolok 13y ago
  And "web 2.0" was mostly "started" with gmail in 2004

jacquesm 13y ago

Geocities time came and went, and I don't actually blame Yahoo for that (though I do blame them for the way in which it was shut down, lots of people lost their content forever, we didn't get everything out in time). As a portal it failed because the basic concepts of free accounts and uploading made it a haven for spammers, as a commercial concept it failed because bulk display advertising rates dropped through the floor during the .com bust and in spite of losing money Yahoo kept it running for many years. To 'fix' geocities would have meant grandfathering in a few million accounts, re-inventing the service in a way that would make it profitable against the rise of the new homepage provider: facebook. I personally don't think that is something that they could have done, not with Yahoo's image and the legacy they were still hauling along. It needed a clean break with the past and ditching Geocities gave Yahoo an opportunity to do just that (which they then subsequently mostly wasted). Yahoo did the right thing, but they went about it in a terribly callous way. All they had to do was to deny google crawling access to geocities, freeze the uploads, allow account archival and deletion in an automated way (easy for them to do). That way we wouldn't have this gaping hole in the web today, and we wouldn't have desperate people trying to find their old stuff through whatever means possible. I'm sure 1 fte and a few hundred bucks worth of bandwidth would have been a price worth paying for Yahoo given the dent it gave their image, it definitely was worth paying that much to me to try to keep it running.

coputersaysno 13y ago

intention = funny; I really don't want Tumblr to be bought by Yahoo! Last time a startup went in and was killed. Rumour has it that they halt the progress of things till it's no longer relevant to the real world and then kill it.

loceng 13y ago

That's a pretty big rumour - though it would give Yahoo a better foothold.

untog 13y ago

It would be really quite amazing if Yahoo acqui-hired Tumblr. I know it'll never happen, but it's just funny to think, given their current trend for acqui-hires.