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Marissa Mayer Shuffles Yahoo Leadership Team
- staunch 12y agoApple was saved through the creation of a series of world-changing products. Yahoo doesn't even seem to have creating breakthrough products as a goal. They have no excuse for not making something people want.
- yeukhon 12y agoI think Yahoo is simply too quiet. To be honest the only thing that keeps popping up these couple years about Yahoo were * email * Fantasy Sport * Flickr * Yahoo Finance * Mayer * Tumblr * Alibaba sale The first four have existed for years. I bet a lot of Tumblr users don't even know Yahoo owns Tumblr now. Yahoo search is probably getting more notice given now Yahoo search is Firefox's default search engine (at least that's the case in North America). Yahoo has some great ideas like the Digest app and doing some great mobile and streaming products, but I don't use them, and I don't always hear my coworkers and my friends talking about Yahoo (well except my friends who are working for them, but they are still pretty quiet about what they are working on). Maybe their Yahoo Original series will catch on some fire.
- kleer001 12y agoI liked Yahoo pipes, but they're super limited compared to IFTTT
- skuhn 12y agoPipes is a dead product, it's just waiting for someone to remember to turn off the light. Even in 2011 it was on life support. It's a great example of how even when Yahoo hits on something interesting, they will neglect it and fail to profit from it. Instead IFTTT launches 4 years later and gets a $170mm valuation.
- kleer001 12y ago> Pipes is a dead product It totally is. Is there something that can rise from the ashes or was it just a waste?
- skuhn 12y agoAt least when I was at Yahoo (many years ago), there was zero apparent desire to even continue to operate in that type of service space. I guess Yahoo wants to be a media company and sell ads, not provide APIs to do nerd stuff for free. I would look to Zapier or IFTTT instead. I haven't used Zapier, but the fact that they actually charge money (shocking!) gives me hope. Maybe they can actually build a business around it.
- possibilistic 12y agoI have never used Yahoo pipes, but I found IFTTT to be quite limited when I tried it earlier this year. There are no booleans, pipeline control, arguments, scheduling, reuse, etc. I know this tool wasn't written for me, but these are things that I would derive real value from. I want visual tools at a level just above a scripting language, hosted on a managed platform I can largely ignore. An API for webhooks and oauth, 3rd party API support, triggers that can run custom javascript or python... I'd pay all the money for that.
- mlvljr 12y agoAnd Community Season 6!
- jonhohle 12y agoThis is the first Yahoo! endeavor I've engaged in since their original directory. I'm glad they picked it up, but it's not clear they have any velocity with the rest of Screen.
- stickfigure 12y agoTo confirm your point - my blog has been on Tumblr for years and I just now discovered the Yahoo connection by reading this article.
- tobylane 12y agoYahoo has services not products, with invisible and constant improvements. Not comparable.
- sjg007 12y agoAhh but what do people want?
- rdtsc 12y agoIs there a good track record of Yahoo-sized companies that got back on top of their industry by shuffling executives around? Seems like more often than not failing companies are always characterized by lot of shuffling in an attempt to "do something" and in the end stay the same or get worse.
- Natsu 12y agoSomething about deck chairs on the Titanic comes to mind. To be fair, there wasn't much there when she joined and I don't honestly expect anyone to make Yahoo relevant again.
- AnkhMorporkian 12y agoI'm not sure that's the specific goal of this move. It's very doubtful any company has suddenly reversed their market position by switching two executives' positions. However, it's likely this move is more intended to send a message to the other executives that whatever their position, even the leader of Tumblr, that maintaining a narrow market for a platform is unacceptable. I doubt Marissa thinks that the switch will actually expand Tumblr's market share, but that it's a future-looking move that will encourage other execs to engage a broad audience. I don't know how effective it will be, but I'd bet dollars to dimes that's the motivation.
- jaredsohn 12y agoIsn't it really hard for Yahoo-sized companies to get back on top of their industry in general? A list of such companies and theories as to how they managed to recover would be interesting.
- venomsnake 12y agoApple, IBM ... and in a few years we will see what will become of Dell. That is all I can think of ...
- noir_lord 12y agoIn fairness IBM didn't really get back on top of it's original industry, they where clever enough to get on top of a much more lucrative one, also it's much harder to clone IBM developers than IBM hardware ;).
- pcunite 12y agoGive her time. She did not start with a lot in my opinion.
- mlvljr 12y agoResembles me of http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Catherine_Weaver http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Catherine_Weaver , given all the stories we hear. Hope she'll show em some tough hell :)
- mlvljr 12y agoWaait, laddies, why so downvotish?? Sexism?? ;)
- mlvljr 12y agoDare to elaborate, cowards? :)
- eropple 12y agoI can only speak for myself, but I downvoted you, and flagged your latter two posts, because I didn't think your post added anything of value. It happens all the time. The more you post complaining about it, the more downvotes you're going to get. Your account's a thousand days old - I'd hope you'd get this without spam-replying to vent your spleen.
- mlvljr 12y agoI rather got my lulz :)
- rgbrenner 12y agoI agree... but it has been 3 years since she took over. At some point people are going to want to see actual results. And so far Yahoo has gone from $5b in revenue in 2012 to $4.68b (2013) to $4.62b last year. (Even by quarter: Q4-2014 is 10m in revenue less than Q4-2013... and net profit dropped by more than half) I understand there's a lot to fix at Yahoo.. but how much more time is she really going to have without posting real results? Edit: link: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:YHOO&fstype=ii https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:YHOO&fstype=ii
- mikeryan 12y agoThe phrase "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind.
- WalterSear 12y agoI'm going to be calling useless executives working in corporate lichdoms 'deck chairs' from now on.
- oh_sigh 12y agoSuperficially, any time anyone reshuffles or rearranges anything, that could come to mind. Please provide a more fleshed out post unless you're interested in quipping and moving on.
- G00d1 12y agoShould have skipped tumbler, saved $1billion and spent it on people and given them some freedom to fix yahoo products.
- deftnerd 12y agoWhat I don't understand is that there is the impression that that Tumblr isn't doing well because it hasn't broken out of the teenage and 20's demographic. By forcing changes to try to extend to more age demographics, they risk alienating the ones they already have. They could simply just focus on the teen and 20's demographic and wait it out until they get older and are entrenched in the platform.
- xasos 12y agoI agree. This is kinda how Facebook has lost the attention of an important early demographic - high schoolers. It was probably due to the fact the everyone they knew was on FB, and it wasn't the "cool" place to be anymore.
- tptacek 12y agoIt's not totally that simple. When they acquired Tumblr, the valuation was dominated by goodwill --- 750MM of it --- which was explained in part by the value to Yahoo of exposing Tumblr's users to Yahoo's monetization systems, and of integrating Yahoo technology directly into Tumblr. If that plan goes out the window, they may need to formally account for that, which can hurt their numbers.
- pkaye 12y agoThey will eventually need to do that like with the rest of the acquisitions.
- aswanson 12y agoShe needs to shuffle her idiotic mobile team by firing all of them, at least the ones who made the mobile email app. Who the hell designs, in this day and age, an email app that does not let you log out; your only choice is to delete the app if you don't want someone who picks up your phone to look at your yahoo mail. I used to be skeptical of snapchat, but I'm coming around to new startups that understand how humans use things and don't want everything open to everyone.
- raverbashing 12y agoHeh this is the least of the problems with the mobile app (and Y mail in general)
- detaro 12y agoAnd parts of the mail team, too. A mail provider of their size that manages to regularly get blacklisted is in a bad position (United Internet and others right now are not taking mail from at least parts of yahoo groups, and yahoo claims all is fine and all mail delivered. Cue furious users that can't leave lists and are missing mails)
- morgante 12y agoApple...
- aswanson 12y agoPart of the reason I have never owned an apple phone in my 5 years of smartphone usage.
- aswanson 12y agoMust be some yahoo mobile email devs here...listen, sorry to threaten your livelihood with my statements...but the fact of the matter is, the product is a pos and not aligned with what it should be in terms of human needs. Nobody wants their goddamn email available at all times to anyone. That's why they've been password protected, since like, the 80s. Fix it and you might save your company/jobs. Basic logic.
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- Animats 12y agoNo mention of search at all. A year ago, Mayer was going to put Yahoo back in the search business.[1] Yahoo resells Bing search, for which Bing pays Yahoo. Yahoo's own search engine was discontinued in 2010. The deal with Microsoft/Bing is up for review, and Yahoo has the opportunity to exit. Yahoo hired a new head of search last year, but his area of expertise was negotiating with Microsoft. The Yahoo search announcement seems to have been a bluff to get a better deal from Microsoft/Bing. This year, search doesn't even get a mention. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/11/technology/yahoo-mayer/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/11/technology/yahoo-mayer/
- bane 12y agoHonestly, search is not a market I'd ever want to get in. Even if you build a strong ad network for it, ads are paying less and less and unless you have a new approach that give results that are a quantum leap better than google, you're going to fight a losing battle. I mean, after Google, Baidu has ~11% of the market (and actually gives passable results for English), Bing has ~10% (after spending billions), Yahoo has about 9%, but is basically just Bing (so maybe Bing has 19%?) and after that there's AOL, Ask, Lycos, Excite there's also Yandex, Naver, Exalead, Gigablast, Munax, Qwant, Sogou, Soso, Youdao. There's also Metasearch engines: Blingo, Yippy, DeeperWeb, Dogpile, HotBot, and a dozen more. There's tons of language or geographic specific specific ones: Biglobe, Accoona, Goo, Miner.hu, Walla!, etc. And then there's all the specific engines like Yelp, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, and hell, Reddit's search even counts given how much content is on Reddit these days. This is not a space I'd want to fight in, search is fracturing, the monetization story doesn't look good long-term, and nobody seems to have figured out a way to search that's fantastically better than keyword + some graph weight + heuristics If I were Mayer, I'd be looking for a way out of search as fast as possible.
- joelrunyon 12y ago> ads are paying less and less Do you have proof of this on a search level? On a display level, I'd agree with you, but anecdotal, things seems as competitive as ever in search.
- gyardley 12y agoThe smartest thing I ever did was to sell my startup to Simon Khalaf's. Marissa's made a good move here.
- AndrewHart 12y agoWhy do we still care?
- clusterbits 12y agoI wonder if Yahoo will get back on track. Marissa is doing an extraordinary good job. I would say that if all measures Marissa is doing don`t help Yahoo, nothing can help Yahoo.
- Bootvis 12y agoWhy would you say that? Not that I disagree but I don't have any information that causes me to agree with you.
- mtrimpe 12y agoThe simple fact that you're talking about this now is already a rather mighty feat. Before Marissa took over Yahoo wasn't even worth mentioning anymore outside of sentences containing the word 'downhill' or equivalent.
- Bootvis 12y agoIt's a tech company with a market cap of $42bn and see was the fourth CEO to take the wheel in 2012. Of course, what happens at Yahoo! is news and that the conclusion that it went downhill during all the board shuffles makes sense. But I'm not sure this proves she is doing great: Certainly seems to be in a better state than before. That can be credited to Marissa Mayer. A look at the stock price[1] seems to confirm she indeed does a good job. However, one might argue that's just mean reversion at work: they hit a bad streak followed by a good one. The fact that this shuffle remembered me of the Henrique de Castro mess makes me conclude see is not doing an 'extraordinary good job', just good. [1]: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO
- aikah 12y ago> Marissa is doing an extraordinary good job No she isn't. She has done anything but spend money, fire and recruit executives, but she has no plan.
- gcb0 12y agoMe thinks the board is moving against marisa (yahoo board trying to change ceo, oh my) the only change this time, instead of shoping around and turning the company upside down they shopped and put the CEO-to-be as SVP first.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoSecond envelope.