Yahoo 'won't screw Tumblr'? Then Tumblr will screw its balance sheet Famously, Yahoo! has promised during its $1.1bn buy of hipster blog site Tumblr not to "screw it up". If I was a Yahoo! shareholder, I should hope not - given the head-spinning number of dollars. But not screwing up is like Google’s promise to “not do Evil” – impossible to comply with, and something people throw back at you. …
It (tinkering) will be sooner than later. Yahoo has a track record. I remember when they purchased Music Match Jukebox. It was THE media player to have and organzie the files.
Unfortunately, it was promptly crippled., and DRMed and what not. Dead.
Why cant Ms. Mayer simply fix the extremely slow Yahoo mail? When gmail and Hotmail (Outlook) are touting "faster" loading/deleting/viewing, Yahoo seems to go in reverse.
Seriously, if she is keen to give its users a better experience, she can start at home by fixing its mail system, rather than pissing of users with more adverts.
That’s a formula for disaster if you want to reap the benefits of a web company…
There is nothing special about web companies. You actually mean companies with a distinctive brand which have to be handled carefully, a good example might be how IBM handled the purchase and integration of Lotus which it kept as a separate division for over ten years and only recently dropped the brand. Oracle's design to fold Sun in quickly was equally as successful in disposing of loss-making sectors and improving the profitability of the rest and providing a coherent product line for customers.
For all its blurb Microsoft has hardly kept its mitts off Skype which is why the client's are increasingly welded to other Microsoft services and increasingly unwieldy as a result. Do we have any figures from Microsoft as to how well Skype is doing? Is it still operating at a loss?
What does seem to be different for web companies is the size of goodwill and potential write-offs. If Facebook can pay $1 bn for Instagram, why shouldn't Tumblr be worth the same notional figure? The justification is usually about the eyeballs for advertising but this is as much about shutting down the competition as anything else. This is less about market share than outright domination: IBM got out of the PC business when it realised the margins were terminally thin; Akamai bought Cotendo to shut them down. And if things don't work out, well the charges can be offset against any tax meaning that other taxpayers will actually take the hit.
Given that current monetary policy is making any of these purchases extremely cheap, we can expect more of them and that is probably one of the aims of QE and its ilk: raising valuations supposedly makes us all feel wealthier and we thus go out and spend more.
I'm really puzzled by this perceived need to be "cool". Why would I want a technology service to be cool? I'd be happier if it worked well.
By cool, they seem to mean "popular with teenagers". This is a rolling tide that washes from one thing to the next like the Severn Bore. You can't capture it and pin it down and the more you try, the more it will evade you. As Richard Holway says over on TechMarketView, Yahoo trying to be cool, in that sense, is like Grandad dancing at a family party.
Real cool has nothing to do with age. Keith Richard is cool. Apple, Google, Yahoo, Tumblr, Facebook and Myspace aren't, weren't and never could be.
So here's a suggestion for Ms Mayer and her ilk. Try creating a service that does something people need, that is easy to use and works well, and aim it at a stable base of customers who will stay with you, and might even be prepared to pay something for it.
"...seamless and enhance the user experience"
I understand that they have to add ads, fine. But... No experience in my lifetime has ever been enhanced by the addition of adverts, or likely ever will be. I suspect I'm not alone.
You have to wonder if these people *actually believe* what they're saying sometimes. I think I'd prefer if they knew it was bullshit, but I think they really might believe it...
In the article it says:
... it's [Yahoo!] paying roughly 20 per cent of what it earned for an asset estimated to have made a mere $13m. At Tumblr’s estimated earnings, it would take about 10 years before Tumblr pays off.
Tumblr’s CEO might have a gift of spotting a budding social networking opportunity, but he’s not been able to turn his skill at attracting short-form bloggers into the ability to make money from them. Yet - we're being lead to believe - Tumblr's CEO will remain in charge and independent of Yahoo!.
so it is making money at the moment, just not enough for your liking, and presumably, not enough for someone who spent over a beeeeelion dollars on it.
The reason for its current success is also the reason it will fail, it is currently managed by someone who monetizes the site as little as possible while still making a reasonable profit. In this manner, users are encouraged to use the site because it does not have invasive monetisation of the user.
Yahoo have said they are going to keep a hands off approach, and yet at the same time massively increase revenue because of the acquisition. If they do the former, they won't make any more money from it than they are now, if they do the latter all the users will leave and they still won't make any money from it. Of all the things you could spend a beeeeeeelion dollars on, this is not the one I would choose.
I would not believe a word of Yahoo!'s corporate spin if my life depended on it.
They always makes these sorts of comments when they buy something. They made the same sort of soothing noises when they bought Flickr years ago and have progressively destroyed the site.
There are literally 20,000 complaints (178 pages of them) on the Flickr blogs at the moment demanding that Yahoo! undo the changes to the interface that were implemented on Monday, without consultation or any warning.
Yahoo! won't take any notice of course. The changes are part of targeting Flickr at a different audience and Yahoo! has basically told its existing Flickr users to just go away, which they are doing in droves (to French site Ipernity.com)
What the Yahoo! experience shows Flickr users is NEVER EVER trust the cloud or trust corporations to take care of your data.
Tumblr users can look forward to the same behaviour from Yahoo! ... why should we think otherwise.
Sod this.
Commentary like the 90's Internet Bubble is BACK AGAIN?
The only good thing is that the lass in charge of Yahoo now can justify her 6 million USD per month salary (or thereabouts) with a retarded acquistion.
I hope every fracking fund takes the conclusion that needs to conclude itself
Well, it's a good time for someone to start a plan for building a duplicate of Tumblr by another name. By the time that plan is ready for implementation Yahoo will have turned Tumblr into something completely different leaving a gaping void to be filled by who ever is most ready to step in an fill it.
A Flickr search used to give pages of thumbnails in a matrix that loaded quickly and were easily scanned by eye before manually requesting the next page. You could also step backwards or forwards to selected pages.
Now it's large pictures of random shapes closely fitted on a black background. No pagination - just erratic refreshes as you scroll down. If the download is slow you suddenly find you have skipped many pictures. Going backwards is equally hit and miss - and jumps to a numbered page in either directionare apparently impossible.
There is no longer any visible legend - you have to hover with the mouse to find out the owner of a picture and any information.
The same criticisms apply to a photostream display.
When you finally select a picture from a search/photostream you get a small image on a black background. The icons for things like copying links are lost at the boundary with the comment field. There is no apparent scroll bar - on my laptop I have to go to the absolute maximum window to get the top "window" expanded to see those icons.
Apparently they've turned what was a useful research tool into pretty wallpaper for half-engaged minds.
Someone please tell me there is a "classic" mode setting in there somewhere. Otherwise there's no point in me using it.
The Flickr official comment page for feedback the changes is going into meltdown - 185 pages in two days.. The vast majority are unfavourable comments.
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/
Ipernity seem to be picking up those who are jumping ship.
Yep - Flickr has been screwed up big time. Moans page now up to 200 - that's a lot of very unhappy users. Weirdly, the ones most P***ed off are people like me who paid for the premium service because it was worth it. It seems Yahoo thinks the future is freetards and not those handing over cold, hard cash. What could possibly go wrong?
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