Yahoo is Falling Apart – Please Clean House Before You Slip Away August 5, 2008
Posted by John Furrier in Technology.Tags: yahoo
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As Yahoo twists in the “corporate governance” wind (Kara Swisher has all the latest details at ATD), the company is falling apart. Yahoo is a sad story these days – it’s slipping away. People are leaving left and right. However the real problems are two fold: 1) the wrong people are leaving and 2) public brand perception is plummeting.
On the people side it’s not the executives leaving that a problem – hell half the execs need to go. The issue at hand is good ‘workers’ and “teams” of talent are leaving. Why? It’s easier to take a team out and start a new company or work for another company. All the stars are continuing to leave. A source from inside Yahoo recently told me that the only work getting done is powerpoint slides. In fact my source said “the way to survive and get promoted at Yahoo is to master the “powerpoint” presentation. “
On the user and marketplace side the fact is it’s not cool to use Yahoo anymore. I guess that Yahoo will own the market or franchise on the 60-something user market market – the people who have been locked into all Yahoo’s Web 1.0 stickiness tactics. Yahoo needs to do things differently.
I am a big fan of Yahoo and what it has meant to the progress of the Web, but it’s time to clean house. I mean really clean house. Get “mavericks” who can look beyond powerpoints and deliver product value.
Yahoo is slipping away.
Bravos, John. Your take is spot-on. Yahoo! needs to start thinking and doing things different rather than chasing their present agenda of getting better. This will require hiring on the talent needed to drive the game-changing innovation that will upset and disrupt the Yahoo! status quo. As Dee Hock once said it’s not getting new ideas into your mind that’s difficult, it’s getting the old ideas out.