After Microsoft left Yahoo! at the altar, its got me thinking is Yahoo! ever going to get back to what it was. Most of all the scorched earth policy that Yahoo! used against Microsoft has done them more harm than good.
Its apparent to anybody with any common sense, that Yahoo! has too many fingers in too many pies. Even down to having competing products within the same company, they have some stellar internet properties but mis-manage them or let them go cold and the talent leave.
Yahoo! needs to focus and innovate not play catch up (more) also they need a clear brand stratergy are they a search, advertising or community company. They cannot be everything to everybody in the short-term they just need a stellar product that works and can propel them to where they should be. Yahoo! Live is a good product but not enough time was invested at launch and it failed, del.icio.us and Flickr are also good but they haven’t really seen any development since their acquisition. Pipes is also another great idea (and powers some of the backend systems of this site) but is difficult to get into and under promoted.
Yahoos’ best bet is to pick one of its web properties such as del.icio.us and develop and innovate that platform and put some fire back into the thing, then move on to the next product. Build fantastic products in social areas such as Bookmarking, Photo, & Video and they could be in with a chance of re-gaining some market clout that they once enjoyed.
Links
Yahoo’s Tumbling House Of Cards - TechCrunch
del.icio.us - Social Bookmarking
Flickr - Photo Sharing
Pipes - Rewire the Web
The more and more I deal with companies and managing networks and working with the wonderful world of windows server, the more and more I realise how poor many companies deal with IT.
Q: “What is the problem?”
A: “I don’t really know, but we can solve it if we buy a new X “
Here in lies the problem, there a number of companies that get this crap answer. There is very rarely a person in the company who will take responsibility and make sure their current system works properly before trying new things or upgrading, at the end of the day new hardware is meant to be better right?. Small to medium businesses have less of a problem with this because the amount spent on IT directly effects there bottom line, and don’t have deep pockets for IT to begin with.
The problem becomes even more pronounced when you get to a school or college. There are obvious complexities with these system your dealing with a couple of hundred computers and about 10 times as many users, but when anything goes wrong more money ‘must’ be spent to solve the problem. Inevitably the systems breakdown within a couple of weeks or even days, because the real problem wasn’t tackled or even attempted to find a fix.
For the average user this is a minor or major frustration depending on which way you spin it, but for anybody interested or working in tech like me, its like having burnt sticks buried into the back of my eyes. It can’t be too difficult to get it set up right in the first place, I like buying new tech as much as the next man (probably even more) but you have to realise somewhere along the line what you are proposing is costing someone a shed load of money and that money could be used better elsewhere, especially in schools.
–Rant Over–
OK, so I will be the first to admit I am quite the geek but I didn’t really get twitter. Fair enough I have had an account but it wasn’t until last night that the penny finally dropped.
So I have twitter in my AIM account, but have never really done anything with it. “track iron man” the 3 words that brought about the revelation that made twitter make sense to me.
Within seconds I had 30 messages, all relating to our favorite subject Iron Man. Not content with just one subject I added a couple more, and then shut down AIM. Unfortunately for my iphone it was ill equipped to deal with that many messages in one go, so mobile messaging is now disabled. I think twitter is one of those weird things you come across that you have to have being using it for a couple of weeks, before you actually get it.
Heres to Twitter!!
Update:
Its one of those things that snowballs, I don’t think I post that much but the information I get out of twitter is invaluable. Like:
Stay until the end of Iron Man, there’s an extra scene.
Also its nice to just be able to post, that witty one liner you just came up with ;-).
Phorm is a obvious idea, associate ads with what a user views and they will be more likely to click on these ads. There are obvious privacy concerns with the system what gets associate to the users, coupled with rushed legislature link. Could land many people in hot water and prison.
Phorm is just the latest incarnation of what is a global trend, we already collect enough data to be able to track every persons moves transactions and friends, we just don’t want the dots to be connected up. Thats when it will go wrong. For better or for worse we are going digital, and more so with web 2 centralising the data we have, making it even easier for profiles of innocent people to be made.
The problem with these systems are if they are put together, no is squeaky clean. For instance I have peace of music in my iTunes library called “Thank God for the Terrorists” it isn’t too hard to imagine if I was traced buying that piece of music, I could be arrested.
We need to fight to make sure these database aren’t connected up anymore then they already are, we don’t need ID cards, or CCTV to stop terrorism and crime. We need to grow up, and tackle the root causes. It’s very dangerous to even think these things do anything to stop crime or terrorism.
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” - Benjamin Franklin
Google News
Ok, so I would be the first to admit that I didn’t think Iron Man was going to be a film for me.
As always I turned out to be wrong, I aren’t a comic book fan but this film has to be one of the best ’superhero’ films ever made. I mean come on Spiderman isn’t all that great and The Incredible Hulk isn’t that brilliant either.
The dialogue is engaging and witty, and most of all the whole thing is almost believable.
Verdict
Go See!!
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