Comments on: gathering the troops

By: jeff hester.net

jeff hester.net — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 08:46:12 +0000

Yahoo! Acquires WebJay (and a KM digression)

O’reilly Radar reports that Yahoo! has made another acquisition in their drive to transform the company’s web properties into a Web 2.0 über-community. This time it’s the music playlist community Webjay created by Lucas Gonze. Yahoo! seems determined …

By: kai

kai — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:44:52 +0000

Questions: Does it matter if it is Yahoo bringing in the cool kids or Google? Are there any true alternatives to either/or and does it matter (once again)? Obviously social movements form when a collective of like-minded individuals unite (with more or less conflict), but can a corporatist network model work to change lives for the better when it comes to those that need the most interaction/uplift? ya

By: randomtruth

randomtruth — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:21:40 +0000

There has definitely been a sea-change in the works at Yahoo at the grassroots developer & visionary level (the technocrats). Much of this has been led by the Search team btw (cause they get that crowd).
However, the real test is still to come… Many of the middle-management beaurocrat-types that came into Yahoo post ’99 during the down times think that things are fine and that the company doesn’t need to change development & business practices. These folks will challenge the new loose cannons to prove them wrong or fall in-step with their “spreadsheet-proven” conservative ways.
So… all you Yahoo technocrats, both new and old guard, need to show that the path of openess & “just get it out there” innovation can succeed. If you don’t, the Internet will be dominated by Google and Yahoo will be a defensive #2 player in most services. Google is cool and all, but competition between multiple intelligent and well run companies is much better for the consumer.

I, for one, am rooting for ya. Get hacking.

By: grumpY!

grumpY! — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:32:17 +0000

from a double-digit employee number Y: i appreciate the quality of the people who have been joining yahoo, but i also detect a subcontext in the many blogs and postings by some of these people that they are “saving” us adults (and yahoo) from ourselves.

the “old” yahoo (pre 99) was about one thing – a group of people running at nearly 100% efficiency with almost zero BS, truly a wonder to behold. you could literally point at each person and describe precisely what value add they delivered, and you didn’t have to stretch the definition of value, in fact it was very easy to underestimate each contribution.

this group of people was not interested in being called out by name or being identified in public for our contributions, and i suspect there would have been a gag reflex at doing so…there was an extreme, almost pathological modesty in this group. very educational and enlightening indeed. this is a quality of the founding team in particular, who have done almost zero self-promotion in ten years. i will be up front and tell you i don’t care for your call outs above, building personal brands isn’t what a team is about.

as for new people telling the company “whats what”…yes, please speak your mind, but remember we are not morons, and blogging does not bestow a special status on you. some of the people you are dealing with are big company morons to be sure, but some have also been quietly coding like mofos, and not talking about it.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 23:56:25 +0000

I’ve got a mouth like a $*#@!&$ sailor when I code. Come on down to A3 Sunnyvale if you don’t believe me.

By: jr

jr — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:31:59 +0000

Heh, you wacky kids.

Considering that I’m one of the “adults” sitting next to both flickr and upcoming.org, I can say that I love it. (Well, with the possible exception of the marshmallow gun fights, but then, that’s why I keep a small nerf artillery in my desk drawer.) As for the language concerns…. you’ve obviously never been by my desk when I’m working on a weird perl bug.

That said, you’re dead right about this getting back to the original roots of what made Yahoo cool to begin with, and I’m damn glad and proud to be teaching and learning again from all of them.