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Yahoo, Death By 200 Paper Cuts

July 9, 2010 By

Back in April of 2009 when Carol Bartz joined Yahoo as the new CEO, she discussed the challenges of their product portfolio and brining discipline to their product management process.

Techcrunch is now reporting,

In an email to all staff last week, new chief product officer Blake Irving told employees that he would be sending a two page document outlining Yahoo’s overall product strategy moving forward by the end of July. Later employees will be able to dive deeper into a twenty page document, and later still a 200 page detailed product strategy document would be available.

My gut call is that this is not a good sign (yes, I know when the ship is already sinking, it isn’t exactly risky to say it is in trouble).  2 pages is an acceptable length for a strategy document.  I can even buy 20 pages for an in-depth overview of the various parts of the product portfolio strategy.  200 pages?  That to me sounds like death by presentation that most employees will take a pass on.

To use a gardening analogy, when you are overrun with weeds you have to take drastic steps to recover lost ground.  You can’t save everything, so sacrifices must be made and made quickly.  If the plant can be saved you save it,  but this is not a time for nurturing.  What you hope to do is to pick a few hearty plants to focus on and  try to build from there.

Back in 2007, I had a chance to hear Steve Miller speak while he was in the process of trying to turn around the auto part maker, Delphi.  What I remember most from his speech was the sense of urgency he conveyed when talking about his turnaround plan.  He knew that the only way to the save the business was to to take action quickly before it was too late to save any momentum.

I would like to see more action and less presentation coming out of Yahoo.  What does Yahoo stand for?  Which of their many,many products are they going to cut and which one are they going to bet the farm on? What’s going to be the rallying cry to galvanize the organization?

I personally think Yahoo has the resources and the brand equity to make the turnaround happen – plus wouldn’t a comeback from one of the pioneer’s of the Internet make for a great story?  Let’s hope that there is more than talk coming soon!

Photo Credit:  Flickr

Filed Under: Product Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

Are You In the Top 5% Of The Twittersphere?

December 23, 2008 By

Did you know?

Only 5 percent of all Twitter users have more than 250 followers.

and

70% of Twitter users joined in 2008 (for more facts see  The State Of The Twittersphere (HubSpot Edition) )

I joined Twitter earlier this year during the first ProductCampAustin. The conference set up a Twitter account for everyone to follow during the event.  It was a great way to keep track of all the comments during the sessions and to keep in touch after it was over. From there, I was hooked.

So, if you are on Twitter, why did you join?

Filed Under: Marketing Resources Tagged With: , , ,

Circle of Moms is on Fire (and top 3 reasons why this is cool)

December 5, 2008 By

Great post on TechCruch today about Circle of Moms and their very impressive growth.  They have only been online for 2 months are are up to 850k active users.  So why is this interesting?

  1. If you build it, and it fits a need, they will come –> more important, it doesn’t have to be an idea that is completely new, just improved and focused
  2. Let the users run the show (to a degree) –> “Circle of Moms wsers have created over 1,000 such communities for topics like parents with toddlers, special needs children, and even recipe swapping. Many have tens of thousands of members.”.
  3. You can leverage existing sites like Facebook to build and reinforce your site.  The Circle of Mom Facebook application has 840k active users that helps connect users back to the main site and attract new users.
Filed Under: innovation Tagged With: