
Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals - coloneltcb
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/02/8591214/ax-falls-yahoo
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snorrah
What the fuck is a content vertical?

~~~
cft
The development of such language ("content verticals") indicates the
transition of a maturing industry from the founders/builders to the
executives/gate keepers. They create such language to inflate the value of
their executive work which is necessary in corporate politics, as opposed to
the value creation process of founders who build new things and call them
simply.

~~~
laughinghan
I completely agree. That's why we founders, who are much better at using
simple language, should ideate a way to pivot our unicorns to disrupt this
space. These executives will discover they're not a culture fit in this
paradigm shift where sweat equity is properly valued.

(Can I get some help working in 'gamification', 'bootstrapping', and
'dogfooding'?)

~~~
larrymcp
Don't forget "leverage" instead of "use", "orthogonal" instead of "unrelated",
and "onboarding" instead of "training"!

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smegel
This might be the first good move Yahoo has made since Mayer took over.

I can't think of a better example of a company that needs to shed worthless
baggage and focus on high value propositions.

And I am gobsmacked Yahoo has not at least made an attempt at a real social
network. They have hundreds of millions of users, at the point they are in
giving all their users an automatic account on Yahoo Social might be a dick
move, but it's time start taking risks and see what unfolds.

~~~
skewart
What would be the point of building a social network for Yahoo? Better
engagement? I'm pretty sure they always have been a destination for much of
their audience (as opposed to depending on social sharing to get eyeballs,
like, say BuzzFeed). So I'm not sure they'd have a whole lot to gain from it.
Of course, their audience probably will spend more and more time on social
networks, so stemming that tide somehow might make sense.

Rather than building out a full-scale social network like Google+ they might
be better served by aiming for something like Reddit, or HN. There's enough
sociability and gamification to make it an engaging destination, but it's not
confusingly trying to reproduce a Facebook. Of course maybe this kind of
lightweight social network is what you meant in the first place.

~~~
tomc1985
Why does the world need yet another social network?

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skewart
I'm defining "social network" pretty broadly, including websites that have a
strong social component, like HN, reddit and imgur. These kinds of online
communities tend to make people happy, and they let them form friendships and
exchange ideas. If a new one emerges then it's probably making some critical
mass of people happy.

I would guess that Yahoo's audience might not have a ton of exposure to all
the different social networks out there on these days, and they might
appreciate a stronger community aspect to Yahoo. A Facebook clone wouldn't
make sense, but something that gave it more of the flavor of imgur or HN
might. Though I suspect that would be really hard to pull off.

It wouldn't be the bet thing for Yahoo to focus on, but it wouldn't be the
worst.

~~~
smcnally
They've done Buzz! (very Digg/reddit/HNews-like) and a handful of other social
net products since their founding. Executing that well -- like with most
things -- takes focus and willingness to get behind something particular,
rather than everything, and Yahoo's often spread their peanut butter a little
thin.
[http://www.wsj.com/public/article/SB116379821933826657-0mbjX...](http://www.wsj.com/public/article/SB116379821933826657-0mbjXoHnQwDMFH_PVeb_jqe3Chk_20061125.html)

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jharohit
Quite happy to see the "content verticals" being scrapped (food, travel,etc.)
and retained (news, finance, fantasy sports,etc), respectively, are exactly
amongst those I had summarized with a product analysis of Yahoo 2 years ago (I
was hoping to get a job in Yahoo's product team - which I didn't). As in my
analysis, I think it's a great start but there are still a LOT more products
that can be dropped while some of the strong ones boosted. Here is the product
analysis - [https://medium.com/@jharohit/a-new-yahoo-
part-1-5b9288595635...](https://medium.com/@jharohit/a-new-yahoo-
part-1-5b9288595635#.9h6g5juia)

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AznHisoka
What about Yahoo Answers? I hate seeing their results show up in the top 3
when I do a Google search. They're always low quality and not useful.

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sanarothe
Fun fact: practically every assigned problem in undergrad chemistry, physics
and math is solved on yahoo answers.

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anpk
My dad loves solving the physics problems on yahoo answers.

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abrkn
I'd love to see an example

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anpk
I dont know what id he uses. I'll ask next time.

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jorgecurio
Let's just recap what happened to Yahoo since Marissa took over:

\- wasn't able to turn the company around

\- wasn't able to monetize tumblr

\- wasn't able to capitalize on Alibaba shares

\- wasn't able to deliver return to investors

\- _was able to parachute out of Yahoo with hundred million dollars+_

Someone tell me, what CEO out there actually does anything that justifies
their insane pay grade because often it looks like someone just waving a baton
thinking he/she's a conductor despite how much the orchestra sucks.

Maybe if it actually began investing what it paid out to a revolving door of
CEOs looking to make a cool hundred million dollars....just then Yahoo will be
a stock worth buying.

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dingo_bat
It seems to me that most CEOs are simply irrelevant. The company does well if
it does, and doesn't if it doesn't. It is rare that any one person is able to
turn around the fortunes of their company. The only example that comes to mind
right now is Steve Jobs.

~~~
jorgecurio
Carl Icahn put it the best as he described his encounter with a CEO when he
asked the question, what does a CEO actually do in a corporation?

His answer was that it was a pretty pathetic one based on his observation. The
CEO would take him to different floors and explain stuff but nothing that had
any substance or material understanding of operating the country.

Carl Icahn's view isn't alone. Nassim Taleb also blasts overpaid professionals
and experts as "empty suits", they literally add little to no value to the
organization other than how much they don't shut up about how great they are
and what ivy league school they graduated from.

I also have to conclude that CEOs are largely useless and could be replaced by
a sock puppet operated by a homeless man.

~~~
fieryeagle
This Dilbert strip says it best
[http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-04-14](http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-04-14).

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dfar1
"We know you come to Yahoo because of our distinct voice and unique blend of
original content, aggregation and personalization."

That made me lol. They should just keep their gossip columns (half the news on
the front-page). The comments on those articles are always entertaining.

~~~
votr
>> The comments on those articles are always entertaining.

Agreed. Who the heck are those people who comment? Are these comments
aggregated from somewhere?

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batmansmk
The name Mayer is not present in that article. That's definitely PR for the
investors. Maybe to prepare a transition?

~~~
matthewbauer
*Meyer

~~~
id
It's Mayer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer)

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inesf
I'd say this is an unavoidable decision. Look into the stock price of Yahoo
Inc. on Yahoo Finance, you will find out Yahoo should specialize its business/
contents a long time ago. If you set the range from 2000 to 2016, you will
find a great drop there!

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive#{"custom...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive#{"customRangeStart":943891200,"customRangeEnd":1455724800,"range":"custom","allowChartStacking":true})

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tn13
I guess a lot of Yahoo! employees will now be in mood to leave the company and
this means a lot for other companies in bay area.

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Laaw
Hope they don't axe their fantasy offerings, I much prefer their site to the
other options for my fantasy football.

~~~
chris_wot
That seems to be one of the few things going for them.

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mbritton72
Guess I should pull down all my Flickr images and back them up.

~~~
voltagex_
To where? Don't forget all the metadata as well.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703650)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862663)

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kafkaesq
By the time anything is thought of a "content vertical" it's pretty much past
its time, on autopilot editorially-wise, and generally worth disregarding
anyway.

~~~
_delirium
A number of them are pretty lucrative (and seemingly consistently lucrative).
On autopilot editorially yes, but that can be even better. For example, Yahoo
does pretty well in the stock/finance content vertical, with Yahoo Finance.
They've lost some traffic share with the entry of Google Finance (which is not
far from a clone of Yahoo Finance), but there's quite a bit of ad money
floating around there, which is why it's not one of the ones being shut down.

~~~
kafkaesq
Oh, there's plenty of ad revenue around some of these sites -- but does
Yahoo's board actually care about the content of any of them? _Any_ of them?

That's what distinguishes legitimate news or entertainment outlets from
"content verticals."

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sandymcm
I love that the goodbye memo from Dan Tynan is an advertisement for his
talented team. Classy.

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crackpotbaker
I'm interpreting that the moment when Yahoo started falling apart was when
they fired their whole vowpal wabbit team.

If you can't value the state-of-the-art research being done in your labs, then
you don't really value a thing.

~~~
appleflaxen
> If you can't value the state-of-the-art research being done in your labs,
> then you don't really value a thing.

that's a bit simplistic. vowpal wabbit is cool, but if the corporation can't
figure out a path from the research to revenue, then it's smart to spin it off
or shut it down.

maybe the more amazing thing is that they couldn't find a competitive
advantage in the vowpal wabbit project.

~~~
crackpotbaker
yeah, it is a bit too black-and-white

Microsoft is doing great stuff with it in finance, ads, and MR is doing
amazing stuff.

~~~
rezashirazian
Lets not forget that they too shutdown part of their R&D department (Microsoft
Research Silicon Valley) back in 2014.

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PhasmaFelis
I can never figure out what it is Yahoo _does_. Their original core business
(search) was demolished by Google many years ago. Their website looks exactly
like any of a thousand different sketchy, clickbaity news aggregators, and all
of the couple dozen "content verticals" in their sidebar are the same thing,
only focused on a specific topics. They've also got a few services that other
companies do substantially better (Mail, Weather, Flickr...) The only thing I
see that's really relevant is Tumblr, which I hadn't even known was owned by
Yahoo.

Is that what Yahoo is these days? Clickbait news and Tumblr? How are they
still regarded as a major tech company?

~~~
Pxtl
Half the world still has Yahoo mail accounts, for one.

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cphoover
"vertical" might be the douchiest corporate speak word I know of.

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known
Copy/Compete; Yahoo is doing neither;

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SatoshiRoberts
Will fantasy football get cut soon?

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misterbwong
Yahoo! Sports is one of the verticals that is staying. I'd assume that fantasy
sports is under that umbrella.

~~~
SatoshiRoberts
Staying where? With the holding company that has the Alibaba stock?

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minimaxir
Better title: "Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals"

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nerfhammer
It's from the article, but what is a "content vertical"?

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prawn
Like a category site. Like NBA news, or a site focusing on security articles
or home renovation.

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OedipusRex
Does anyone have concrete evidence that Tumblr didn't get axed? I don't think
the article said anything about it, unless that falls under "lifestyle".

~~~
rsynnott
"Content verticals" are their magazine-type news-ish sites, with in-house
and/or syndicated content. Tumblr is user generated content, and is probably
the only part of Yahoo that isn't in active decline; they're unlikely to axe
it, though they still need to figure out how to make money on it.

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cant_kant
Yahoo has digital magazines ?

Why would a search company have junk like that ?

How much other worthless baggage do they have ?

~~~
jahewson
Yahoo considers itself a "media" company. And therein lies the problem.

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cant_kant
I read the WSJ, FT, NYT, RCP, and The Hill if I want exposure to the "media".
And HN for light entertainment.

There is no way that I would look at inane posturing on Yahoo's blogs.

~~~
vidarh
That's your choice, but Yahoo's content verticals provides a huge proportion
of their overall pageviews and ad revenue. The successful ones, like Yahoo
Finance, are still huge.

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vidoc
> David Pogue is one of a kind – the most gifted tech reviewer on the planet,
> and easily the most entertaining.

Wanted to LOL at this as the other time, i watched one of the 'life hacking'
shows of this moron, and he demonstrated how to find out whether an egg is
hard-boiled ... by spinning it...

