Yahoo’s Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh Departs Company
recode.net
recode.net
Putting marketing in charge of journalism is probably a bad move but worse is the poaching of mainstream, old-school talent from the NYT or NBC. If we have learned nothing from the internet it is that interesting, intelligent commentary and opinion does not necessarily originate with the NYT. The trick is to find the untapped talent out there, the writers with a fresh view and who are not committed to the old ways and give them a voice, assuming you want to make Yahoo into a media giant on par with the NYT. But it starts with new voices not repackaged old voices who had a lock on the channels of communication for decades for historical and accidental reasons not merit.
Flickr I've pretty much already given up on; the UX is just about as awful as before, if not more so.
I also want to ask who the hell signed off on this: http://www.yahoo.com/tech.
It looks like a content farm, honestly.
Google invents really cool products, and then kills them. Yahoo buys really cool products, and then starves them.
To read these resumes, you get the sense that Yahoo cannot hire someone who has a creative background outside of a BigCo. That may very well make sense, but it signals that the tools for success are not great product skills, talent, and vision...but rather the toolset's to deal with politics, beuracracy, and the myriad "grease the wheel" problems that are inherent to an ossified corporation.
Seems like the ads are working to me.
Competence is a wishy-washy phrase.