The Curse Heard Round the Globe–Well, Actually, Just the Web, But It's a Start for Yahoo

Kara Swisher — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:00:29 +0000

San Jose Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien made a lot of humorous hay at the expense of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz yesterday, in a joke piece called: “Bartz Unveils New &*%! Strategy for Yahoo.”

O’Brien cleverly created a fictional transcript of a Yahoo (YHOO) staff meeting where Bartz–by now, well-known for her salty language–lets loose in an address about just how sick she was of competitors getting all the good press:

“We’re not going to take this (expletive) any more.

Starting today, we fight back. We’re going to announce a major new marketing campaign that won’t let anyone ignore Yahoo any more.
For those of you who don’t have your heads up your (expletive), you may have noticed that I’ve personally been beta testing this thing. First with those analysts, and then with that (expletive) Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher–I dropped the f-bomb.

The results were clear. Those (expletives) in the press won’t write about all the great (expletives) we’re doing at Yahoo, but one foul-mouthed remark from me, and we’re back in the headlines.

So we’re re-branding the company around excessive use of profanity. Our new marketing slogan will be, ‘Yahoo, (expletive) yeah!’”

Well, why not?

During her interview with BoomTown at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last week (pictured here, giving me a finger-to-eye-pointing lesson, which you can click on to make larger), Bartz did, in fact, curse at me, although she did not toss that off when talking about what was needed for Yahoo to regain momentum.

As she noted after a question I asked about Yahoo’s bruised image:

“The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it. For instance, I know everybody out there says Yahoo has lost the youth; only old people use Yahoo. Do you know in the 18 to 24 demographic we have 76 percent reach? Everybody doesn’t just go to Facebook. We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, Thank God, Yahoo’s back. And we are back. We’re going to go step by step.

It was a good answer and certainly a lot more forceful defense of the company than former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang had made the year before at D6–which was essentially Job No. 1 for Bartz to correct at the recent D7 event.

Except that a lot of folks last week–both inside and outside Yahoo and also in the media–later took Bartz to task to me privately and also publicly for just being a big talker.

“If you compare what she said and what Jerry said word for word, it was the same thing,” said one person to me, in what was a common refrain. “It’s just that Carol said it with more oomph.”

Well, yes. Exactly. Which is why I am not sure there’s anything wrong with that.

Of course, it is entirely true that Bartz has a only a limited time to roll out the confident patter and colorful cursing, before it gets old and real results are required. We have all seen ribald CEOS who delight and then disappoint.

The current economic downturn is, of course, giving Bartz a bit of cover. But, as she well knows, when it turns for the better and she is in office for more than three full quarters, people will justifiably have to have their expectations for her performance met.

That could mean striking a deal with Microsoft (MSFT). Or it could mean gaining some search share from Google (GOOG). Or it could mean just cutting enough costs and improving display advertising sales to turn in a great quarter. Or reviving the pace of innovation at the Silicon Valley giant. Or, all of the above.

Until then, even on the receiving end of an f-bomb onstage (which, I can assure you, came as no surprise), it’s probably a very good thing to keep the tough talk going for a while longer.

Because it motivates staff, because it shows that there is some oomph, because it allows people to forget all that has past.

In no way will be no substitute for making significant changes that Yahoo so desperately needs–but, for this window of time, loose lips might even help keep the Yahoo ship from sinking further.

Speaking of lip, here is the clip of Bartz cursing at me, which is at 57 seconds in:

[ See post to watch video ]

[The T-shirt image is from CafePress.com.]

Wondering if AOL Is About to Kill Your Favorite Service? We Can Tell You

Peter Kafka — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:00:22 +0000

AOL is about to shut down its Uncut/AOL Video Upload service, a move that caused a small stir over the weekend. But the move wasn’t actually news: Uncut has been on AOL’s hit list for quite some time.

What’s AOL’s hit list? Just what it sounds like: A list of 50+ projects that Time Warner’s (TWX) Internet service is shutting down this year. I first ran the list, pulled from an AOL internal report, earlier this fall. But for anyone who missed it (or perhaps was distracted by, say, the collapse of the world’s economy) I’m re-running it at the end of this post.

Note that a lot of these cuts are just different components of the same project. I’m assuming that’s because this list, which comes from an internal AOL PowerPoint, is supposed to convince someone that AOL is cutting lots of dead weight. So there’s some grade inflation going on here. And least one of these cuts is confusing — for more information about AOL’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Magnify.net, see this story.

But some AOL users are going to be or have already lost features they really cared about. The folks who use AOL’s message boards, for instance, are quite despondent. There is an upside for a few people, though — the handful of startups that have been able to capitalize on the void AOL is leaving.

In the case of the uploaded video service, for instance, AOL is recommending that people use Motionbox, a startup run by my neighbor Chris O’Brien. Even if you’re not an AOL video uploader, it’s worth checking out Motionbox’s freemium service: Basic uploading storage and distribution are free, and unlimited uploads are $30 a year.

And if you happen to have, say, compelling footage of your child doing something that is simultaneously embarrassing and amusing, Motionbox will let you take a 15-second excerpt of said footage and turn it into a cool paper flipbook for $8.99. I just bought four for holiday presents.

The Hit List:

Video/radio/Winamp
UnCut brand
HiQ
Fugu
Windows Media Streaming
AOL Video 10ft
10ft on 2, HiQ
AMoD on MCE
AMoD on TWC
Video Commerce
Predixis on Winamp
Ceased ingesting 3rd party videos
AOL Video DRM
Onstream
2CMedia Productions
UnCut on Mobile
UnCut Payloaders
HP IP enabled TVs
Magnify.net
Direct File Downloader
H.264
Userplane enabled-syndicated video player
New content management and ingestion system

Messaging/social platforms/homepages/toolbars/personal media/community
Transition US Chinese Portal
AIM Today
ADP-based AOL.com Apps
Transition AOL Pictures to Bluestring
AOL Hometown
ICQ Universe and ICQ Labs
ICQ2Go Java version
ICQ Pro, ICQ Lite, ICQ 4, ICQ 5, ICQ 5.1
Older AIM clients
Old ICQ Welcome Screen
Journals
FDO Chat
10″ Vista Applications
UNPT-based welcome screens
Big Bowl-based AIM dashboard
AOL message boards
X-Drive Desktop

Desktop & safety
OpenRide
AOL 8.0 and AOL 8.0+ support*
AOL 9.0 – Bunker Hill support*
AOL 9.0 Optimized – Thailand support*
Active virus shield (Kaspersky)
Free anti-virus (legacy McAfee)
Safe search & surf
Computer check-up

Mobile
Legacy WAP portal
WAP 1.0 portal

Email
Old Webmail product and infrastructure (Atlas)
AOL communicator mail client
Old mobile mail product and infrastructure (PigeonMail)
Old calendar product and infrastructure (Tardis)
Old sync infrastructure

Voice
Aim phoneline

*Apps still run

AllThingsD » Chris O’Brien

The Curse Heard Round the Globe–Well, Actually, Just the Web, But It's a Start for Yahoo

Wondering if AOL Is About to Kill Your Favorite Service? We Can Tell You