Would-be blog post to Yahoo Mash blog
Joseph Dunphy
Attempted post at : http://blog.mash.yahoo.com/?p=4
Love the ageism. "Yahoo 360 is for the old folks", "old folks" I guess
being defined as being anybody old enough to stop using clearasil.
While I suppose I could explore the implications of the idea that life
is supposed to be over at 22 and of the brilliant society that will
result when the retirement age is moved down to the point at which one
starts pulling SSI before the gestation cycle is over ... let's get
back on track.
If Yahoo invites us in to use a service, like Yahoo 360, gets us to
devote a lot of time and energy to creating pages on it, and then that
time and energy goes to waste because Yahoo has gotten tired of its
new toy and now wants to play with another, Yahoo will damage its
corporate credibility irreperably. This would be a breaking of faith
with its users, one which would have consequences for its new
services.
Who is going to invest real effort into creating a page that is likely
to evaporate when Yahoo finds yet another new toy? A service run on
those terms becomes the kind of place where people will make a
halfhearted effort to throw up any old garbage just to establish a
presence, before wandering off to Myspace and Blogger, and like it or
not, the quality of what your users are uploading affects the
reputation of your service, and its ability to attract new users.
By now, we've all heard about the alleged "peanut butter manifesto",
supposedly written by one of your senior VPs, in which Yahoo 360 is
cited as a redundant service. Mosh/mash would apparently be its
replacement. While many Yahoo users have directly asked Yahoo whether
or not these reports are true, myself included, to the best of my
knowledge not one of us has even been given the basic courtesy of a
reply.
Note the fact that the url I've given is for my journal at Blogger,
not my 360 blog, despite the fact that the latter has seen far more
use. When Yahoo refuses to clarify the situation when a damaging rumor
like that has circulated as widely as this one has, as users we're
forced to wonder why, and this is something that we can afford to just
ignore. Ever try getting a hastily relocated site to reappear in the
search engines? Not fun.
Even if you guys aren't planning to kill Yahoo 360, your silence may
be killing it anyway. Forced to assume the worst, users are going to
start moving their efforts elsewhere, so that by the time we get the
notice the Yahoo Photos users got, the new blogs will be up, running,
and visible, which makes me wonder if the Yahoo staff has been more
devious than it has been given credit for being. Scare people into not
using one of your services, and then sidestep the issue of the
inconvenience worked on the users by the company's actions by saying
that this was done because nobody was using the service.
What's kind of twisted is that if this is what you guys are up to and
this is later realized, that you'll probably be praised for your
cleverness. But then I am one of those fogeys, well past puberty, who
still thinks that honesty is better than dishonesty, that manipulating
people is objectively, morally wrong, and that success in betraying
the trust of those who work with one is nothing to take pride in. I
guess I'm out of touch.
Keep up the good work. Tactical brilliance in the service of strategic
idiocy is always a wonder to behold.
-------------------
End of post. After I hit the post key, I saw this:
Name: Joseph+Dunphy
Mail: joe.dunphy40gmail.com
Website: http://http%3A%2F%2Fjosephdunphy.blogspot.com%2F
all looking more than slightly mangled, and definitely not what I
entered. I can already picturing the look of innocence on a Yahoo
executive's face as he goes "these things happen" ... and what do you
want to bet that they happen a lot more often when one posts a non-
Yahoo address or url? Maybe these remarks will be posted, but I'm
guessing that they won't.
I have been pleasantly surprised on other sites, but usually I'm not.
Joseph Dunphy
http://groups.google.com/group/josephdunphy/web/mash-redirection