Is the Yahoo! Honeymoon Over?
Story Text:
Yes, I think it is. Over the last year and a half Yahoo! have well and truly won the hearts and minds of the blogging and tech community - no small feat, and very, very important. Yet much of that achievment, perhaps all of it, can be directly attributed to the Y! Search team - they get it, 100% However, there's a large disconnect between Y!Search and the rest of Y! - while the Search team is busy producing buzzworthy products and services, dressed in black and wearing shades in the blogosphere, other Y! departments have been undermining all that hard work with stupid, nonsensical moves. It doesn't take much to reach the tipping point on reputation, and i think although unrelated to recent spyware scandals, the Chinese journo case may have pushed them over it.
Sad, because as noted in the comments, it's not as if they had much choice but to comply with local laws. It has however taken the momentum of ill will built up with previous stupid PR moves and sent them screaming over edge.
Mike at Techdirt has a great roundup of recent PR atrocities in "Yahoo Getting PR Body Slammed" for non TW links if you're interested in chasing up the details.
Yes, I think it is. Over the last year and a half Yahoo! have well and truly won the hearts and minds of the blogging and tech community - no small feat, and very, very important. Yet much of that achievment, perhaps all of it, can be directly attributed to the Y! Search team - they get it, 100% However, there's a large disconnect between Y!Search and the rest of Y! - while the Search team is busy producing buzzworthy products and services, dressed in black and wearing shades in the blogosphere, other Y! departments have been undermining all that hard work with stupid, nonsensical moves. It doesn't take much to reach the tipping point on reputation, and i think although unrelated to recent spyware scandals, the Chinese journo case may have pushed them over it.
Sad, because as noted in the comments, it's not as if they had much choice but to comply with local laws. It has however taken the momentum of ill will built up with previous stupid PR moves and sent them screaming over edge.
Mike at Techdirt has a great roundup of recent PR atrocities in "Yahoo Getting PR Body Slammed" for non TW links if you're interested in chasing up the details.
- Y! MyWeb
Ah well, something good may
Ah well, something good may come out of it. Cre8asite only came to it's current form because of being screwed over by Yahoo! Clubs/Groups. We got fed up with all the ads and the crappy way the new 'Groups' worked, so someone installed phpBB2 and away we went :) Grown a little beyond a small group of people casually chatting about HTML and SEO.
Like you say, the other depts are undoing all the good work the search team is doing. If people are going to argue that Yahoo! are better positioned to be THE web app suite than Google, I think they still have a few things to sort out :) Lets face it, if Yahoo! had built Flickr from scratch, it wouldn't be nearly as good, would it?
Y!
Still life in the old dog yet I reckon. Their bad PR just stands out because of their lack of good pr of late, no better or worse than G or MS. I think it is still a three horse race.
I would like to see Yahoo! do well, I have a soft spot for them, not sure why as they can be bloody annoying sometimes ;O)
Not saying they're out of
Not saying they're out of the game chris, crikey, that WOULD be a bit much!
Just saying that i think the unquestioning "yahoo is good" opinion of the blogosphere in general is at an end.
local laws
The RSF media release indicated that they didn't have to comply with Chinese law because they are based in Hong Kong (who still maintains separate laws)and that basically they went out of the way to nail this poor chap.
Was the guy breaking the law
the answer is YES.. end of story, he lives in a country that have very very strong laws, whether we agree or disagree with those laws.
DaveN
Yahoo! Mail is currently pissing me off...
Heard of the Capcha Project? Something the Melon heads at Carnegie-Mellon thought up. It's essentially the underpinnings of the ever-so-clever character string verification system that everyone has used at one point or another during their internet travels, essentially verifying that your eyes are human and not bot. Well, imagine filling out that damned form to send outgoing mail after you've crafted your message. Oh, okay, you say, that's what you get for using free mail - the email address that I've used since 1995. But, I actually pay for Yahoo's Mail Plus. And I still have to verify the character string. And let me tell you, sometimes it's difficult - and if you screw up - you lose your message. I complained to Yahoo about it, and they told me to "Save your outgoing messages as drafts" before sending them. I explained that I've been using that address for about ten years, that I have a .edu adress pointing to it, and attached to it as the "send to" address. They don't seem to care, and would rather direct their anti-spam efforts at their formerly loyal customers. Fuck you very much, Yahoo! - The only reason why I'm staying with them is because I can't get gmail to work on my smartphone... but once I've efforted that, I'm dropping Yahoo like a bad habit.
Capcha Project
lol ... yep that stopped people signing up for 1000,s of spam email accounts
DaveN
But..
Still, no one likes a NARC.
They had a honeymoon?
Yahoo had a honeymoon? As I remember it the whining and complaining started on WmW the very same day Yahoo switched from Google search results to their own and never let up for about 3 months solid. "SEO's" that had only known the Google monoculture were in a panic and very loud about it too. Poor Tim Mayer was in there holding off the pitchfork and torch wielding mob with nothing but a yodel.
In fact, I think Yahoo has only caught a few breaks, especially from the press, who up till about a month ago just lapped up every puff piece Google tossed to them. Yahoo and the rest was lucky to even be mentioned off hand in paragraph 8 of any story.
Okay, and notice the press only really turned on Google when that freekin chef left. Coincidence? I think not.
Yup Brad
Google has a lot easier time of it. They are still the media daaaahlings. I put it down to the media and journos owning lots of stock ;O)
Yahoo had a honeymoon? As I
WMW is different as they are very pro-Google. I think they've gotten some good praises from a lot of other boards and areas.
Yahoo! Character String Verification Bullshit.
Yahoo has just lost me as a customer. I've efforted Gmail access on my phone - and it is wonderful - and I can use it to generate messages from all of my other accounts.
I'm sure Gmail is slowly siphoning off several Yahoo users since its rollout - it's slowly been happening in my circle of friends - I'm the most recent and all but one have crossed - I'm strongly pushing the sole outlier to drop Yahoo mail. I'm sure after he loses one more composed-but-not-yet-sent message because of the screwy character string verification, he'll join the Gmail world.
Yahoo used to put their customers/users first. I can only imagine the stupid conversation that occurred behind closed doors that produced this warty beast:
Yahoo: "Hey, dude. Let's battle spam. Let's have our email clients complete character verification forms to send outgoing mail."
Yeehaw: "Wow. What an excellent idea! What about the customers/users who have had email accounts for several years, and what about the dudes and dudettes that pay us for Yahoo Mail Plus?"
Yahoo: "Everybody gets to fill out the character verification forms. What fun for everyone! Yes, yes. Even the dudes and dudettes who are paying us $20 for Yahoo mail plus - You know, the email service that we advertise with the improved spam guard, POP access and email forwarding - even though gmail offers all of that for free."
Yeehaw: "Don't you think people will find filling out the character verification forms an annoyance?"
Yahoo: "No way, dude! It's fun I tell you. They'll spread the word and our users will go through the roof!"
Fuck you yahoo.
BusinessWeek just picked up
BusinessWeek just picked up the Yahoo Rep Meme here. Sans links of course...
yahoo mail may be 2nd best
Yahoo mail now has an image verifier before send
Why?
Is their original security poor?
Is this "security through Obscurity by adding another inadequate layer"?
when I got the image wrong (so their robot thought) my message was lost!
I have been keeping my Google mail account alive, it may be time to switch.
Gmail sofar has no spam, Yahoo seems to have about 6 every day, it looks as if Yahoo spam filter lets a few through.