Yahoo May Need to Embrace the RockStar Programmer.
Continuing my the Web as Hollywood Hitmaking riff, there is a nice LA 101 essay by by Arianna Huffington on fear, self-loathing and risk taking in creativity and art. It's quite elegant really. I like my postmodernism a bit more surreal, circus and dada, but hey, doesn't she have a blog network ?
The most interesting thing about Yahoo's Peanut Butter Monologue - which I agree with Dave McClure as soon as I read it I thought of Jerry McGuire and not in a good way, is not Yahoo's serious lack of new ad optimisation technologies, itsy sized acquisitions, or wrong internal structure etc : The biggest disconnect (as it always is) is between the suits and engineering. Engineers arent being empowered to take risks in the right areas.
Wouldn't Yahoo have renegade teams of 10 engineers working on new rich media advertising technologies; Another 10 on contextual display ads; More on behaviourial; Reporting; Search; Verticals; Moving beyond purely CPC which google's obvious weakness is, and why they bought YouTube but will take 2 years, if ever, to properly monetize that video asset. That's a window Yahoo could exploit. You can't tell me if you had 100 of the best ad optimisation engineers cordoned off from daily client campaigns, and working solely on new products, algorithms and tools that they couldn't drive better results.
The ad spec for Panama was likely one of those "I'll have what she's having specs" that contain no breakthroughs or elegant solutions, and through bad design are quickly out of date and 2 years later look 3 years old. Not that it's easy to trump Adsense at its core search/text ads for SMB's, but everything else is game on.
Semel may well not be the person nor want to be, nor think he should be as the CEO, the one which unlocks that Writer-Director-Talent relationship that in Portals is Product Planner-Producer-Engineer. This is where BTW Jerry McGuire's ideas on General Managers is right.
Even if the google cult is too heavily weighted to rockstar programmers, that ain't a bad thing with biggest automated advertising cashflow generator known as Adsense. (it's like a casino and optimising every ad page view creates huge bottom line impact)
Variety.com : "As you may have noticed, for a town built on idiosyncratic vision and nonconformity, Hollywood is a shining example of the herd mentality at work. (Don't believe me? Try getting a new Prius in less than six months) This, too, is caused by fear -- the fear that our instincts and abilities and worth just aren't valuable enough. To prevent others from shutting us down, we do it for them. Trapped by our own fears, we then pretend we're incapable of having what we want, forever waiting for others to give us permission to start living -- or at least start filming our next movie. Pretty soon, we start believing this is the only way."
Also : Interesting to see Yahoo7 in Australia (a JV) rolled into a multi-billion JV between Ch7 and famous KKR buyout firm. I wonder what book value has been assigned to Yahoo7. Stokes has definitely been doing a carbon copy of PBL deals at moment.
The most interesting thing about Yahoo's Peanut Butter Monologue - which I agree with Dave McClure as soon as I read it I thought of Jerry McGuire and not in a good way, is not Yahoo's serious lack of new ad optimisation technologies, itsy sized acquisitions, or wrong internal structure etc : The biggest disconnect (as it always is) is between the suits and engineering. Engineers arent being empowered to take risks in the right areas.
Wouldn't Yahoo have renegade teams of 10 engineers working on new rich media advertising technologies; Another 10 on contextual display ads; More on behaviourial; Reporting; Search; Verticals; Moving beyond purely CPC which google's obvious weakness is, and why they bought YouTube but will take 2 years, if ever, to properly monetize that video asset. That's a window Yahoo could exploit. You can't tell me if you had 100 of the best ad optimisation engineers cordoned off from daily client campaigns, and working solely on new products, algorithms and tools that they couldn't drive better results.
The ad spec for Panama was likely one of those "I'll have what she's having specs" that contain no breakthroughs or elegant solutions, and through bad design are quickly out of date and 2 years later look 3 years old. Not that it's easy to trump Adsense at its core search/text ads for SMB's, but everything else is game on.
Semel may well not be the person nor want to be, nor think he should be as the CEO, the one which unlocks that Writer-Director-Talent relationship that in Portals is Product Planner-Producer-Engineer. This is where BTW Jerry McGuire's ideas on General Managers is right.
Even if the google cult is too heavily weighted to rockstar programmers, that ain't a bad thing with biggest automated advertising cashflow generator known as Adsense. (it's like a casino and optimising every ad page view creates huge bottom line impact)
Variety.com : "As you may have noticed, for a town built on idiosyncratic vision and nonconformity, Hollywood is a shining example of the herd mentality at work. (Don't believe me? Try getting a new Prius in less than six months) This, too, is caused by fear -- the fear that our instincts and abilities and worth just aren't valuable enough. To prevent others from shutting us down, we do it for them. Trapped by our own fears, we then pretend we're incapable of having what we want, forever waiting for others to give us permission to start living -- or at least start filming our next movie. Pretty soon, we start believing this is the only way."
Also : Interesting to see Yahoo7 in Australia (a JV) rolled into a multi-billion JV between Ch7 and famous KKR buyout firm. I wonder what book value has been assigned to Yahoo7. Stokes has definitely been doing a carbon copy of PBL deals at moment.
posted by redbarren at 11:49 PM
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