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Yahoo! Businesses The Almighty Buck

Yahoo Pinkie-Swears It Won't Ruin Tumblr 162

Posted by samzenpus from the you-will-be-assimilated dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. 'Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,' read the company's press release. 'The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.' Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it's a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company 'cool' and relevant."
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Yahoo Pinkie-Swears It Won't Ruin Tumblr

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  • I believe Yahoo, really. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:04AM (#43773503)
    Yahoo is where the Internet goes to cash out and die.

    • Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:18AM (#43773613)

      Yahoo is where the Internet goes to cash out and die.

      I was skeptical at first - I was thinking she was buying shit up like what's her face at HP years ago for the sake of buying shit up.

      Then It downed on me. What do all of those websites have in common?

      Registered users. Many of whom with real and pretty accurate personal profiles.

      Merge all that data together - not hard at all - and BINGO! She's got a multibillion dollar portfolio of people's profiles for ...wait for it .... aaw man! ...

      Yeah, that's right, for marketing shit.

      She's gonna out "Facebook" Facebook.

      • Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:28AM (#43773725) Homepage Journal

        Registered users. Many of whom with real and pretty accurate personal profiles.

        Interesting.

        I'd not really heard of Tumblr before, and went to their site, and to even get in and find out WTF the site is about, they seem to insist on you setting up an account with email.

        So, I didn't get to see what Tumblr is or what it is about.

        I've not seen a site before, that requires an account to even get far enough to find a FAQ or anything to find out if you WANT to join.

        Are so many people willing to just give out their information at less than a drop of a hat these days?

        • Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Informative)

          by ElectricTurtle ( 1171201 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:44AM (#43773857)
          If you want to know what tumblr is really about these days, think of a sexual fetish, then put it into Google with 'tumblr' tacked on, and you'll get whatever you want stream dumped from tons of different sources. When it comes to jacking (pun huhuhu) still images from porn producers, the fetish catagorizing fans on tumblr are second to none. Granted sometimes the "blogs" (haha yeah right) get shut down for infringement, but there's always another dozen that spring up to fill the void.

        • Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Informative)

          by kelemvor4 ( 1980226 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @11:00AM (#43773983)

          Are so many people willing to just give out their information at less than a drop of a hat these days?

          In a word; yes. It's definitely a tiny (albeit vocal) minority who even give it a second thought.

          • Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:4, Insightful)

            by pspahn ( 1175617 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @11:46AM (#43774431)

            I worked briefly on a site launch for a startup a couple of years ago (selling overpriced designer shit to Austrailians, basically) and the founder was absolutely insistent that people had to sign up before they were even allowed to look at any products.

            His main argument in favor of that tactic was that it gives the user a sense exclusiveness... they are now part of the "club"... one of the cool kids... with accounts not automatically approved (they would have to wait an artificial amount of time) the delay helped build anticipation for looking at stuff and then being able to purchase it.

            I was strongly opposed to the founder's idea, but he insisted, and I left shortly thereafter (not really because of this, however, was offered a better position elsewhere).

            Last I heard, they completely changed their business model, so I am guessing their choices had failed.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Seumas ( 6865 )

            And if you don't willingly give it up, you're paranoid and/or a terrorist.

            I would rather pay for services than give up my personal information, but you'll notice nobody allows that. They'd all rather spam you with ads and sell your personal data than just directly trade you a service for a buck.

        • Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Informative)

          by interkin3tic ( 1469267 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @11:30AM (#43774265)

          I'd not really heard of Tumblr before, and went to their site, and to even get in and find out WTF the site is about, they seem to insist on you setting up an account with email.

          You went to www.tumblr.com rather than a specific tumblr feed. I'm at work, so I couldn't provide you with any specific tumblr feed I'm familiar with, which brings us to your original question.

          Tumblr is porn. Lots and lots of reasonably well organized porn. I'm sure there's other stuff there, but I have no idea why you'd bother.

          (alright, there are some which are memes which start out as funny and then you get tired of after five minutes, such as this one popular during the last election. [tumblr.com])

        • Despite all of the replies to you mumbling about porn, Tumblr's main draw is that it's a social base of somewhat technically literate, creatively-oriented people, mostly teenagers. They view it as an escape from Facebook's social ills. It combines some of the features of Twitter ("reblogging" things and making them appear in your feed) with richer post style controls, more like LiveJournal. In fact, it might be rather appropriate to call it LiveJournal for millennials. There's generally more emphasis on image-based communication, and a lot of the same meme-spamming you'd expect to find on a site like 4chan or Reddit, but in general the atmosphere is a little more positive and accepting than other popular social sites.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Seumas ( 6865 )

            Really? The few times I've been unlucky enough to stumble upon a Tumblr page, I don't see anything fucking social about it whatsoever. it's just someone spewing shit into a feed with no comments or discussions or anything. It's just a place to dump your stupid shit and link people to because . . . I guess they're supposed to give a fuck about your stupid shit.

            If the people who use Tumblr are "technically literate", I'd hate to see what people who aren't produce...

            • Try to take a deep breath and remember that one person's "stupid shit" is another person's favourite hobby. The tech community largely ignores Tumblr because it's a very different culture. It's true that the most popular feeds often just live off rebloggings with few or no comments, but the people committing those rebloggings are a captive audience, and they do use the platform socially the rest of the time. Try not to take it too personally that you didn't fit in!

              And I said somewhat technically literate, n

        • WTF? Really? http://www.tumblr.com/about [tumblr.com] I must be smarter than you. Or you're trolling.

        • You can visit millons of user's tumblrs without registering.
          Oh, the faq is in the help page, and you don't need to register:
          http://www.tumblr.com/help [tumblr.com]

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        She's got a multibillion dollar portfolio of people's profiles for... tens of billions of dollars!

        Doesn't seem like such a hot plan.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Seumas ( 6865 )

          Let's be honest, here...

          The type of person who uses Tumblr is also the type of person who _already_ has a Yahoo! account and spends half their day logged in here playing Puzzle Pirates or some shit.

      • Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:4, Informative)

        by game kid ( 805301 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @02:06PM (#43775647) Homepage

        Except Yahoo is working with Facebook now, due to general patent shenanigans...so it's actually even worse because the data will all get merged...with Facebook.

        Don't forget to Like their page for a chance to win a new Chevy and the right to vanish.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )

      Yahoo is trying to buy "cool" by totally wildly insanely overspending to buy a "brand" that is only "cool" to a few hipsters and largely not given a fuck by most of the internet. This is one of those moments where everyone in the world says "what the fuck are you doing?!" while a company just plods along with the most absurd of plans. Yahoo! buying Tumblr is like watching your teacher or parents try to rap and also a bit like watching someone start dating a miserable loser who thinks he is hot shit and has

  • Geocities as a blogging site? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:07AM (#43773533) Homepage Journal

    That this article suggests GeoCities was a blogging network tells me this was written by someone who never visited sites hosted by GeoCities.

    Really though, Y! has a horrible track record. The question is, will enough users stay to keep it viable? Will they trust Y! enough to keep putting their efforts as users into the site?

    • Re:Geocities as a blogging site? (Score:5, Informative)

      by djsmiley ( 752149 ) <djsmiley2k@gmail.com> on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:14AM (#43773591) Homepage Journal

      And flickr isn't dead either,. lol.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by intermodal ( 534361 )

        Flickr is probably Yahoo!'s second most useful feature, after its Fantasy Football leagues.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rgbscan ( 321794 )

          Agreed. I pay for both every year! Flickr has been routinely updated and upgraded, and the Fantasy Football continues to work well every year. I even switched over my paid league from CBS Sportsline to Yahoo after seeing how well my 'fun' leagues were doing on the Yahoo platform.

          • Flickr (Score:2)

            by pne ( 93383 )

            Agreed. I pay for both every year!

            And now suddenly free Flickr users get - what was it? - 100 terabytes free, removing much of the draw of Flickr Pro (which isn't even sold any more, though you can now buy an "Ad Free" level).

            I had also paid for Flickr but this recent change is making me reconsider. (In particular, wondering how long Flickr will still be around.)

      • They keep adding more and more slow loading interactive crap to the interface, and making more and more crazy barriers to actually being able to save any of the pictures (short of a screenshot.) And it used to be the uploader had to opt-out of letting people see the original-sized picture, now it's opt-in. Apparently letting people have access to nice wallpaper-sized pics is just too useful a feature.

        It's one thing to encourage users to stay on your site by disabling the right-click menu and using 'favori
      • Yeah, I read that and was confused. I use it, and even pay for the service. Works great for me.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      That this article suggests GeoCities was a blogging network tells me this was written by someone who never visited sites hosted by GeoCities.

      Really though, Y! has a horrible track record. The question is, will enough users stay to keep it viable? Will they trust Y! enough to keep putting their efforts as users into the site?

      ..what was geocities then?
      what do you think homepages with regular updates were..

      I think the real question is what is yahoo going to do about the popular content on tumblr now that they're footing the bill for transfers.

      https://www.google.com/search?num=30&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=tumbler+tits+and+ass [google.com]

      flickr isn't dead though. it still serves it's purpose quite nicely - and has actual paying users.

      • Re:Geocities as a blogging site? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:46AM (#43773875) Homepage

        describing Geocities as "a blogging network" is like referring to medieval town criers as social media newsfeeds.

        Geocities was a free web host that provided some primitive site creation tools and injected a bunch of ads. did some people use them to create sites with regular updates? sure. but there was a heck of a lot more "chewbacca ate my balls"and "JEFFROS AWESOME PAGE OF COOL LINKS!!!! (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)" than there was anything else. i don't even think the term "blog" had been minted by the time geocities peaked.

    • Ah, I remember Geocities. I actually was quite involved in the community there, and the biggest problem was that they did update the property. Where a vibrant community had grown up around a "neighborhood" metaphor, Yahoo replaced it with a top-down dictatorship. There were no more Community Leaders, no neighbors, and no humanity that made Geocities a friendly place to be. Members were no longer people, but rather just usernames, eventually reduced down to an email address.

      This was, of course, about a decad

      • I remember actually being contacted by a community leader for my site over in Area51 with a legitimate email that reflected the first upload I made to that site. The metaphor was fascinating, and the concept hasn't been repeated successfully by anyone. Today, everyone is expected to find their own "friends", but the concept of "neighbours" was brilliant.

        Another concept I think was good but has disappeared (probably due to botting) is the "webring". Today, we have seen them replaced with omnibus social si

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NotBorg ( 829820 )

      Y! has a horrible track record.

      The fact that they have to promise up-front not to "ruin" something, I think, speaks for itself.

    • I trust yahoo. They let sevices stagnate and leave them without change for years.
      Google changes the UI to most of it's stuff almost yearly with almost no new funcionality, and keeps shutting down services.

      I'd rather have a 5 years old GUI, and have my service shut down. (ie: reader, caldav, soon: xmpp).

  • Flickr (Score:5, Funny)

    by carlcmc ( 322350 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:07AM (#43773537)
    The news of Flickr's death has been greatly exagerated ...

  • Skeptical fungus is skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:17AM (#43773607) Journal

    Ok, let's take a look here: Tumblr, pre-aquisition, made $13 million in income with reported costs of $25 million. So, they are losing money, surprise, surprise...

    Yahoo comes along and sinks $1.1 billion into the company. Unless they are total fuckwits(a possibility that cannot entirely be ruled out), they are going to want to squeeze that cash back somehow, whether directly by 'monetizing' the Tumblr userbase, or by some farcical theory about a halo effect drawing users to their other properties...

    In what possible universe is a service that is going from "VCs are paying you to use it" to "Yahoo wants to scrape 1.1 billion dollars out of you" going to improve? At best, it might improve in an absolute, technical, sense; but be accompanied by a subscription fee or something. More likely, we'll start to see increasingly aggressive frog-boiling attempts at upping the advertising, theme microtransaction, and other revenues.

    They might realize some incremental efficiencies in terms of web hosting costs, given Yahoo's volume and datacenter operations experience; but unless Tumblr's previous management was wholly incompetent, they were probably already using the cheapest commodity web platforms they could get their hands on, so I find it very hard to believe that there is enough fat to cut to magically fix the situation without end-user pain.

    • Re:Skeptical fungus is skeptical... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:27AM (#43773699)

      Perhaps, a few months into the job, Marissa is realizing how bad things really are at Yahoo, and it depresses her, so she's engaging in a little "retail therapy" -- paying way too much for something she doesn't really need in order to feel better about herself.

    • Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the website is made. Tumblr-the T-shirt, Tumblr-the Coloring Book, Tumblr-the Lunch box, Tumblr-the Breakfast Cereal, Tumblr-the Flame Thrower.

      Tumblr users may loathe advertising, but the site is also a huge reservoir of creative people and their fans. Even if Tumblr offered just a shop interface in the style of an eBay buy-it-now storefront, they'd make a killing. DeviantART taps into the same user base as Tumblr, and while they do offer premium accounts, most of their revenue comes from skimming off user sales.

    • My guess is they bought it for the same reason Google made Plus.....to get user information from a bunch of people so they can sell it to advertisers. Facebook did it first, then Google, now Yahoo wants into the game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bmk67 ( 971394 )

      Unless they are total fuckwits(a possibility that cannot entirely be ruled out)

      The bulk of the available evidence seems to point in that direction.

      The question should not be are they fuckwits, but what kind of fuckwits.

      Oh yeah, you said it. TOTAL fuckwits.

      Never mind. :D

    • Ok, let's take a look here: Tumblr, pre-aquisition, made $13 million in income with reported costs of $25 million. So, they are losing money, surprise, surprise...

      I think this deal is stupid, but "income" generally is synonymous with "profit" (for varying definitions of profit). So the $13 million is after subtracting the $25 million in costs.

      The number you're mistaking it for is called "revenue". If they had had $13 million in revenue, then yes they'd be losing money.

      • I did make a mistake; they made 13 million in revenue(my use of 'income' was wrong), with costs of 25 million. So I (incorrectly) stated it as though they were making money; but they are in the red.

  • Languish and Die? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:18AM (#43773621)

    Flickr is a tremendous service, I use it frequently, as do many many other people from around the world. It has a huge community of more serious photographers and amateurs alike.

    Just because it isn't "the big thing" anymore doesn't mean it is dead.

    • I feel happy!

      I think I'll go for a walk!

    • Tremendous indeed. A hipster obviously wrote this, went to Flickr, was confused by the lack of "instagram" effects, and therefore couldn't recognize it as actual photography. And just because it hasn't changed much since its acquisition, there's a lot to be said for leaving well enough alone.
    • Giving 1 Terabyte (not gigabyte, terabyte) of storage to users (not paid users, all users) is NOT the action of a dying product. The Yahoo! bashing is getting pretty tiresome around here - according to the Wall Street Journal they've made $5 billion profit annually for the last few years - I fail to see how that is unsuccessful. In regards to Tumblr, Flickr is an excellent example of Yahoo! buying a brand and service and not ruining it in the proces.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )

        I don't think you understand how the market works.

        Five billion dollars profit each year for the last several years isn't good -- it's "stagnation". :P

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )

      From what I've seen, Flickr is where you post your photos mostly for yourself. It's a storage service, primarily. I mean, it's not like people are spending their time socializing and perusing Flickr unless they're specifically looking for something and Google Image Search has landed them there.

      Tumblr is not a photo storage service and is primarily used for people to dump images of stupid shit that doesn't belong to them and doesn't really have much in the way of social features, either.

      I really don't see an

  • The only thing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...that anyone really cares about: will there still be porn?

  • It is bizarre to me that a company with such prowess in buying power, most of the time have no idea how to handle their brand-new assets. It even got to the point that Yahoo swears to not fuck it up, compared to drawing this grand vision of improvement that most of what other companies would've done. Though I think it is the right decision to back-off, there are barely anything Yahoo can provide to Tumblr (except huge sums of money that is). Also correct me if I'm wrong, isn't Flickr pretty successful as

  • i need $100 million dollars (Score:3)

    by alen ( 225700 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:21AM (#43773645)

    i want to create a free blogging site with no advertising and no hope of profits

    it will be cool because everyone knows advertising makes you blind

  • that this could be the work of the GNAA [cnet.com]?

  • Leave it alone right up until... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:24AM (#43773673) Homepage

    It's only going to be left alone if it can make giant piles of money and Yahoo management doesn't think they can boost some other property by linking them together.

    Given that Tumblr is currently not profitable and Yahoo management most definitely thinks they can use it to boost their other properties, a promise that it'll be left alone isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      It's only going to be left alone if it can make giant piles of money and Yahoo management doesn't think they can boost some other property by linking them together.

      Given that Tumblr is currently not profitable and Yahoo management most definitely thinks they can use it to boost their other properties, a promise that it'll be left alone isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

      which gets us to the question, what if tumblr was profitable, let's pick numbers like 20 million in costs and 24 million in revenue - would it have been worth 10 billion dollars then? like, what the fuck yahoo, what the fuck?? was tumblr trolling them that google was going to buy them??

      • which gets us to the question, what if tumblr was profitable, let's pick numbers like 20 million in costs and 24 million in revenue - would it have been worth 10 billion dollars then?

        No.

        $4 million annual income as a return on $10 billion isn't as good as parking the $10 billion in your typical savings account. Hell, at ONE billion, the savings account would probably still be a better choice.

        Much less some real investment...

  • They need to take pinky promises VERY seriously... Have you seen what those Bronies are capable of?

    It's right there in NSFW on Tumblr!

  • "...make [Tumblr] a significant cash generator..." (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:35AM (#43773785)

    "whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator"

    Perhaps they could first make Yahoo a significant cash generator, and when they have a proven method for that, THEN apply it to Tumblr and other properties.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )

      Over the past 12 months, Yahoo's revenue was $4.91B, for a gross profit of $3.37B. They have enough cash on hand to buy Tumblr three times over ($3.01B), and practically no debt ($.036B).

      Whatever is is wrong with Yahoo (and it's a LOT) it's still a massive revenue-generating machine. (Whether this Tumblr acquisition will contribute to that in the future... that's far less clear.)

  • The real story should be... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    A largely irrelevant search engine apparently has 1.1 Billion lying around?

    • http://ycharts.com/companies/YHOO/cash_on_hand [ycharts.com]

      About $3 billion in cash and short term investments. While that ain't just walkin-around money, sinking a third of what you've got into something that 1) isn't currently profitable and 2) your press release about the acquisition announces your plan is to "do nothing with it" is head-assplode crazy. If I had stock in Yahoo I'd be dumping it about now.

  • Customers and zero price. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:48AM (#43773891) Journal
    Once customers get used to getting something for free or close to free, they are not going to pay more, no matter what. All these VC's paying customers to use their product for free is setting up the mentality. When they stop subsidizing it, it founders.

    I see mundane things in bed bath and beyond, 12$ for the shower curtain or 250$ for a window treatment kit. People just shrug and pay. The very same people pick a flight that is 10$ cheaper but needs an additional stop and 3 more hours. All the price maximizing optimizing strategies by the airlines have created a sense that" my fellow passenger probably paid 10$ less for the very same ticket" and that changes the way people shop and decide. All these social networks are going to find it difficult to make money off their users.

    In a country like India where piracy is rampant and no one wants to pay anything for any kind of music, video, movie or software, the telephone ringtones are raking in several hundred million dollars to the phone companies. So how users arrive at a consensus fair price is a very difficult thing to understand or predict.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @10:55AM (#43773951)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Quite obvious. They were stupid in the past, they are stupid now, why should anyone believe them.

  • Does Tumblr pinkie-swear they are not going to bankrupt Yahoo? I mean, they cost a lot of money, how are they going to deliver a return on that investment?

  • Yahoo's promise seems a lot like Shultz' in Hogan's Heroes. "I know nothing."
    Yahoo seems to operate under a binary system of choices. either they will do nothing at all to the site, including no maintenance (geocities, flickr) or else they will add stuff such as advertising. Yahoo's problem is that their internal bureaucracy has only those two options.

    Changing something to make it better is just not in their DNA. I even wonder how many of their own employees use Yahoo as their home page.

    And if they're
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Yahoo will sooner or later realize that they can't buy "cool", and that their either going to render Tumblr into yahoo, thereby ruining it, or let Tumblr go off on its merry way by selling it to someone else, or to it's prior owners who, thanks to Yahoo, have $1.1 billion to buy it with.

    IMO, the net of this purchase is that in a few years, Yahoo will again not own Tumblr and will be about $900 million lighter for their trouble.

  • Pron (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThatsNotPudding ( 1045640 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @12:32PM (#43774849)
    There is significant chunk of pron on Tumblr - ahem, I mean, so I've heard - and now it's owned by a publicly traded company? They will definitely be the first casualty (followed by about 75% of Tumblr's employees in 13 months or so).

  • Standard operating practice in any takeover is to say "We love what you do, won't change a thing, carry on and we won't interfere." This prevents immediate hemorrhaging of both customers and knowledge-work employees (who in reality should flee as soon as possible). But it's fundamentally a lie or, at to be as charitable as one can be, a temporary measure. I did believe it the first time I heard it, when I was young at working at my first job; but not after that.

  • I never thought of Geocities as a blogging network. It was just the place where I put up my first ever webpage (for free which was awesome back then) somewhere around 1996. It was on the South Beach (if people recall the various neighborhoods and addresses within each where your site would go).
  • "Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to .. make the latter more of a significant cash generator"

    Would anyone care to describe how any of these 'social` networks are making money?

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 20, 2013 @05:56PM (#43777267)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )

      This is the first time I've cared about or enjoyed a piece of Onion content in more than half a decade. Thank you, SternisheFan!

  • The reason I don't use Yahoo's services is simply that it's impossible to remember your username.
    Yahoo forces you to register an email if you want a yahoo account. There's two problems with that:

    1. It's impossible for create a rememberable username. You need to append three digits to any username to create one that isn't taken and...
    2. I don't even want an @yahoo.com email. I already have email, thanks. Just let me use my existing one as a username.

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