SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

April 29, 2009

Yahoo Fires Them On The Road, Hundreds Get Axe Today

Looks like no one can hide from the Yahoo axe today. Last week it was going to be 700, today the number is 600 - but people are being aggressively laid off - apparently even employees on the road are getting notification of termination, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Morale must be low over at Yahoo right now, especially after CEO Carol Bartz stated, ""You have three people telling project engineers what to do, and nobody's fucking doing anything," during an analyst earnings call last week, CNN Money reported.

Stock prices have risen about 4% today - similar to the reaction to the layoff announcement last week. Sad if layoff notifications are the only time the stock gets spikes.

Posted by Frank Watson at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 10, 2008

Jerry Yang's Casual Note To Employees Thrown Overboard

The outgoing CEO and co-founder of Yahoo Jerry Yang seems to be taking the new round of layoffs rather casually, if his letter to them at Yahoo Anecdotal is any indication.

The entry titled "Tough times" was written in all lower case - written in a casual tone despite the seriousness of the occasion to those leaving. Obviously "saying goodbye to colleagues and friends is never easy" but perhaps it deserves more than what looks like a casual note jotted off in a hurry.

A sale of Yahoo at $31 may have led to as many layoffs, but the departing employees would have more money than the 4 months severance ValleyWag reports to fall back on. A sentence in the About page for Yahoo Anecdotal - though not directed at this situation - has a resonance I can't get out of my head.

"Much as we'd love to help resolve your concern, support issues are way out of our realm."

Combine that with the slides ValleyWag acquired for layoff instructions to managers and one sees the big business actions of this declining corporation.

The Twitters of the employees as they have been given the news and their friends reactions have made this day seem like an industry tragedy - which in the short term it definitely is. Hopefully though some of these people go on to create new companies and products that build on its continued future.

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 1, 2006

Yahoo's Tim Converse Colors SEOs

Tim Converse, the "spam fighter" at Yahoo, has a fun post he named Search engine optimization (SEO) from black to white. He tries to add nine colors between black and white. For example, a "dark gray" SEO is an SEO that "collects (aka steals) random text from other sites, and uses it to create thousands (or millions) of pages targeting particular queries. The pages have nothing original of value, but do have ads." The new shades of black and white include; Dark inky black, Charcoal, Dark gray, Slate gray, Gray, Light gray, Off-white, White, and Luminescent pearly white.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:12 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

August 10, 2006

The Good & Bad Of Working At Yahoo

Jeremy Zawodny, famed Yahoo blogger, wrote an article that was syndicated at WebProNews named Thoughts About Working At Yahoo. It goes over an other Yahoo's employees thoughts on working at Yahoo after one year of employment there. I thought some of you may find it interesting.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:20 AM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Yahoo's Ass Kicking Statue Controversy

This was one of those, "should I skip it" decisions, but I did find it interesting. Phillip at Google Blogoscoped in Yahoo in Battle Mode summarizes how Yahoo's mail team was given a statue (yep, there's even a picture) for "kicking an enemy's ass." That would be Google's bottom being whacked, specifically.

Phillip then points to Google's Kevin Fox having long commentary on the statue. Kevin used to be at Yahoo, and he does a compare and contrast feeling that Google's about making better products while Yahoo's focused on "how to beat Google" and finds the competition goes too far with the statue's comparison to Britain fighting Nazi Germany.

The comments after Kevin's post go all over the place and are fun to read -- pro-Yahoo, anti-Yahoo, pro-Google, anti-Google. Phillip also points to two Yahoo employees who comment on the statue as well (Ryan Kennedy suggests a toned-down description for the statue; this employee prefers the "be humble" approach).

Yahoo's new email interface is way, way cool (double verified by checking with my wife, who is a regular user) -- but honestly, the old system was already kicking Google's butt for the simple fact that anyone could sign-up for it without getting someone to send you an invite or having to get text messaged a secret code. When Gmail's freely open to anyone, then let the weigh-up really take place.

Speaking of statues, how about Yahoo putting a little message on the Bob's Big Boy statue that Chris and I came across in one of the Yahoo buildings when visiting this summer. I'll see about getting the photo off Chris's phone -- I made him stand there and take it. But it looks just like this, except the hamburger was replaced with the Inktomi logo.

Bob's an old friend I remember well, from my days of visiting Inktomi. He was in the lobby, and I'd sit next to him waiting for someone to come meet me.

If memory serves, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer bought him to represent the serving/caching service that Inktomi used to provide. When Yahoo bought Inktomi, Bob came over -- and apparently was nearly tossed out until someone gave him a home.

He deserves a better home and maybe his own message devoted to the Yahoo web search team -- those from Inktomi, plus the AltaVista and FAST/AllTheWeb vets. They assembled a great product that directly rivals Google's core search results. Heck, put Bob out in the main entrance of Yahoo! Just make the message praising the efforts without dissing the competition, and I suppose everyone will be happy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:58 AM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

Recapping Official Search Engine Blogs

Search Engine Blogs as Public Relations Tools from Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal is a nice overview of how the various major search engines are turning more and more to blogs as a communication tool, with continuing unofficial help from employee blogs such as those from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Google's Matt Cutts (hey, Google, get his blog listed in your Blogs By Googlers section on the Google Blog already!).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:10 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2005

The Guidelines for Employees Who Blog at Yahoo

Blogging in the workplace is a hot-topic and it's always interesting to read how various companies and organizations handle or don't handle personal blogging by employees. If you're interested in reading what Yahoo has to tell its employees about personal blogging, you might want to take a look at the just published Yahoo Employee Personal Blog Guidelines (PDF; 3 pages) that Jeremy Zawodny made publicly available today.

In addition to the "official" guidelines the document includes advice to Yahoo bloggers from four well-known Yahoo's (Zawodny, Beattie, Conlin, and Boulter) who blog. I've only been able to access the advice Zawodny posted here.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:17 AM | Permalink

March 9, 2005

Yahoo Readying Contextual Ad Expansion?

We had plenty of rumors running around SES NY last week that Yahoo might expand its contextual ad offerings in the manner of Google's self-serve AdSense ones. Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang suggested in my keynote talk with him that this was pretty likely as well. Yahoo! Mulls Expansion Of Contextual Program from MediaPost today looks briefly at further fuel after Yahoo contextual ads showed up on the blog of Yahoo product manager Ken Rudman. More from Andy Baio and Olivier Duffez. How big for Yahoo? As noted in the article, Google doesn't reveal how much its own self-serve AdSense ads generate. But I suspect it's serious money. More on why is explained in my article about the Google IPO from last year: Google IPO To Happen, Files For Public Offering.

Postscript: News.com has a new story on the rumors, Yahoo seeks to expand in Google territory. Also see ClickZ's Marketers React to Yahoo! AdSense Alternative.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:59 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Former Google Employee Mark Jen Was Fired For Blogging

Yahoo blogvangelist Jeremy Zawodny has confirmation that Mark Jen was fired from Google because of his blogging activities. Until now, this was suspected but not confirmed. A Chat with Mark Jen from Jeremy provides more. More background on Jen's blog in this past post, Mark Jen, Controversial Google Blogger, At Google No More.

Jen told Jeremy he didn't believe he'd done anything wrong and that the interest in his blog took him by surprise. Jeremy then goes on to look at how Yahoo has had to consider issues of employees blogging and what to allow.

He notes that he's removed a few posts and made changes at his own blog as part of the process of finding out what the "line" is in terms of what's acceptable and that Yahoo is working on formal guidelines.

He calls on Google to do the same, and I'd encourage that. It's somewhat amazing to read views on some blogs suggesting that employees of a company -- whether posting on their personal blogs or not -- might have some type of right to say whatever they want about a company but not suffer any type of repercussion.

Forget blogs. Does anyone think that a company employee could say anything they want about a company in a public forum, to a media outlet or other public venue without limitation? I'd say not at all.

Rules are definitely helpful, so that everyone knows where they stand.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:03 AM | Permalink

February 3, 2005

More Google & Yahoo Employee Blogs

I posted earlier about a list of Google and Yahoo employee blogs. Here are two more spotted via Nathan at InsideGoogle, one for Google, one for Yahoo. And Microsoft employee blogs? Nathan notes blogs.msdn.com is the place for them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:09 PM | Permalink

January 28, 2005

Google & Yahoo Employee Blogs

After all the furor over a Google employee's blog earlier this week, I started categories called "Employee Blogs" for Google, Yahoo and MSN in the Search Topics area we maintain for Search Engine Watch members. If you're a member, they're at Google: Employee Blogs, MSN: Employee Blogs and Yahoo: Employee Blogs).

Today, I came across this handy list from Google Answers where someone's provided a long rundown of what they've found so far. So looking for search employee blogs? Check out the list. And when someone launches Search Employees Blog Watch, I'll let you know. Question is -- who will it be first, Nick or Barry. Let the race begin.

Postcript: Philipp Lenssen over at Google Blogoscoped also compiles a list of weblogs by Google employees.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:19 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2004

Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist

Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here: New Job (Again).

Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and even his own employer, at times.

That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering feedback and recruiting people.

What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.

Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well, launched in August. It's more active than Google's, completely focused on search and frankly often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don't reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.

Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He's someone who works from Microsoft, is vocal about things there but doesn't necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft's recent Search Champs initiative.

As a long reader of Jeremy's blog, he's always been that way as well -- a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search wars.

Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.

Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.

A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time. However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.

Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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