5 reasons why Yahoo is making a $1.1 billion mistake
finance.fortune.cnn.comAuthor seems to be focused on how Yahoo can generate a profit on the investment through advertising revenue in the short term. That seems pretty short sighted to me.
The pattern I've seen since Mayer took over has been about 1) improving developer talent 2) focusing on what's doing well in the Y! properties and making that even better. Hopefully she's thinning the ranks of middle management behind the scenes as well. The company isn't going to turn around overnight, but you combine Tumblr, Flickr, and Mail, and suddenly you are getting a pretty robust social network with an existing userbase to rival Facebook, without having to ramp up a new product from zero like Google did with Plus.
Tumblr+flickr+mail does not even get close to being a social network with an existing userbase to rival Facebook.
What it nets you is three independently operated (non integrated) software-as-a-service offerings, a fragmented user experience, a branding nightmare and a userbase that is a small fraction of Facebook's once you've done the undoubling / removal of dead accounts.
What other businessmodel than advertising would you suggest Yahoo should use?
This purchase looks like this decade's Geocities. Yahoo can't seem to stop itself from wasting money on crap.