Twitter is in middle of a tumultuous time as a company. It is in play, thanks to an offer Elon Musk. It is a company that has underperformed as a business. It has anemic new user growth. The revenue targets are optimistic. Does Twitter have the right captain to navigate the company through the stormy seas. Is the CEO Parag Agarwal, who replaced Jack Dorsey, the man for the job? Continue reading Musk or Not, Twitter CEO Needs To Go
Telecom companies tend not to be particularly good at anything, including running their own businesses. They never seem to learn — only to spend incompetently on expansions into new markets involving content and media. I would go as far as to say that, when it comes to shareholder value, their repeated attempts at “diversification” are … Continue reading Weapons of mass (value) destruction
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Theranos, CEO Elizabeth Holmes and company President Ramesh Balwani accusing them of massive fraud. Holmes has settled the lawsuit and has been stripped of her position as the CEO. As part of the settlement, she will pay $500,000 in penalties and won’t be allowed to serve as an officer or director of a private company. It is quite a comedown for an entrepreneur who often graced the covers of business magazines and was a constant presence at the posh conferences. She also convinced investors to invest $700 million in the company at vertigo-inducing valuations. And even though SEC’s actions are a mere slap on the wrist with no admission of guilt on part of Holmes, the nuanced message of SEC actions is clear enough for rest of the unicorn club.
Continue reading “SEC vs Theranos & what it means for Silicon Valley”
Weighing in! My thoughts on AOL + Yahoo + Verizon. If you have read my previous pieces, you will see I am consistent.
Like Verizon’s similar purchase, last year, of another ancient bauble, the once ubiquitous dial-up service AOL, the acquisition of Yahoo speaks mainly to the past. Tomorrow’s Internet users don’t dream of using Yahoo’s properties any more than they do AOL’s. Instead, they lavish their attention on Instagram and Snapchat, Musical.ly and Spotify. And software continues to move in directions far removed from the early Web, as new voice-based interfaces, on devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home, train us to think about the Internet beyond browsers and smartphones.
Hedge-fund investor slash trying-to-be-an-activist shareholder slash media darling Eric Jackson of SpringOwl told the Wall Street Journal today that it is time for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to go. He outlined a strategy to save the company, which basically says to cut 9,000 jobs and make a few other changes. “For all the bluster, the solution outlined in … Continue reading Again, CEO Isn’t Yahoo’s Real Problem
Yahoo Livetext is a new communications app from the house of Yahoo, the first one that tries to catalyze a new mobile broadband native behavior by combining video and text. It is the first time in many years Yahoo has tried to launch a brand new behavior instead of trying to coast in the slipstream … Continue reading Yahoo Livetext
For past year or so, there has been a bit of a lovefest around Yahoo (s YHOO), the rapidly aging former web star that has lost the attention and preeminence it enjoyed in the 1990s and early 2000s. The showers of praise, prompted in part by the appointment of Marissa Mayer as its chief executive … Continue reading No Henry, you need to get real about Yahoo. Here are the facts
It is amazing how having a huge homepage can be a curse. people start fighting over existing traffic instead of trying to make awesome new things that are exciting enough to attract their own audience. Marissa Mayer should exclude homepage traffic from all metrics used to evaluate performance – that would be the single biggest … Continue reading The curse of a huge homepage
I’ve spoke to quite a few people who know Kilar well, and most of them described him as that rare content guy with technical chops. A good team builder, he is said to inspire. Others waxed eloquent about his sense of design and his passion for media. Remember, he ran the DVD store for Amazon. … Continue reading Hey Yahoo Do Send a Thank You Card
