Prophecy Of Doom
I really don't want to stir up drama about this, but I can't say that I'm happy about something that I just read. now, this is the 'Net, and thus you have to take all of this with a grain of salt, as usual. However, according to this article, Yahoo may be looking to acquire Six Apart.
Yeah, the company that just bought us and swore not to make a bunch of changes.
OK, before you go freaking out and whatnot: it doesn't actually say that this is a done deal or even specifically in the works. While, at the opening, it seems to say this, as you read the article, the implication becomes that Six Apart is merely ripe for a buy-out by Yahoo. And this is true.
Read over the details of the ongoing battle between Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Each is slowly but surely building the best all-inclusive network that it can, getting the bits that it doesn't have into beta and beyond:
So, the question becomes this; if Six Apart were to be acquired by Yahoo (and, sadly, us along with them), what consequences would we face? See, Six Apart was basically a small company. They understood the community feel and ethic of LJ, and so, when Brad went ahead with the deal, there was little worry about us being taken over and changed against our will. The feeling was that it would be business as usual for LJ, and maybe we'd get some visual upgrades, but all in all, no worries. But Yahoo? A big, corporate, bottom-liner like Yahoo? well, there's every possibility that we'd be inundated with ads.
It's got precedent. Let's take YahooGroups, for example. There's a group that I've been part of since sometime in late 1999 (man, has it been THAT long?), that was on a site called OneList.com. Sometime in 2000, OneList was bought out by eGroups.com. Not much changed for us other than having to alter our name slightly, due to a conflict with an existing group. Then, one day, we were bought by YahooGroups. The shit started to fly. Suddenly, we had ads attached to every damn message, and going through the web page for the group was even worse (clicking on a link for a message, you'd get only an ad, and had to click another link to get to it, etc.). Other lists I was on at that time dropped the list mailing entirely, opting to set up a forum elsewhere.
face it, Yahoo is a business, and they're in it to make money. In the Internet Game, that means charging for access and gathering PPC revenue (that's "pay-per-click", for those of you not in the biz...now you, too, can use slang and jargon and look cool!). All those bloggers going to Google, they're lost to Overture. The ones on MSN are possibilities, but that's still in beta, and at the moment is small potatoes. Can you imagine how big the cumshot is gonna be down in Sunnyvale, CA, if Terry Semel (CEO) and Dan Rosensweig (COO) realize they now get to increase the available saleable ad space by 6.5 MILLION PAGES? Sunnyvale, get the towel ready.
So, bottom line: Six Apart has made itself ripe for plucking, and Yahoo's gonna have the hots for it, you betcha. If this deal ever goes down, we may all wanna batten down the hatches, because the flood of ads just may rival the recent tsunami problem.
Yeah, the company that just bought us and swore not to make a bunch of changes.
OK, before you go freaking out and whatnot: it doesn't actually say that this is a done deal or even specifically in the works. While, at the opening, it seems to say this, as you read the article, the implication becomes that Six Apart is merely ripe for a buy-out by Yahoo. And this is true.
Read over the details of the ongoing battle between Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Each is slowly but surely building the best all-inclusive network that it can, getting the bits that it doesn't have into beta and beyond:
- Google already has a corner on the search engine front, has Google Groups for mailing lists/discussion, has Google News for information feeds, Froogle for shopping, owns Blogger, has a load of tools and services beyond that, and recently added e-mail with GMailThink what acquiring Six Apart would do for them. They would have not only the immediate upper hand, but a damn fine lead (6.5 million users and growing, plus TypePad and Moveable Type, all in place, skipping beta and going right into profit). For them, it would be a landslide. They'd have it all, an integrated web-toolkit, with new users begging them to be a part of it. All in one...and all easily accessible and susceptible to Overture. And there's where the problem lies for us. Overture is basically the "search advertising" that targets large web publishing sites, much like Google's text ads work. All those ad banners plastered all over Yahoo's and MSN's sites? That's all thanks to Overture...who used to be GoTo.com (anyone remember them? *shudder*). And who owns Overture? Yep, it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo.
- MSN has long been a player with Hotmail, has it's own portal/news/info sections, MSN Groups for mailing lists/discussion, shopping links, plenty of other tools/services, ties everything together through MSN Messenger/Passport, and just passed the 1.5 million user mark with MSN Spaces for blogging
- Yahoo, who you'd think would be at the forefront of all this (since they've been a portal for-fucking-ever) is actually behind. Sure, their portal has all kinds of stuff (e-mail, groups, tools, services, messenger, shopping search), but has nothing in the way of blogging.
So, the question becomes this; if Six Apart were to be acquired by Yahoo (and, sadly, us along with them), what consequences would we face? See, Six Apart was basically a small company. They understood the community feel and ethic of LJ, and so, when Brad went ahead with the deal, there was little worry about us being taken over and changed against our will. The feeling was that it would be business as usual for LJ, and maybe we'd get some visual upgrades, but all in all, no worries. But Yahoo? A big, corporate, bottom-liner like Yahoo? well, there's every possibility that we'd be inundated with ads.
It's got precedent. Let's take YahooGroups, for example. There's a group that I've been part of since sometime in late 1999 (man, has it been THAT long?), that was on a site called OneList.com. Sometime in 2000, OneList was bought out by eGroups.com. Not much changed for us other than having to alter our name slightly, due to a conflict with an existing group. Then, one day, we were bought by YahooGroups. The shit started to fly. Suddenly, we had ads attached to every damn message, and going through the web page for the group was even worse (clicking on a link for a message, you'd get only an ad, and had to click another link to get to it, etc.). Other lists I was on at that time dropped the list mailing entirely, opting to set up a forum elsewhere.
face it, Yahoo is a business, and they're in it to make money. In the Internet Game, that means charging for access and gathering PPC revenue (that's "pay-per-click", for those of you not in the biz...now you, too, can use slang and jargon and look cool!). All those bloggers going to Google, they're lost to Overture. The ones on MSN are possibilities, but that's still in beta, and at the moment is small potatoes. Can you imagine how big the cumshot is gonna be down in Sunnyvale, CA, if Terry Semel (CEO) and Dan Rosensweig (COO) realize they now get to increase the available saleable ad space by 6.5 MILLION PAGES? Sunnyvale, get the towel ready.
So, bottom line: Six Apart has made itself ripe for plucking, and Yahoo's gonna have the hots for it, you betcha. If this deal ever goes down, we may all wanna batten down the hatches, because the flood of ads just may rival the recent tsunami problem.