Taking Leap Day Seriously

My bus got re-routed this morning coming into work. As we turned back onto 2nd avenue the normally subdued workers on their way to work started buzzing towards one side of the bus. There was a lady wrapped in a blanket threatening to jump from about the 7th floor. Police were trying to talk her down. They had the bullhorn from the street, and a couple more helping from the window she walked out onto the ledge from.

Here’s the article for proof http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/353242_jump01.html.

I don’t know how it all went down (another bad pun…sorry) but I didn’t want to stick around to see something I’d regret seeing. I made that mistake by watching the Daniel Pearl video and I’ll never do it again.

Anyway, when I told a co-worker about it, he reminded me that it is “Leap” day afterall. So wrong.

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wow. Who isn’t talking about this in the tech/finance world? It’s everywhere with such varied opinions. For us nerds it’s way more interesting than the SuperBowl right now. I think overall it’s a smart and probably necessary (only) move for Microsoft to make.

Reasons why I like it - in order:
1. Flickr
2. Delicious
3. Yahoo mail
3. Yahoo answers
4. Upcoming.org, mybloglog, yahoo finance, yahoo autos, yahoo music, yahoo real estate
5. Yahoo Personals
6. Yahoo Games
7. HotJobs
6. Yahoo portal, search, brand, etc (oh yea, they do have significant search share)

Holy crap! We have to realize Yahoo isn’t just a search engine. They have been and are still the #1 most visited site on the internet for a reason. They have done SO much better at Google at finding promising properties that give them relationships between websites, clickstream data, account and user info, etc. All this stuff is looking so important for the next generation of search. They just haven’t been able to focus under a cohesive strategy.

When I think of being tied to a website, it’s really about places I have an account. I’m tied to flickr and delicious. Google has me with gmail (but yahoo mail is WAY bigger than gmail). Search?…we still type a destination into an address bar or use the integrated search bar in firefox/camino. There’s a reason they push their own toolbar, and an even bigger reason they want to have an account..be it with igoogle, youtube, gmail, google analytics. Owning that user, being able to communicate to that use, is huge. On paper, Yahoo is way ahead in that game, and I really think it’s still a big one. They just need some of that peanut-butter manifesto focus.

Reasons why I don’t:
1. Focus hasn’t really been Microsoft’s strength