Yahoo Kills Flipboard Competitor Six Months After Debut

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Yahoo Kills Flipboard Competitor Six Months After Debut

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday May 27, 2012 @11:58AM from the we-hardly-knew-you dept.

redletterdave writes "It seemed like a step in the right direction for Yahoo back in November, when the company announced a family of new mobile products that would enrich the way users experience and understand their news and entertainment content. But just shy of seven months after that outburst of mobile and social apps and tools, Yahoo has decided to call it quits on arguably the biggest piece of that mobile package: the personalized magazine app for iPad, Livestand. This was the first major business decision made by Ross Levinsohn, the interim CEO who took over for Scott Thompson on May 13 after the SEC discovered Thompson lied on his resume."

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CEO has to mark his Territory by Fluffeh · 2012-05-27 12:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

This looks just like a "Hey! Imma doing something! Yay Me!" type move from Ross Levinsohn. I often find within the company that I work for, that when a project changes hands, the new Project Manager feels that he/she needs to stamp in some sort of "territory" so that they seem to be doing something. Sadly though, it also seems that many of these decisions are made without a full understanding of impacts and result in poor implementation. Given that these apps seemed to be at least getting Yahoo looking in the right direction, it seems a shame to see them canned. Given that Yahoo is in such a poor position at the moment, I don't think that a conservative approach is a good strategy for them at the moment - they need to be rolling the dice on long odds while they still have the money to be able to afford to do so. Give them a few more years of stagnation and their customers moving onto other products and they simply won't have the capital or time to find that "new big thing" that will ressurect them.

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1. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Genda · 2012-05-27 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  Yahoo should consider making disposable hybrid cars... or perhaps frozen fudgesicles... maybe even sportsware for little people.
2. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-27 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  I reject the assertion that yahoo is just a bag of bones. I know many people at the company, and they are some of the most creative, energetic programmers that I have met. All the new management team needs to do is unlock the potential that exists within their own staff.
3. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Ritchie70 · 2012-05-27 13:05 · Score: 1
  
  I wonder if you actually tried the app.
  As I recall, it is so slow as to be unusable on my iPad (original model) and crashes frequently.
  It deserves to die.
  
  --
  The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
4. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:05 · Score: 0
  
  Or, maybe it was just an unprofitable or dead-end project?
5. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Fluffeh · 2012-05-27 13:07 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I reject the assertion that yahoo is just a bag of bones.
  They are losing market share, their name once used to be "God" on the mouth of the internet. Now look at what they are. Ask a 12 year old what Yahoo is, then ask about Google. They ARE a bag of bones.
  
  I know many people at the company, and they are some of the most creative, energetic programmers that I have met. All the new management team needs to do is unlock the potential that exists within their own staff.
  You realize that this is paraphrasing exactly what I said yes? A company the size of Yahoo will no doubt have plenty of creative and skilled people, but that doesn't mean a damn if the new CEO is killing off their ideas. I am saying that the company HAS to start implementing these ideas and letting them come to fruition so that if they gamble on 10 out-there ideas right now while they still have the money to do so, it might be enough to find the next new idea that bring Yahoo back to at least some of its former glory. All the brightest, most creative geniuses in a company mean nothing if their ideas aren't followed through.
  
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6. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Taco+Cowboy · 2012-05-27 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  I know many people at the company, and they are some of the most creative, energetic programmers that I have met.
  You mean creativity in killing projects that made sense ?
  Mind you, Livestand is not the only project that made a lot of sense that Yahoo has decided to kill, "Delicious" is another thing that Yahoo has killed
  
  --
  Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
7. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by marcosdumay · 2012-05-27 13:16 · Score: 1
  
  You solve that by making it faster and fixing bugs. The reason to retire an application is only if there isn't any market for it (it doesn't even need to be a big market, as it was already written).
  I won't second guess the current CEO. The former one wasn't much good, but he could have got that one thing right. Time will tell.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
8. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:16 · Score: 0
  
  May be you should ask them what Flickr or Yahoo Answers or what Del.icio.us (which they f'ing shutdown) is?
9. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:18 · Score: 0
  
  Yahoo! is the new AOL, Apple, Barns & Nobles, Microsoft. These companies are all dying. It may be a slow painful death...but they have or will all go co-boom.
10. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:32 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, not really.
11. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:44 · Score: 0
  
  It worked well on my iPhone. I quit using it after a couple days, but I didn't have any problems.
12. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:44 · Score: 1
  
  And you know what the problem with Flickr is? Their iOS app. Oh, wait, that's right, they don't have one. Instagram just sold for a billion dollars, and Yahoo sat on Flickr and never bothered to take advantage of Flickr.
13. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by stephanruby · 2012-05-27 13:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I wonder if you actually tried the app.
  As I recall, it is so slow as to be unusable on my iPad (original model) and crashes frequently.
  It deserves to die.
  The Android Yahoo app is also slow on my Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1, mostly because of the new heavy banner advertisement they force you to load before each and every story. And there is really no reason for anyone to use it, when there are so many free alternatives that have smaller and less intrusive ads and that are getting far better ratings overall in the Android Market/Google Play Store.
  They don't need to kill their apps. They just need to kill their current mobile advertising network, and purchase an existing one (or copy the features of an existing one) that doesn't try to kill the user experience trying to squeeze out every single penny out of our eye balls (and cell phone batteries).
14. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by owlnation · 2012-05-27 13:56 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds about right...
  
  I will never understand how Yahoo survived the first dot.com bubble. And every year since then, it's become even less clear as to how they are still around. Are they the new AOL? There seems to be a lot of similarities.
15. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-27 14:08 · Score: 1
  
  Ask a 12 year old what Google is, then ask about Facebook. They ARE a bag of bones.
  Ftfym
16. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Shoten · 2012-05-27 14:13 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with Fluffeh. I can attest to all the incredibly creative and talented people I worked with at HP, to give another example. But the company was run like a case of AIDS, and so the efforts of those people have been pretty much for naught. There's a vast huge difference between having talented employees and being able to harness that talent effectively as a company. In some cases, you can even have a successful company for a while without many talented employees...that's how most ant colonies work as well. But if management is terrible, or the organization does not function well, the efforts of individual people won't make that much of a positive difference overall. And this shouldn't be so shocking, when you think about it...that's the whole point of a company in the first place, to gather people together in a group to make possible what cannot be done by one or two people working on their own.
  
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17. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 14:26 · Score: 0
  
  Or, maybe it was just an unprofitable or dead-end project?
  like Facebook?
18. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Lisias · 2012-05-27 14:28 · Score: 1
  
  Give them a few more years of stagnation and their customers moving onto other products and they simply won't have the capital or time to find that "new big thing" that will ressurect them.
  Perhaps this is not what's he (the CEO) is aiming at all.
  If he's planning to sell the company, perhaps by pieces, he must maximize the short term incoming of the units.
  
  --
  Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
19. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 14:41 · Score: 0
  
  They have the feel of Apple Computer during the '90s before Jobs returned. A rapid succession of failed CEOs, including the Marketing Guy, the Engineering Guy and the Operations Guy. I remember the Engineering Guy (Michael Spindler) told the skeptical press, "Don't count us out!". He was right, you couldn't quite count the out, because of their position. For the same reason, you can't entirely count Yahoo out.
20. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 15:37 · Score: 0
  
  Yep. The Chinese like to say (and I only paraphrase, as it sounds more poetic in Chinese): A bureaucrat starts his new job with three fires (as in, burn things down).
21. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 18:05 · Score: 1
  
  Excuse me?
  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flickr/id328407587?mt=8
22. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by drdrea · 2012-05-27 20:54 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, the project was all but killed under Scott Thompson. Most of the leadership team on the project got laid off in the last round and the engineers got reassigned to new projects. The announcement may have happened after Thompson left, but the decision was made months ago.
23. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by digitig · 2012-05-27 21:09 · Score: 1
  
  There's a problem with Flickr? My kids still use it a lot, and don't do Instagram. As far as I can see they do completely different jobs; they're not in competition. Nowadays, photographs are used for (at least) two purposes: record and communication. Flickr is great for the former, crap for the latter. Instagram is crap for the former, great for the latter but is in direct competition with tools such as Facebook which is what my kids use.
  
  --
  Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
24. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by digitig · 2012-05-27 21:12 · Score: 1
  
  You solve that by making it faster and fixing bugs. The reason to retire an application is only if there isn't any market for it (it doesn't even need to be a big market, as it was already written).
  Or if it isn't cost-effective to service that market. Whether the code is already written comes into that equation but it's not all of it. The company I work for withdrew a product simply because the cost of supporting it was higher than anything we could earn from it.
  
  --
  Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
25. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by eulernet · 2012-05-27 22:13 · Score: 1
  
  All the brightest, most creative geniuses in a company mean nothing if their ideas aren't followed through.
  I totally agree with you.
  There are 2 more pernicious effects to killing projects:
  1) this sends a signal to all managers to focus on costs. So everybody just focus on reducing their budget and risks.
  All good ideas that would have been normally tested are buried, because it's too risky, or it costs some money.
  2) this sends a signal to all creative people: we don't care about your ideas.
  If you have good ideas, it's better that you don't propose them to us, because either we'll refuse them, or if it's an excellent idea, it will be probably dropped after a few months of development, don't forget that we are cost-driven.
  When a company gets money-driven and loses its values, it's as good as finished.
26. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by qxcv · 2012-05-27 22:25 · Score: 2
  
  Their iOS app.
  That's right, because the only way a web service can be successful is if it has a thin wrapper over its API in the form of an iOS app so poor users don't have to open Safari.
  
  Also, I don't think you should be measuring other companies against Instagram. There's no greater proof that we are in the middle of a second tech bubble than the fact that a company whith no discernible monetisation strategy managed to be bought for $1 billion.
  
  --
  "The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
27. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by hairyfeet · 2012-05-27 23:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Because for normal folks (the non geeks out there) the Yahoo Portal has replaced the morning paper and the last figures i saw had yahoo mail as #1 in number of active users?
  Frankly Yahoo has a BUNCH of original content....that nobody knows about. Did you know that have over 70 categories on their portal, from comedy and horoscopes to fantasy football? I didn't, not until I hooked up with my current GF who uses the Yahoo portal as her home page and decided to check it out. Hell I've been using Yahoo mail as a primary email for years, I like to explore, how did I not notice this? Its because they don't advertise these services, even on their own portal, instead they are on this little strip on the far left side of the page that doesn't draw the eye at all.
  So lets see if this CEO knows what to do with all this content. if it were me I'd be featuring a couple of different categories each week front and center on the portal, change the placement and size of the category pane to make it more eye catching and maybe have a couple of little humorous "tutorial" videos pointing out all this free stuff. Because frankly they have plenty of content they just need to let folks know it exists.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
28. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by tehcyder · 2012-05-28 02:28 · Score: 1
  
  Yep. The Chinese like to say (and I only paraphrase, as it sounds more poetic in Chinese): A bureaucrat starts his new job with three fires (as in, burn things down).
  I think I prefer the gag about living in interesting times. Yours is a bit dull.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
29. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by marcosdumay · 2012-05-28 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  You are right in that. But that is not a function of the size of the market.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
30. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory by interkin3tic · 2012-05-28 08:12 · Score: 1
  
  In this specific case it is: it's a photo sharing service. I seem to recall that you COULDN'T upload through safari from your iphone or ipad's photo library. I'm not sure about the app.
  
  Displaying photos is where flickr really falls down. Last time I checked, there was an iphone app but no ipad app. This means that for un-jailbroken ipads, the thing is showing 3GS resolution just bigger. It looks terrible. Flickr in safari on ipad displays alright, but there seems to be no queuing of the next pictures, so you swipe forward and then wait for the next one to load. Even with safari, it didn't seem to be displaying the full resolution of the new ipad. And flickr's web interface on safari or app didn't seem to be set up to allow cloud syncing. You could download individual photos by clicking a few options under the menu, but you can't say "Download this set or these photos I tapped." They seem to be completely ignoring the mobile segment.
  
  Putting photos on the ipad via itunes is so annoying. It constantly seems to want to erase any photos that aren't also on my computer. Flickr could easily be the best way to do it for me (paid subscriber), but it's not, to the point that I'm thinking about jumping ship.
did it for investers by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 12:27 · Score: 0

From a business standpoint I see his side. Focus on what you have already built rather than sinking money into new ventures. You need to stabilized the company and show that the last CEO did screw things up. Reassure your stockholders then push into new ventures.
Lie? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 12:30 · Score: 0, Interesting

The "lie" was a minor or emphasis at his school. I went to a Cal State university and the counselor stated I should emphasize or minor in sub-disciplines, which I did as requested. When I went to have it perfected onto my degree there was no process or procedure to do it. The University lied outright. It wasn't me, it was them.
JJ
New browser thing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 12:42 · Score: 0

Wouldn't this be redundant with this whole new browser thing they started working on recently?
The new browser thing (still not sure what to even refer to it as) is essentially this idea but expanded even more. (at least, I think so...)
1. Re:New browser thing by ae1294 · 2012-05-27 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  Wouldn't this be redundant with this whole new browser thing they started working on recently?
  The new browser thing (still not sure what to even refer to it as) is essentially this idea but expanded even more. (at least, I think so...)
  You mean the browser with their private key included? Yeah it seems like Yahoo! has no idea what they are doing at any level within the company..
how long will it take by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 12:56 · Score: 0

yahoo to die?
1. Re:how long will it take by greg1104 · 2012-05-27 13:45 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  At its peak in late 1999, Yahoo's market cap was over $100B. You don't just kill a hundred billion dollar company all at once; they have been doing a solid job of strangling it slowly for the last twelve years though. Shouldn't be too much longer.
2. Re:how long will it take by guttentag · 2012-05-27 15:06 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  At its peak in late 1999, Yahoo's market cap was over $100B. You don't just kill a hundred billion dollar company all at once; they have been doing a solid job of strangling it slowly for the last twelve years though. Shouldn't be too much longer.
  For a moment there I thought you were talking about Facebook.
3. Re:how long will it take by auLucifer · 2012-05-27 15:22 · Score: 0
  
  Replying to remove incorrect modding ...
  
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  If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
4. Re:how long will it take by tehcyder · 2012-05-28 02:29 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, and that was in the days when $100B was serious money!
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Not enough buzzwords by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 13:10 · Score: 0

You forgot "holistic" and "synergy" and "paradigm shift".
Too bad, it was a good app by yog · 2012-05-27 13:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

I like Livestand. It's a richer interface than the one-dimensional approach of the classic browser news portal. I wonder if it was costing them too much money to maintain, or not enough ad revenue, or no revenue at all. That part was never clear to me; paging through the app, I don't see much in the way of ads.
I wonder what's happening to Yahoo these days; they seem not to have a clue since about 2003 or so. They were a great portal back in the '90s and I still have them bookmarked for news and weather, and my wife uses their email. They have so much potential; something isn't adding up.

--
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
1. Re:Too bad, it was a good app by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 15:07 · Score: 0
  
  I have been using their email, and news as a portal, for years and... something has gotten crappy in the past couple of years. They rejiggered their homepage and news page with an eye to sensationalism, and they seem bent on racing to the bottom in a quest for the most douchebag users (judging by their user posted comments). I'm sick of them and ready to ditch it all for gmail (I'll just get my news headlines by RSS from other sources)
2. Re:Too bad, it was a good app by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-28 03:40 · Score: 0
  
  On topic of potential - YUI is a very solid framework. But it has never really caught on.
Another cool yahoo project by brillow · 2012-05-27 14:01 · Score: 2

Another cool-looking yahoo project that I never heard about until they decided to cancel it. If only yahoo spent as much energy talking about the things they are starting as much as the things they are ending.
1. Re:Another cool yahoo project by AmberBlackCat · 2012-05-27 14:45 · Score: 2
  
  I hope nobody tells the CEO that Yahoo Groups is still functioning.
2. Re:Another cool yahoo project by jashsu · 2012-05-27 21:22 · Score: 1
  
  Same goes for Yahoo Pipes.
3. Re:Another cool yahoo project by longk · 2012-05-27 22:45 · Score: 1
  
  Same here. Wish I knew about it earlier!
WTF of an ERA by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 14:21 · Score: 0

Yahoo not selling out to MS is probably going to be the WTF of an whole era and used as case studies by the future students of business.
Re:Yahoo should do everyone a favor by PopeRatzo · 2012-05-27 14:22 · Score: 5, Funny

Haven't used YooHoo in years.
Be careful friend. You are inadvertently smearing one of the finest beverages on God's Earth.
6 ounces of YooHoo, a jigger of Slivovitza, 1 oz of the juice of one boiled Ayahuasca vine and a cocktail onion over cracked (not crushed) ice is a great summer refresher. Miniature japanese umbrellas decorate the top of the glass to create a festive atmosphere for a party you'll never forget.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
A Small War Within Yahoo by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 14:58 · Score: 0

The ... hush ... 'Discovery" of ResumeGate continues across vast battlefields of the 'Yahoo Netscape' and engulfing its 'Executive and Board Officier's Fiefdoms and Kingdoms'.
Bloodshed at its Corporate Best ... Love it for sure. A rare specticle these days. You can smell the blood.
Looking forward to the next Head of ... Yahoo Fiefdom de jour to be ... beheaded ... by the Sword of Justice.
LoL XD
PS Let the Blood flow! There is now Blood. Sweet Blood. Warm Blood. It will nurish ... those about to be called.
Pity Those in the Sight of the Called.
Re:Yahoo should do everyone a favor by Sulphur · 2012-05-27 15:23 · Score: 1

Haven't used YooHoo in years.
Be careful friend. You are inadvertently smearing one of the finest beverages on God's Earth.
6 ounces of YooHoo, a jigger of Slivovitza, 1 oz of the juice of one boiled Ayahuasca vine and a cocktail onion over cracked (not crushed) ice is a great summer refresher. Miniature japanese umbrellas decorate the top of the glass to create a festive atmosphere for a party you'll never forget.
Do you attain shaman status afterwards?
Re:Yahoo should do everyone a favor by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 16:13 · Score: 0

Haven't used YooHoo in years.
Be careful friend. You are inadvertently smearing one of the finest beverages on God's Earth.
6 ounces of YooHoo, a jigger of Slivovitza, 1 oz of the juice of one boiled Ayahuasca vine and a cocktail onion over cracked (not crushed) ice is a great summer refresher. Miniature japanese umbrellas decorate the top of the glass to create a festive atmosphere for a party you'll never forget.
Do you attain shaman status afterwards?
No. Red leather pants, maybe.
Always Yahoos problem by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 17:52 · Score: 0

They don't seem to have the concept of sticking to anything for any length of time... They have a big battle to regain any relevancy and that battle will not be fought and won in 6 months time. They are gonna have to decide on a strategy and stay with it... SOON. Or else they aren't going to have to worry about fighting that since they'll be so far gone nothing will work.
Scott Tompson by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-27 19:00 · Score: 0

If only this Scott Tompson was as funny as the kids in the hall version.
Yahoo should buy RIM by Spy+Handler · 2012-05-27 19:16 · Score: 1

and kill two birds with one stone
Re:CEO has to mark his Territory or simply ... by Herschel+Cohen · 2012-05-27 22:07 · Score: 1

if successful it could make his tenure less secure. That is, from the CEO's perspective it is better to jettison a potentially successful project for which he will garner no credit and could potentially make his efforts seem weak in comparison. Too bad corporate ethics are never enforced, where only the top dog's needs are now met.
Re:Yahoo should do everyone a favor by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2012-05-28 01:50 · Score: 2

I think that's part of a Steely Dan song:
"The YooHoo drink. The fine European Nutella...make tonight a wonderful thing.
Sing it again.
The YooHoo drink. The fine European Nutella...make tonight a wonderful thing."

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:Yahoo should do everyone a favor by PopeRatzo · 2012-05-28 02:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

Do you attain shaman status afterwards?
Brother, shamans try to attain PopeRatzo status.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:Yahoo should do everyone a favor by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-28 04:13 · Score: 0

cracked (not crushed) ice
Oh, the good old days in the double-O section. These days, rumour has it, the double O's gulp down Dutch beer.
Re: Monetization strategy by presidenteloco · 2012-05-28 05:30 · Score: 1

Monetization strategy?
The most common monetization strategy these days starts with "be the most popular ___ on the planet, and attract hundreds of millions of users".
Then think of something, anything, that will bring in a dollar or two from the exploitation of knowledge about those peoples' habits and predilections.
After Google, Facebook is the recent master of this game, and recognized a competitor that might steal some facetime (read: content pattern analysis time)
of users if they didn't buy it.

--

Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Super Genius by stalky14 · 2012-05-28 16:45 · Score: 1

Why do I picture Yahoo as the Wile E. Coyote of tech companies?