Yahoo!'s Appointment of Jerry Yang As CEO No Surprise To Me - My Idea!

This week, Yahoo! announced it was hiring -- or re-hiring -- co-founder Jerry Yang as CEO. The move comes as no surprise to me because I suggested it to a newly-minted Yahoo finance executive I was sitting next to on a Monday April 30th 2007 5 PM EST flight bound from New York City, where I was for the NFL Draft, to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he and I both live.

The conversation started because we were talking about the web and "Web 2.0". In the process of the talk, we both revealed our occupations. He was only with Yahoo for about three months to that point and had just come from a meeting regarding the then-new acquisition of Ad Bright, the online ad company, in New York. I said that one reason Google was way ahead of Yahoo! was that there were two recognizable founders at the center -- Larry Page and Sergi Brin. By contrast, Yahoo's founders were no where to be seen. I said the best way to recapture some attention and institutional memory was to bring back Jerry Yang.

After the conversation, the man said little. He was working on a massive Excel spreadsheet that explained Yahoo's ad inventory and revenue estimates. OK, I absorbed a lot of information. Hey, it was in my face, what could I do?

Yahoo's website is an enormous system containing over 100 million pages and several billion impressions. I was really surprised at just how large the site system and the company as a result, had become. And it may be the very reason for the problems it faces -- it's so big both in site and company structure that it's lost it's identity.

Can Jerry Yang bring Yahoo! back? Perhaps. But I think the first move should be to simplify what's there. Yahoo's all over the place and it's hard to see it in a coherent fashion. Google's website design provides a key, as it's many services are neatly separated and grouped so one does not get lost. This isn't true for Yahoo!'s site at all.

Yahoo! needs to find a new design formula that's easy and timeless and scaleable -- and stick with it.

Virginia Tech Shooting Murder - Web 2.0 Gives Us A Unique View

The Washington Post covers the role of cell phones and other video recorders in the coverage of the Virginia Tech Shooting Murder as well as the ability to upload the digital information to a website for view by many people.

Perhaps one day the technology and use of it will become so widespread that a crime will be thwarted because of their use. I certainly wish that were true in this case.

Web 2.0 Expo - Web2Open Better Than Keynote

Ok. I'm sitting here listening to an interesting conversation about to what degree one can expose a part of their body over the other. Note, I'm using my ears.

The conversation is part of something called Web2Open and it's quite interesting. For example, what's taking place now is a discussion over the First Amendment -- free speech. There's parts of this conversation I simply can't print, but it's ....cool.

What can a person say online? If this happens on a privately owned social network, what can be done? My almost-a-lawyer response is that if what happens in this "private space" impacts millions of people, it's no longer really private. Thus, it is subject to a set of laws that goes all the way back to Rylands v. Fletcher and the underpinnings of what became the Coase Theorem.

The reason I wound up here is I was in line to go into the regular Keynote Speech, but because -- unknown to me -- I had an "Expo only" badge, this woman, who I'm a little aquainted with as she's in my video on Aimee Allison, didn't even bother to cut me a break, she just told me to get out of the line. It's easier to spot me as I'm one a few Blacks here. But still the, eh, person could have really given me a break.

But in a way I thank her, because if it were not for that, I'd have never sat down at Web2Open.

Sitting In An Overcrowded Room 2016 At The Web 2.0 Conference!

Yep. I'm at the Web 2.0 Expo and I'm sitting on the floor of an overcrowded conference room with an all-too-slow web connection.

Part of the reason for the overcrowded condition is the topic: "Profit From The Long Tail By Tapping The Invisible Crowd." The other part of the reason for the crowd is the other event didn't have a description of what it was all about. Plus, this and the other event can be attended by anyone with a tag, and since I paid just $100 rather than a grand, I'm here as are a LOT of other people.

The topic itself is interesting...and wrapping up. I'll write more about it in a bit.

I'm also trying to get my Mac to "talk" with my cell phone, but when I go through the procedure, I get my phone...and five other phones.

Wild.

More soon!