jstrauss

Jeez, this whole interweb thing sure is powerful

When I wrote that post last night (with Kevin standing over my shoulder), I had no idea it would blow up like *this*. I really didn’t have any ulterior motives at the time, I was just so incensed reading all the punditry (as wrong as some of the bloggers are getting things, it’s the commenters who really piss me off) that I felt compelled to speak out.

So now that my day of Internet celebrity is coming to a close, I thought I would preserve some of my favorite moments for posterity:

• Making the top story on Techmeme (pictured), and Ian‘s comment: “i think that’s the first time i’ve seen a 360 post make techmeme”
• Nick Denton defending Valleywag from accusations of ripping off GigaOm by commenting “Hey, we read Strauss’ blog too!”
• Thomas Hawk commenting “Yahoo! needs more fire in the belly people like Strauss.”

But, what I’m truly happiest about is all the positive feedback I’ve received from current and former Yahoos and people not even affiliated with the company. With the critics being so vocal of late, I’m glad to see that there are still some fans around. And I hope more of them will start to speak up.

Ok, now back to my normal ramblings that no one else generally cares about (and sticking to my usual rule of not blogging about work-related matters).

So, I’m probably breaking a ton of rules by doing this. But, f@$k it! Here is the transcript, verbatim (I rewound the webcast several times just to get it right), of Terry’s closing comments at today’s re-org all-hands:

To hell with what Valleywag, TechCrunch, or WSJ say. It’s easy to sit back and Monday-morning-quarterback the leadership of a multi-billion dollar international company in the fastest moving and most competitive market that has likely *ever* existed. Today was one of the most exciting days in my two and a half years at Yahoo!, and I know a lot of people who feel the same.

As someone who has witnessed many of Yahoo!’s dysfunctions first-hand, I am frankly surprised at how right on they got it with this re-org. The changes that were announced this week and the ones that will come over the next few months are pretty much exactly what I think needs to be done to enable Yahoo! to realize its full potential. What seems to have been lost in the media’s Yahoo!-bashing dogpile is the fact that we are still the dominant player on most of the web. Yes, we’re #2 in search and Google is currently monetizing much more effectively than we are. But, they keep trying to get into our core businesses with very little success. Why if Google is so awesome, are they trying to do all the things that pokey old Yahoo! does? Hrmmm…must mean we actually do have some valuable assets. While we have a lot of improvements to make in certain areas, I firmly believe that Yahoo! still has the opportunity to approach our market from a position of strength. And I think this re-org is a *huge* step in that direction.

As for the Terry-bashing, you are all idiots. It seems like the tech world is getting its hubris back in bubble 2.0 and pundits are dying (again) to prove that an outsider can’t possibly have what it takes to succeed on the Internet. Schadenfreud is very easy to spot, and it is ugly. I hate to break it to all of you, but the Internet isn’t about technology. Cisco is a technology company, Yahoo! is a consumer services company — the fact that those services are delivered via IP is just a detail. The people who fault Terry for not knowing how IP switching works might as well have criticized Ted Turner for not knowing how to install a cable head-end. Technology savvy can be hired (and I won’t defend Yahoo!’s track record on that), but true leadership is something more.

What our company needs right now from a leader is resilience, defiance, and strength. And I couldn’t think of anyone better than Mr. Semel to provide that. All those idiots speculating on Terry’s departure (which has been talked about since he got here), have no understanding of the man. Do you think that after WB he ever had to work another day in his life? Let alone 70 hour weeks (I know when he leaves, and it is frequently after my 7:30pm shuttle)? Think about the kind of man who takes one of the most sterling records in recent executive management history and steps into a turnaround role at a company and in an industry with no certainty for the future. He may not be as bellicose as some other CEOs in tech. But, Terry is not the one to run from a fight — he runs to them. Right now we don’t need a leader who invented some cool technology when he was 25, we need the guy who spent 25 years climbing the corporate ladder all the way from the bottom to become arguably the most respected leader in one of the most cut-throat businesses in the world.

Keep on keepin’ on Terry, we’re right behind you.

I’m glad to see that the anti-“UGC” (the term, not the concept) meme that started back in April is finally getting some mainstream (if you can consider Valleywag mainstream) airplay now that our very own Web 2.0 poster-boy Stewart Butterfield is speaking out.

Stewart’s public comment, which ironically made it on the screen during the “(User Generated) Content is King” panel at >play today, was:

Amen, brother! But, let’s give credit where it’s due. Derek Powazek originated this meme (as far as I know) back in April with his post “Death to User-Generated Content” (a title I just realized I unintentionally/subconsciously repurposed in a post last week). Here’s how Derek breaks it down:

I have subsequently posted twice on this topic, here and here. And I know from conversations with others who I respect that there is a broad consensus among the people who get “it” that the people who throw around the term “UGC” like so much “2.0” clearly don’t. I’m glad that this meme has now shown up on the only tech blog (or blog, period) that these “corp development morons” (Denton’s words, not mine) likely read. Maybe now they will be too ashamed to keep dropping it at every opportunity.

And I’m not at all upset that this is (probably only) being talked about in the context of people hating on Michael Arrington (in real-time, no less). I sat through the first 5 minutes of the panel in question, and that guy is a pompous prick. It probably didn’t help that the sycophantic b-school student introducing him called him the “King of Web 2.0” and he didn’t even consider blushing at such an absurd statement. The organizers of >play, who did an excellent job, had an innovative real-time feedback system powered by Mozes that enabled the audience to text their questions to the panel and have them show up on the big screen. In the true spirit of community participation emblematic of his reign over Web 2.0, Arrington’s first request was to turn the system off because it gave him less personal control over the conversation (a request the organizers, surprisingly and happily, refused). Then he proceeded to launch into a totally premeditated and exceedingly smug attack on Micki Krimmel and Revver, a person and a company for which I have a lot of respect.

Arrington’s relatively simplistic premise — of which he was oh-so-proud — was that the popularity of sites like YouTube was built on the back of illegal use of copyrighted content and that, as such, there was no legitimate business model to be had in this space — basically he was saying that no one wants to watch truly user-generated content. I wanted to remind him that Apple’s entire billion-dollar digital music business was built on illegal use of copyrighted content (iTunes and the iPod pre-date the iTunes Music Store by several years), and explain to him that this whole Web 2.0 thing that he apparently rules is all about the fact that you don’t need to aggregate large audiences to build a successful business. But, I left to go watch some football instead.

P.S. I managed to sneak Randy‘s term “Context is King” into Marco’s keynote this morning. It was far and away the best delivered and received speech I’ve heard from an executive at a conference in a while, way to go Marco! Maybe if Arrington had shown up for that as well, instead of just for his panel, he would have had a clue. I’ll link to the deck when it goes online.

You can find the deck here.

Yesterday, while still in the place that spawned these posts, I stumbled onto this post by Micki Krimmel, a fellow film industry vet (and LA BarCamper) who now works at Revver and writes for Worldchanging.com. Micki’s post on “Keeping the New Media new” is a great primer for citizen content creators and consumers on what they can do to preserve the open nature of entertainment on the Internet in a world in which conventional entertainment incumbents are taking an active interest in “user-generated content.”

And, the discussion in the comments would make Hegel proud:

• Thesis A – Content is king.
• Antithesis A – Content’s importance is only derived from the control it has over context (i.e. distribution / consumption).
• Synthesis A /Thesis B – Context is king.
• Antithesis B – Context is created by conversation / community.
• Synthesis B – “If context is king and conversation is the queen mum, then consumers are the subjects who give this monarchy its power by investing it with their sovereignty.”

My two not uncontroversial assertions based on this are:

1. Net Anti-Neutrality is a greater threat to the telcos themselves than it is to consumers.
2. Apple currently poses the  greatest potential danger to an open digital media ecosystem.

Now, go here and add your $0.02.

Shout Outs (and some interesting reading):

• Randy, for coining, as far as I know, the phrase “context is king,” which is the title of a presentation he’s been giving around Yahoo! (and has promised to blog about soon) – and for continuing to tirelessly represent the voice of the consumer.
• Ian, for educating me on the evils of DRM for ceaselessly evangelizing his anti-DRM stance within Yahoo! and for making it the official policy of Yahoo! Music.
• Russell, for the discussions that honed my thinking on DRM strategy (and for this post, which  in hindsight is a case in point for the better product and execution beating the seemingly better strategy).
• Kareem, Heather, and all the others responsible for BarCampLA – a venue for discussions on the intersection of media and technology much more powerful than any Digital Media Summit Yahoo! has paid $2,000 to send me to.

Ok, enough Media 2.0 fun for now. Back to work on my day job: creating Web Candle + Monkey.

So first of all, things aren’t right with the world when your former summer intern is getting quoted in more prominent publications than you are (and no, that’s not a totally shameless “look at me” non-sequitor, it’s more of a partially shameless “look at me” semi-sequitor – and way to go Gilbar!). But, this is just representative of the increasingly mainstream fascination with user-generated content, also called “UGC” by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. I ranted about this in a post a few months back which Randy reminded me of when we were chatting today and he lamented that those of us who hate this name (and it’s more than just the two of us) have yet to agree on something better. And then it dawned on me, we don’t need a new name because user-generated content no longer really exists.

“Huh?”

Bear with me here. This past weekend, I was hanging out with my dad, who is about as old school media as you can get. On our way to lunch on Saturday, he asked me if I saw continued growth in user-generated content/YouTube. My first reaction was to disambiguate the two; YouTube is far from the end-all, be-all of user-generated content. And in doing so, I had somewhat of an epiphany: the primary meaning of user-generated content has morphed. It is no longer really a description of the means of production (or more accurately, financing), it now symbolizes a certain aesthetic that we have come to associate with what user-generated content used to mean – content created by amateurs and offered free of charge.

The comparison that first springs to mind is what has happened to “Indie Film” in the age of Paris Hilton attending Sundance. When Miramax was acquired by Disney, did its films lose their street cred? And are Warner Independent Pictures or Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics producing and distributing “studio films” by definition? And wtf are we supposed to call movies from the new Weinstein Company!? When you try to categorize films by who paid for them, the original denotation of the independent vs studio distinction, it becomes readily apparent that these terms now mean something completely different – they represent a look, a feel, a sensibility that have come to connote artistic integrity and authentic expression contrasted against unabashed commercialism and pandering to the lowest common cultural denominator as established by some formula churned out by a program on a mid-level studio marketing flunky’s computer.

Similarly, user-generated content is now more of a style than a statement on the professional status of the producers. How else could you explain the example du jour, LonelyGirl15 – a YouTube distributed serial produced by professional filmmakers and starring paid actors that initially passed itself off as a teenage girl’s video blog? Or what about our boy Gilbar’s crew of begrudgingly amateur filmmakers who managed to produce a short of higher quality than some tv shows? (See, that earlier reference was relevant. Did I mention that I was quoted in AdWeek?) How about ZeFrank or the Ask A Ninja guys, who started producing content for fun but can now make a living off of it? When you think about it this way, “The Blair Witch Project” was really the first example of the potential of the user-generated content aesthetic.

Those who work with me know I’m fond of saying there are 3 types of content in the world: PBS (free to consumers); NBC (ad-sponsored); and HBO (consumer paid). There is also a *spectrum* of content producers: from those who do it for the love of the game to those who rely on it to finance the lavish lifestyles to which they’ve become accustomed. And finally, there are innumerable styles and techniques in a filmmaker’s bag of tricks designed to evoke specific responses from the audience. While user-generated content began as a reference to a perceived intersection of these three independent axes (namely, free content produced by amateurs with low fidelity DV cameras and choppy editing), that intersection now only represents a subset of what the term has quickly come to encompass in our vernacular. The three axes of business model, professional status, and production value have diverged and the distinctions that defined user-generated content have begun to break down (thanks in no small part to services like Revver that can give anyone an ad-sponsored business model). If user-generated content means anything now, it is merely a certain style of production that is associated with the origins of the term. �

And so, I hereby pronounce user-generated content dead as a business term. Any business person who continues to believe that they can just set up some submission UI and people will hand over the rights� to worthwhile content for free deserves his fate. Another saying of which I’m fond is: “you get what you pay for.” People who want to be part of the network in order to reap the benefit of value created at the edges had better start thinking harder about how they can contribute some value too.

This was originally part of the subsequent post that will appear shortly. But it turned into be a bit of a tangential rant, though one in which I invested some time and not a little bit of passion. So, here it is a standalone:

When you try to categorize films by who paid for them, the original denotation of the independent vs studio distinction, it becomes readily apparent that these terms now mean something completely different – they represent a look, a feel, a sensibility that have come to connote artistic integrity and authentic expression contrasted against unabashed commercialism and pandering to the lowest common cultural denominator as established by some formula churned out by a program on a mid-level studio marketing flunky’s computer.

The sad irony is that this is also how most so-called “independent” films are now brought to market . How do I know? Because, I’ve witnessed it personally. I’ve sat in the room as studio marketing execs used the blunt instrument of focus group feedback to try to force a deeply complex and challenging film (out of respect, I won’t name the particular film, but you can figure it out pretty easily from my IMDb filmography) into one of their precast marketing plan molds. The result was a film that was targeted to a mainstream audience who were disappointed when it didn’t meet the expectations created by the marketing campaign and which was largely overlooked by the more niche audience that would have appreciated  it because they were turned off by the expectations created by the marketing campaign. But at least it made it into the theaters.

Two other films I worked on, “Chrystal” and “Winter Passing,” definitively demonstrated to me the lie of “independent” films. Because unless you actually go to one of the shrinking number of truly independent art house movie theaters or have a penchant for risk with your Netflix queue, every film you see has been brought to you in some part by one of the 6 major studios (Sony, Universal, Paramount, Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox). And they have  universally cultivated a CYA culture among their employees that rewards the safer choice. When you have a film invited to Sundance, the only outcome more disappointing than leaving without a distribution deal is doing so with the complements of all the distributors: “Fantastic film guys, I really loved it; but, it’s just too risky.” As variables in the studio formula, artistic integrity and authentic expression are still second-class citizens.

Which is what brought me to the Internet. Contrary to the best pseudo-scientific efforts of studio marketing departments and their endless focus groups, consumers actually value hearing from people like them (as opposed to some idealized version manufactured in Burbank). If there’s anything that we should learn from the rise of reality television, YouTube, and user-generated content, it is that there is an audience for authenticity (though, no accounting for taste). Now it’s up to us to put them together with the people actually making good stuff.

While most people reading this know where I work, relatively few actually know what I do. Well, I’m the Product Manager responsible for a little something we like to call Yahoo! Widgets. As many of you know, this is the result of last year’s acquisition of a company called Pixoria which made a product known as Konfabulator. And I am privileged to be working with much of the very talented Konfabulator team, including founder Arlo Rose and chief architect Ed Voas.

Those of you who have been keeping tabs over the last 15 months have noticed that not much has really changed since the acquisition – a new price (I guess that was kinda a big deal), a new name, a new purple paint job, and some new Yahoo! Widgets. But for a variety of reasons, Yahoo! was largely disinclined to mess with a good thing. That’s where I come in…

Since May, I have been working with the team to help figure out how we can use Yahoo!’s assets to create a better Widgets experience for consumers and developers. And we’re really starting to hit our stride. Our next release date is still a secret, but it’s not too far off (at least it feels that way when you’ve got deadlines looming) and we’re going to be unveiling some great new features. But, that’s just the beginning.

We have an exciting and ambitious roadmap ahead of us. And in order to achieve it, we need to grow the team. There are currently 5, count ’em 5, openings that we’re looking to fill yesterday:

– Senior Visual Designer
– Senior Product Manager
– Widget Engine Developer
– Widget Engine Developer
– Widget Builder / Front-End Developer

So if you or someone you know is interested in one of these jobs , please apply online or email me at jstrauss -at- yahoo-inc.com.

I was in a meeting Tuesday with a Yahoo! executive, who I shall not name. He several times used the term “Web 3.0” in a way that makes me think that people are actually bandying this new meme about the boardroom without laughing. This was the first time I had heard anyone use “Web 3.0” in a non-ironic context, and I started having flashbacks of the scourge that was the “UGC” fad. So, I thought I’d speak my mind before this actually becomes a thing…or has it already?

It seems that our execs have been beaten (yet again) to the Web 3.0 party by Google (though this time, I don’t think we have anything to be ashamed of). And wait, on the same day, there’s an article about the first self-proclaimed Web 3.0 company I’ve heard of so far. WTF!? I don’t even know what this term means and I have seen it used 3 times on the first day I’ve ever heard of it – I hereby pronounce August 29, 2006 the birthday of Web 3.0…national holiday, anyone?

Though it doesn’t seem that anyone has actually agreed upon a definition for Web 3.0 (did we ever really have one for Web 2.0, anyway?), we here at Yahoo! aren’t ones to let a little detail like that get in the way of what we believe could be a huge viral marketing opportunity. While Crockford’s team continues to push the envelope with their Web 4.0 work, we of the Widgets team are focusing on the present. And so, I’m pleased to announce that Ed Voas, chief architect for Yahoo! Widgets, has been in discussions with the W9C to make the next release of the Yahoo! Widget Engine fully Web 3.0 compliant. Stay tuned…

Web 4.5 has now been officially superceded by Web Candle + Monkey.

So, I pledged to post once a week and I’m a few days behind on my first deadline. I’m blaming my tardiness on the fact that I only got Internet access at my new apartment yesterday – 2.5 months after moving. While I did waste some time in actually initiating the process, the length and complexity of getting my AT&T Yahoo! DSL set up was truly absurd.

If this video represents one of the most compelling arguments for the incapacity of our regulators to make the monumentally important decisions surrounding the issue of Net Neutrality, I think my DSL experience is pretty good anecdotal evidence for why the Telcos shouldn’t be left to decide what consumers’ Internet experiences should be. More on that in a moment, but first enjoy the funny:

Ok, now on to the scary…

STRIKE 1: Building a Shitty Website

So, it starts with ordering a new phone line. Of course as a child of the Internet, I start online. Diving into the 25+ screen (no joke!) order flow for a new phone line, I’m only a little miffed the first time when I encounter an error page that tells me “We’re sorry, but one of our systems is temporarily unavailable.” My annoyance continues to grow as I repeatedly encounter errors at various points in the order flow over the next few days (the most painful ones being those that happen towards the end of the flow, only after I have already entered every imaginable piece of personal information – FOR THE 18TH TIME!!!).

After several days worth of failed attempts, I finally break down and decide to just do it via the phone on my next ride up the Peninsula. Well, that idea lasts about 20 min of being on hold while a soothing voice reminds me that not only can I do all of this on their website but it’ll cost me $40 less that way. So, I’m back where I started – just more pissed off.

The fact that this is AT&T’s primary customer acquisition vehicle for their most profitable business and this is the best website they can build is a frightening harbinger of the potential of an Internet controlled by Telcos.

STRIKE 2: The Internet Never Closes

A side-effect of this repeated viewing is that I actually bothered to read the full text of the error page, which goes on past the above quoted to say:

WTF!? Have you ever heard of a website that’s only available 18 hrs a day by design? Do I need to say more about how clueless this is?

STRIKE 3: OMFG!!!

I didn’t do a full QA cycle on the AT&T order website (but, I probably did more than they have ever done), so I can’t tell you exactly what the problem was. But when I finally was able to successfully complete the online order flow for my phone line and DSL, I was reduced to using Internet Explorer (instead of Firefox), the corporate LAN (instead of wireless), and it was between the hours of 6am and midnight PT (instead of any frickin’ time I want!!!).

So, then the install fun begins. A week or so after my order is placed, AT&T activates my line remotely and sends me the modem/router in the mail. When I get home and set up the equipment, it doesn’t work. I follow the instructions for troubleshooting, which includes inserting the back-up CD and running a diagnostic. When this fails, I call tech support. Tech support answers relatively quickly, runs me through another set of diagnostics and determines that they need to transfer me to “Level 2 Support.” Level 2 Support runs me through some of the same stuff and then determines that he needs to loop in the Maintenance Center. After some back-and-forths between them with me listening in, they determine that someone else is required to solve the problem and it will take several hours. They tell me they’ll call me when it’s fixed.

They call and say it’s fixed, I get home and it’s not fixed. I call back and tell them it’s still busted, and they say they’ll call me back again when it’s fixed.� They call and say it’s fixed, I get home and the hardware seems to be working fine, but my computer still can’t seem to connect to the Internet. I quickly exhaust my troubleshooting options, and am forced to call support again. (Throughout all of my tech support calls, I got relatively short hold times and courteous, if not fully informed, service – this is more AT&T’s problem than mine, as I estimate that support costs for my install probably reached at least $100, and I’m only paying them $12.99 a month.) The operator bumps me around to 3 more people before they find someone who can help me. This fact is made even more disconcerting by the revelation that the final issue to be resolved was relatively simple (if brain-dead stupid) and quite common.

It turns out that the normal installation flow sends users to a registration page that changes some settings on the modem to allow it to access the Internet. However when a user breaks from the normal installation flow for any reason, including to enter the standard troubleshooting flow (i.e. running the included back-up CD as instructed by the manual), this registration page becomes unreachable except by direct navigation – none of which is documented in any of the included materials, nor apparently in the standard tech support training materials. All of this essentially means that as soon as a user encounters *ANY* issue with their install, they will need to call customer care at some point in order to connect to the Internet.

This is a really long way of saying: OMFG!!! What is wrong with you people!? Do you want to be put out of business?

In Conclusion, Do Something People!

This process illustrated to me how ingrained the culture of the captive audience is in a big Telco. Any company with such a pervasive lack of respect for user experience, and thus the user, should not be left to decide how the entire Internet should be presented to consumers. And to those who choose to make an argument that the efficiencies of the free market will sort everything out in the end, I point to this as an illustration of the ineptitude of legacy monopolies in pursuing even their own economic best interests – for it would take a first year consultant about 5 minutes to save AT&T what is probably millions of dollars a year in customer care costs due to sub-optimal installation processes.

Net Neutrality is a serious issue, both for our industry and, most importantly, for consumers. And like most important issues of our time, entrenched special interests are gaming the system to advance their agenda below the radar of a population that can only seem to be motivated to act after it’s too late. The above Daily Show clip of Ted Stevens is hilarious, but it should also be horrifying: a man who was born in 1923 and represents 0.24% of the American people is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has oversight of the regulation of, among other things, telecommunications, global climate change, space, science, technology, economic development, and sports (yes, sports – see the whole list here). It would be bad enough if Senator Stevens was just uninformed on and out of touch with the areas of his responsibility, but it seems apparent that what little instruction he is taking on these matters is relatively one-sided. So, please join me in helping to educate our elected representatives on the importance of a free and open Internet.

Last week, I was taking stock of things and decided I should start really blogging again. Life should be settling down a little bit more for me in the near future (will explain more in a forthcoming post), and I miss the emotional and creative outlet that this blog has provided in the past.

Ironically in the few days since this private resolution, I have received some feedback from others regarding my blog (at Zoe‘s  Sweet 16, someone complimented me on my “image blog,” which totally reinforced my decision to start writing more – it’s not supposed to be a photoblog; and since then, I have had several people close to me discuss some recent posts – this one in particular).

Thus, I’m putting this out here so I’ll have to do it (just like I *had* to move to the Mission ). Starting next week, I pledge to post something of a length that requires a computer keyboard at least once a week.

Stay tuned for more mindless drivel.