Yahoo Gets Trashed By Users

yahootvlogo.jpgYahoo took a beating by users angry over the new Yahoo TV product in the comments to their own blog post announcing it. Even a former head of Yahoo Entertainment, Erik Schwartz, chimed in with his own bashing and suggesting that Yahoo has lost its way.

Sal Taylor Kydd from Yahoo was active in the comments as well, responding to complaints and later giving a status update on changes that were made.

Dave Winer calls this fascinating and I agree. It’s hard for companies to open themselves up to user feedback – particularly when the feedback is anonymous, unmoderated and hosted on their own site. And giving employees the ability to respond directly, permanently and in real time takes guts and a commitment by senior execs to embrace users, even when they hate you.

So while I agree that the new Yahoo product isn’t great, I like how Yahoo is handling things. They’d quickly win more points with users if they brought back the old site as an option for those that loved it. We’ll see.

And I also note that Google doesn’t allow comments on their corporate blogs. Why?