Yahoo 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?
Because they don’t want to implement comment previews.
Remember the Peanut Butter Manifesto by Brad Garlinghouse - just days before…..
Competitive Developers can just become too insulated in AJAX and Web 2.0 with their ultra hi tech systems & lightning fast broadband - and forget about the average geek’s user experience.
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And on the second point, although Google does NOT allow comments, they do link to quality Blogs that reference their Topic, and they have given permission to a high profile Engineer who’s popular blog CONSTANTLY gets critical comments.
Because when you’re a company as big as Yahoo or Google, it doesn’t matter what you do - any change will piss off a certain percentage of users, no matter what. Google turning on comments = bust out the fire suit, it’s going to be a flame war.
Exactly Sean, why would Google want to waste resources such as dedicating staff to comment moderation, spam detection etc by turning on comments. What extra would being able to comment on a story on the Google blog bring? Nothing of any real value.
“Google doesn’t allow comments on their corporate blogs. Why?”
Cuz comments are evil and Google doesn’t want anything to do with it.
My company is considering setting up a forum to announce technical information and provide support to our end users. We’re arguing whether values and risks. I think risks will win and we’re not going to have the forum.
Hey, that wasn’t a bash! While I may have suggested that the product focus was on the developer’s desires and not the user’s needs, my comments were offered in the spirit of improving the product.
After all, I still own a few shares of YHOO.
Mike, as a former regular user of their service, I don’t read the comments on their blog as hate, but we are frustrated. If there were an adequate replacement for the service on another site, the frustration level would be nowhere near as high, but while Yahoo’s original service wasn’t all that great, it was the only one out there that actually worked.
There’s nothing theoretical about this frustration. Imagine you went out to your car this morning and found that Lexus had changed the way the accelerator worked, so that you had to restart the engine every time you wanted to press the gas pedal. This is the new modern way for cars to work they’d say to you. Ohh, but I just want to go to Starbucks and pickup a latte, you think. They say they appreciate the feedback, but the car keeps working the same brain-damaged way.
Most of us are accustomed to dealing with big companies that are really dumb about us as customers. All that’s happened here is that Yahoo is now one of those companies. Would you *hate* Lexus for being so dumb (in the example, assuming you drive a Lexus). Nahh. Hate is a very strong word, so please be careful about using it, esp to describe a class of people that I’m in. I don’t hate Yahoo, and if they fixed the service today (bring it back to its former functionality) net-net I’d be happy. I really just want to be able to find out what’s on TV now, a nice movie perhaps, or find a news show when I want to find some news (an increasingly difficult thing to find, btw).
This is an important area btw, video on computers is hot, and this is video on computers. It’s a convergence point, the fact tht Yahoo has the only usable listing service (or had) could have been a big advantage for them. As soon as one of their competitors creates a workalike, I bet news travels quick, and we’ll all forget that Yahoo ever had a listing service.
I like the design of the site. =)
always good to be open. better for you in the long run.
I would hardly call 39 comments a ‘trashing by users’. How many millions visit Yahoo each day?
“Google doesn’t allow comments on their corporate blogs. Why?”
I’m somewhat glad that they don’t, although sometimes I would like to chime in. I find that once a comment thread grows too large (60+ or so) the entire point becomes obsolete. I’m sure almost every post on Google Blog would garner a large amount of comments.
Emma’s comment: “I would hardly call 39 comments a ‘trashing by users’. How many millions visit Yahoo each day?” reminds me of the old truism about letters to editors, complain letters: each one represents the X number of people who feel the same way but didn’t take time to write in.
The power of a comment — just one — is enormous if it is amplified and turns into a meme — as this one has.
Dave Winer doesn’t allow comments on his blog. Why?
I thought Michael was on vacation.
What is with this WEAK article, serious, who cares, give us startup news.
If it is true that Google has comments disabled on their corporate blog, than more KUDOS to Yahoo for supporting FREE SPEECH comments.
MORE STARTUP NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!! por favor ……..
Current users alway hate change. This type of thing happens everytime a site with a reasonable about of traffic changes. eBay went through this a few years ago with their own user revolt. They rolled their site back and then implemented all the changes over a period of time, slowly spoon feeding their users.
Robert, I do “allow” comments on my blog, look in the right margin.
Maybe it’s time for some new glasses?
Regarding Google, I would also note that they do have an official Google Group for almost all of their products for discussion & criticism of the product there.
No need to duplicate that by having it in the blog postings, which they basically treat as announcement pages.
Corporate Blog with comments is useless,
Comments could be moderated to avoid malecious comments.
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
Quite honestly, this is a situation where you can take a bad and turn it into a good. The fact that Eric came back to offer suggestions says to me that even when their employees leave they still care. I’m not a fan of Yahoo personally, but if they actually do what their users say to do, I’m a fan.
And as far as Google groups? That’s too buried. The normal Joe won’t see that. The corporate blog is supposed to be the accessible point for communication and in Google’s case it’s not.
And to answer the “low # of comments”, people by nature are watchers and not participants. 39 people speaking out can start a flood of more or give the watchers something to follow. 1 comment good or bad on a blog, especially one as powerful as Yahoo’s, should be taken with all seriousness and rewarded with a sincere thank you.
Mike:
I agree with you that Yahoo should be congratulated for opening themselves up this way for feedback. That’s always been a hallmark of their corporate culture. It’s not always easy, but it will ultimately benefit them through this tough time right now. It would be easy to pull up the drawbridge and go into lockdown mode now. Good for them (or at least those responsible for this) for not doing so.
I thought TV was already dead.
Yeah, I see TC and its *smart* readers declared TV dead the other day.May be it is resurrected now.In TC’s lingo TV was “re-launched”
# PXLated
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:24 am
“Current users alway hate change. This type of thing happens everytime a site with a reasonable about of traffic changes. eBay went through this a few years ago with their own user revolt. They rolled their site back and then implemented all the changes over a period of time, slowly spoon feeding their users.”
No, this was about the removal of features and alienating many current users. We’ve all seen other changes at other sites and deal, this one obviously hit a nerve with the majority of us that found Yahoo!’s TV page to be the most functional.
Me? I’ve switched to TitanTV for now, it allows shows to be saved via .ics and their advanced search is similar to Yahoo!’s.
mike, while I agree with your comment, I think its a bit hypocritical. I’ve personally seen you censor/editorialize less than positive comments about certain companies that you’ve taken an interest in promoting; I’ve seem more than a handleful of fantom comments (that were on topic and not vulgar etc.) suddenly disappear and never reappear again. So while yes it does take guts for yahoo to open up comments, you’re not the right person to be question google’s decision not to.
I still like Yahoo Movies. LOL
Michael,
You’ve brought up a critical issue: does “comment” system work?
By “work” I mean “make positive contribution”. In a world of Machiavellian reality, the reason why Yahoo chooses to let people comment, whereas Google chooses not to, is because they think it will help their business. I doubt Google and Yahoo make their decisions the way a Z-list blogger casually decides whether to allow comments on his blog. You can bet that every little thing these big companies do is done with serious internal debates.
Comment system can work in a negative way. One example: on Huffington Post’s coverage of Michael Richards’ racist rant, the ugly head of racist worm poked its head in their comment section, big time. Huffington Post does not delete any comment (I think), and some of the racist comments would make David Duke blush. In a bizarre twist, earlier on, someone claimed that Michael Richards was Jewish, and the anti-Semitic comments erupted. The fact that Michale Richards is not Jewish means nothing in that context, haters simply grabbed the cue and piled on. I am neither black nor Jewish, but those hate-filled comments upset me (and I suspect many others) tremendously. In this instance, what is the contribution of the “let anything go” policy of Huffington Post, other than the fact that racists are still out there, which any level-headed person already knows?
Sorry about the detour, but the bottom line is: the comment section in blogosphere has little to do “wisdom of the crowd”; it is more like “noise of the crowd”, because the voices of the trolls and naysayers get amplified, whereas the voices of reason often get drowned out.
Enough of this Silicon Valley bullshit gossip. This is getting to be like a soap opera for nerds. I want to hear more about cool startups.
Why? Because Yahoo! understands corporate blogging, Google doesn’t.
Google is such a sissy. Only a real man like Yahoo can take criticism from its users.
this site is getting weaker everyday… unsubscribe
Re: Google not allowing comment on their corporate blogs… I don’t see this as being a huge issue, since most of Google’s official blogs suck. And their main official blog is the worst of them all… it was a topic for a post of mine last week: http://anotherblogger.com/2006.....blog-suck/
They need to just switch back to the old site until they come up with something different. I’ve had a yahoo tv link on my bookmark bar forever that linked directly to my local listings page. I hated the new site immediately and switched to tvguide.com listings for now.
I would change this title to something a little less negative, like “Yahoo users speak out.” You got to give them credit for opening this channel. So Google does not allow this kind of thing, and because Yahoo does they get headline like “Yahoo Gets Trashed By Users.” Not fair. I mean, how many reasons do you want to give them for shutting off this kind of feedback?
Google wins the publicity war just by not letting people give this feedback. If these are the kinds of headlines you put out, it is no wonder Google does not allow this kind of feedback (and many more will not) . . . You can do better.
I’ve always thought that they were building up to sell to Microsoft. In the beginning their information seemed to be more well rounded in accessibility to all users. Now they seem to target the users in the U.S. with broadband and a new computer from Best Buy.
They don’t allow comments on their blogs because they don’t care. They’d prefer quality and/or flamboyant feedback via their setup forms rather than on their corporate blogs. Their corporate blog isn’t a discussion area, it’s a blog.
the obnoxious mouseovers on this page proves that this site knows nothing about elegance and usability either
Agreed, stan.
What #38 said.
Somebody please slap the crap out of snap and get rid of those mouseover things.
Thanks.
Of course! Sorry, Dave… I’ll make an appt with the eye Dr.
The more off the beaten path Yahoo goes in its attempt to copy others the slower my Yahoo goes .
Stick to the knitting.
In a way, take this as evidence that Yahoo likes conversations, not the p;d media monolith that is still in love with pageviews.
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com.....-rule.html
Very smart.
Just try to contact someone real and live for a reply at Yahoo if you run into problems. Lots of luck.
http://www.adgerlinux.com
For TV listings, MeeVee.com is the place to go.
I’m sure the changes Yahoo! made are just a first step into a more robust online video offering. Everything’s got to start somewhere.
very good service