Yahoo! is just Newcastle United in guise

For my American friends Newcastle United is a football club in the English Premier League. The similarities to Yahoo are astounding. Both are highly ambitious entities drowning in huge expectations and the spit of what could have been.

Newcastle United have a huge fan base in England, have the third highest home attendance, have splashed big money to acquire big name players and managers and yet face relegation this season. The internet darling of yesteryear Yahoo, have spent huge on acquisitions, big name managers have come and gone, have even went Hollywood all to no avail and are themselves facing their own relegation battle.

I understand their trying to grab on straws, being acquired by Microsoft is like me working as a butler for that kid Michael I went to high school with, would have to be the last resort.

Back to my main point, amongst others Newcastle bought Michael Owen, what a worst of space on the pitch and a huge dent on the player's salary budget that he lives. Yahoo well I was a Yahoo fan, still use the e-mail but that is just about it, and I remember the days I was excited about Yahoo Briefcases and even Geocities, and unconsciously from just using Google search, I now use Adsense, Webmaster Tools, Blogger and even Gmail, and once I know what iGoogle is who knows I will be on that too. I am doing with Google tools exactly what I used to do with Yahoo. As for their acquisitions Flickr that is Michael Owen, I don't find still pictures interesting I would rather see them move on Youtube, oh that is also Google innit.

Steve Ballmer if was you I wouldn't get my hands dirty acquiring Yahoo, Dude it is not worth it trust me, just ask Mike Ashely.

Incredimail Business Model Based on Fraud.

You know the story, last month, Google dropped Incredimail from its Adsense account, leading to the latter's share price dropping.

Well I recently needed to access some POP mail, and thinking back to 2003 I turned to my favourite email client, installed it. On the rare occasion that I use Internet Explorer I noticed that there was an Incredimail toolbar and my homepage was set to Incredimail, with the google search bar featuring prominetly like the firefox start page.

Well I do not mind searching and clicking on adverts on the Firefox google search, after all Firefox provide me with a service and should get paid for it, and I personally chose that to be the start page. Incredimail though, provide no option with the installation as to whether you want these features. Most of their revenue from my understanding is from this search bar, and in my opinion is stolen money. I wonder how a public company can participate in such fraudulent behavior.

I have not uninstalled it yet so I am still to see whether the accusations that it was spyware which were all over the forums are true.

Michael Arrington Courting the media.

Britney Spears and Paris Hilton know a thing or two about getting on tabloids, free ads you might say. Here is a textbook example of how silicon valley does it. The New York Times writes a story on the suicide of an executive, who apparently has received a lot of slack from some blog.

Mr Michael Arrington, takes a look at it, notes he has not been on Valleywag in a while then writes a post criticizing Valleywag. Note that Valleywag is not the blog that is said to could have incited this executive's suicide.

And sure Vallewag respond, and Mr Arrington in the news.

Update: And here he is again mourning about the media, dude give us a break, or Valleywag give us some more wikipedia sex stories instead. These bloggers should just stop talking about each other, we are not stupid, as if they even need the publicity.

In my opinion Arrington is as pompous and eccentric as Frasier Crane minus the charm. If he is such a great entrepreneur do it again, Peter Thiel has done it again with Facebook, and even a movie "Thank you for smoking", now there is someone worthy of my admiration.

Honestly I am tired of this, fake celebrity culture, acting like rappers, yeh that is their world, we geeks do need our own Hollywood but do it with grace, after all this is the business world.

Website Content vs Presentation, web entrepreneur challenge.

Entry into the internet business world is relatively easy. A few factors however limit how successful a venture will be. In this post I will look at a problem faced by the not so technically gifted web entrepreneur. He might have the best business plan, the best content, but how much of a factor is the presentation of his work, graphics, layout, css, etc.

Romelo makes a point that in traditional media the role of presentation is well understood, no publication hits the shelves without thorough consideration of relative size, position color and animation. It is my view that if the content is worthy presented in a legible manner, then that website should prosper, whether or not that website appears to have been created in 10 minutes.

A website with good graphics, flash,etc may be eye-candy but would that make you go back to it if it lacks in content. But a look at high traffic websites like Yahoo, Facebook and google does suggest that content and not presentation is king.

Some website I agree should die because of their presentation. Take a look at robotwisdom. The theory offered there, all text presentation is proved not to have much of a lifetime just by the appearance of that page. Everyone also knows that some webmasters in their attempt to look professional end up having an even worse amateur looking website, mis-use of flash, animated gif, etc.

I have been following with interest Champsportal. They appear to have a solid business plan. Advertisers sponsor a Counter-Strike tournament, gain access to that sort after 18 to early 30 demographic. The gamers get a chance to earn pocket money or a living from their hobby. From what I see the graphics and layout are as simple as it gets, but the site is clearly legible. A forum post called for the death of the site. So should he pay a 1 000 dollars to hire a professional designer. That is in my thoughts raising the bar to entry into web business and fights one of the ideals of the internet age. There should always be a chance for David to slay Goliath in my view.