April 5, 2012 may be a judgment day for half of Yahoo! employees in the context of internal policy changes in this Internet-based company. Yahoo! lay off 2000 employees including the ones who worked at Yahoo! Indonesia. This is the first time that the decision to lay off employees has an impact on Indonesia. There were at least three lay off storms had hit Yahoo! during my work at the company which impact also reached its regional office in Singapore.
Running an internet-based company is like surfing where we have to be smart to know how big the waves are coming and how quick we have to maneuver. This information is important to know not only for decision maker but also, in my opinion, all employees so they know what to prepare for their personal survival because in the end… if something bad happens then they have to rely on their own parachutes.
Regarding Yahoo!, you may have read the post presented by the former lead developer of Yahoo!, Michael “Smitty” Smith in which he goes way back and shows a variety of issues that arise during his jouney with Yahoo!. I have to agree with some of Smitty’s views. I also tried to look from a wider perspective. In my opinion, Yahoo! as one of the internet world’s pioneers seems a bit giddy with the rapid changes happening in the internet world.
At least two great opportunities were missed by Yahoo! caused by this uncertainty. The first is being thought leader on Search Engine, which eventually fell into the hands of Google that used to be one of the engines used by Yahoo! together with Inktomi (before being acquired by Yahoo! as well), AltaVista (also acquired by Yahoo!). The second is the rise of social media driven by Friendster, followed by the giant social network, Facebook. Yahoo! was trying to break into this arena with Yahoo!Pulse and there was a plan to change Yahoo!Groups to be more social by releasing a new version of Yahoo!Groups codenamed Project Runway, which in the end also not working. In this case, Yahoo! has failed again to be a social network platform. And many more similar cases occur.
The ambiguity in Yahoo! positioning in the business world finally solved when Yahoo! decided to be a media company (with its tagline: Yahoo!, ‘the premier digital media company’) and hitting its own business units that does not have the same flow with said positioning. The question that arose at the time was what to do with Yahoo! products that do not focus on media such as Yahoo!Meme (finally decided to be stopped) and also Yahoo!Koprol.
The lay off that has just happened is the result of adjustment process carried out by Yahoo! and is in fact, already predicted by the time Yahoo! positioned itself as a media company a while ago. The entire development team of Yahoo!Koprol being layoff. The Search team is also affected including the entire team at regional office (Singapore) and Yahoo! Indonesia.
From the perspective of company continuity, I personally understand the organizational restructuring of Yahoo! which globally done by its new CEO, Scott Thompson. However, restructuring 4 times in 4 years really shows that Yahoo!’s uncertainty in determining its position in the ‘tidal wave’ of change that occur in this internet industry.
Hopefully, becoming Premier Digital Media Company is the most appropriate position for Yahoo! in order to re-take the lead in the internet world. I hope it will find a perfect spot in this big pond and grow bigger without distraction. 🙂
Abang Edwin is a practitioner of online community management since 1998 long before the term of social media / social networks appear in the internet world. He began his journey by experimentation with several online communities which eventually successful at that, to this day he still gives consultations about knowing character and foster online communities for brands / agencies and individuals.
He was at Yahoo! for over 4 years as a community manager. Currently he is Country Manager – Indonesia for Thoughtbuzz.net, a social media monitoring company.