With the holidays I’m a bit behind in blogging, so this is probably the last “look back on 2005” post out there.  When I look back at this 2005 I see a lot of great and memorable things that have happened in the world, the industry, at my company and for me.  But this post isn’t about those things.  This post is about the utterly exasperating little things I’ve witnessed in the industry/blogosphere over the last year.For those of you that don’t know my sense of humor, realize that this post is all about things I’ve found to be hilarious in a completely dark and sarcastic way.  I think people can become carictures of themselves without even knowing it and I’ve been able to witness that a lot this year.  For example:
- Your company sucks – Upon meeting me in person recently, two different bloggers came up to me and said “I just dissed all the work that Yahoo is doing and said Yahoo sucks on my blog.  Nice to meet you”.  What is my response supposed to be? When you become a blogger do you lose all manners? In the non-blog world I’ve never been at a party and had somebody say “I was just talking to my wife about how much we hate the neighborhood you live in”.  Maybe I should start responding with  “I’ve never read your blog, but I’m sure I’d hate it”.
- EVP – I ran into an Executive Vice President of Sales at this company.  15 employees.  Wow, I wonder what the Senior Vice President of Sales, and the VP of Sales, and the Director of Sales, and all the salespeople think of their boss?  Oh wait, he is the whole salesforce.   I can’t wait til he gets a promotion next year when they hire the second salesperson.
- Congrats, you suck – I was at a conference where someone launched a brand new web product. I know how hard it is to time something to a conference and inevitably bugs get through.  So what happened? Someone in the audience gets up to the microphone and says
“You just launched this thing 10 seconds ago, I just ran an extensive test on it and found a bug, what are you doing to fix it?”   Um, fix it, I suppose.  I think that person spends too much time with the rude bloggers. - Emily Litella Syndrome – Ok, maybe there’s a theme here.  But this is what I find funniest of all.  I read lots of blogs, and I find that intelligent, thoughtful, insightful bloggers are the worst at this.    They make a post with a scandalous headline “Yahoo plans to feed small children to giant sharks” and go on and on about how awful this is, how this fits in with with the “grand strategy” we’ve all witnessed, etc, etc.  Sometimes, they even link to an article that contradicts everything they say (because they skimmed it and missed the facts).  Then–yes, blogging is a conversation–someone points out that they were completely, utterly and deeply wrong.  So they post an “UPDATE: Well, it turns out that Yahoo is not feeding children to sharks, but that they are donating money to starving children and to Aquariums across the world to preserve endangered species of fish.  But that doesn’t matter, Yahoo better watch out cuz we’re onto them and know about their ‘grand strategy’.” And of course the headline remains unchanged and becomes the top headline on Memorandum, Digg or whatever the heck is popular today and everyone’s aggregators have that headline staring you in the face. Ahhh…the new age of citizen journalism.
I think its a pretty safe bet that I will continue to find many more exasperating moments like this in 2006.  I’m looking forward to meeting the Senior Executive Managing Partner and EVP, Finance at some new 4 person startup (his desk is near the fridge in his business partner’s apartment) and maybe I’ll get to try out saying “that’s your blog? Oh, yeah, I don’t read that blog, it sucks”.
No fair. Home come you get to meet all the asses?
Seriously. I get almost all positive comments about Yahoo at conferences.
Maybe they just save the ranting for my blog instead?
OH boy, the EVP of Sales comment hits close to home, or rather what was home in 1998.
Honesty can be so damn funny…
I do not think you should take criticism of what Yahoo is doing as being disrespectful or poor manners.
If people did not care about Yahoo succeeding, they would not say anything at all. Being criticized is much better than being ignored.
I would hope candid, open, and critical debate would be cherished by Yahoo.