The way they handled the leak was idiotic and short sighted. They should blame themselves, not the press.
Their first reply should have clarified that Delicious was not going to be shut down. Furthermore, they should have clearly stated that other prominent properties (like Flickr) were safe and weren't going to be shut down either.
Their initial response ("[we] plan to shut down some products in the coming months") was self-inflicted FUD, which basically stated that they were going to shut down whatever they saw fit. Not the best way to instill confidence in your products.
I suspect they panicked, saw the huge backlash from the community, and quickly came up with the plan of selling delicious and claiming that they were misunderstood from the get go.
The really interesting thing is how long they let this play without any kind of clarification at all. This ran for 24 hours before Yahoo jumped on this. I think you're probably right, surely if they meant to sell this then the response would have been far quicker? Letting this sit out there as a dead service for 24 hours doesn't do a lot for valuations.
Which does raise an interesting question: why the hell would you just shut the thing down and not even attempt to sell it?
Because they didn't think they could get enough for it to be worth the hassle of selling it. Why do people throw things away that they could sell at a yard sale?
What about this response from Yahoo?
"Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond."
That's what convinced me to join a competing service, which is pretty much the absolute worst outcome for a PR statement.
Whoever here wants to start an alternative to TechCrunch that doesn't dengenerate into crap, say aye. Hell, even a well-researched blog would kill techcrunch, mashable and all those shameless corporate/startup whores who pose as journalist.
Although...Yahoo should have came out and dispelled the rumours as soon as they circulated or released their own press release as soon as the presentation was finished.
I think both parties here are to blame; journalists (or supposed journalistst) should hold themselves to a higher standard and actually investigate instead of merely reporting rumours, and corporations should make sure they control their marketing/media message.
Carol Bartz should step down as CEO, she doesn't have the balls to run a company like yahoo. She was appointed to bring yahoo down and is doing a great job at that.
> she doesn't have the balls to run a company like yahoo
Right. She doesn't.
I disagree with plenty of her moves but I always wonder how much that is because I'm standing on the sidelines and she's in the midst of it.
That said, saying one of the most powerful women in tech 'has no balls' is really dumb, for one she is a woman, second she's achieved more than 99.9% of the visitors here including you.
You weren't on the short-list to be picked as CEO of Yahoo! were you?
She's facing nothing but tough decisions, and even if - again - I disagree with some of them it is interesting to try to figure out what it is that you would do instead and to say that rather than criticize someone for 'lack of balls' when they make one ruthless decision after another.
Whatever she has achieved doesn't make the opinions of anyone, including yours, null by default because of some random metric of success. According to you, we should not criticize Ballmer, because he's the head honcho at Microsoft, even though he's obviously a mental case. According to you we should not criticize Jobs because he's the Apple god, even though it's obvious that the amount of control over the app store is a curse in disguise (and don't try to spin that the wrong way, I'm writing this on a mac and own an iPad... I'm as much a fan of most of Apple's products as the next guy).
Not every capable person becomes a multimillionaire and manages a big company, the same way not every dumb fucker ends up in the slums asking for cash on traffic lights. A lot of really smart people end up in the gutter for a variety of reasons, the same way a lot of imbeciles end up being millionaires through good luck or the fact that they where born into money or society. Kilimanjaro may have not been in the Yahoo CEO list, but his opinion is one shared with a great amount of people, and it's insulting not only towards him, but towards anyone who has an 'opinion' to say something that implies that their thoughts are not important because they're not the CEO of a big company. What can't I voice my opinion that someone is doing a lousy job without someone chastising me because "you're not on the CEO to be list". Bartz may be a tech superstar and all (and hell she deserves the respect that she deserves) and has achieved more than 99.9% of us have achieved, but she's also bringing down Yahoo in a torrent of fire.
That being said, I agree with you. I don't think she lacks 'balls'. Quite the contrary, I think she has lot's of 'balls' and the decisions she's making are sure as hell not easy to make. I also think they're the wrong decisions, and I think I'm entitled to say so... even though I'm not in the "Next Yahoo CEO" list.
Their first reply should have clarified that Delicious was not going to be shut down. Furthermore, they should have clearly stated that other prominent properties (like Flickr) were safe and weren't going to be shut down either.
Their initial response ("[we] plan to shut down some products in the coming months") was self-inflicted FUD, which basically stated that they were going to shut down whatever they saw fit. Not the best way to instill confidence in your products.
I suspect they panicked, saw the huge backlash from the community, and quickly came up with the plan of selling delicious and claiming that they were misunderstood from the get go.