Jeremy Zawodny's blog

The word "platform" has become quite popular in the Yahoo! vocabulary in recent months. That's a good thing because it means more and more people are staring to think about our products and services and more than just, well, products and services for end users (I hate the term "consumers" too).

It wasn't that long ago that Bill Gates said:

Yahoo doesn't think of themselves as a platform company. I don't think you will ever have the Yahoo PDC.

That's slightly amusing, because we're certainly headed that way. And Microsoft seems to be trying (and trying and trying) to, with MSN, become more and more of a content/portal/search company. Or some may say "more like Yahoo."

Anyway, there's a lot of confusion about platforms: what is and is not a platform and stuff like that. We also talk about ecosystems and how they related to platforms.

Leave to ex-Yahoo Gary Flake to help connect the dots, now that he's at Microsoft:

People from Redmond often speak of a "platform" while in the valley they speak of an "ecosystem". Here's the surprise: both groups are talking about the same thing. To MS, Windows is a platform because it fosters a virtuous cycle in two parts: developers come to the platform because it has the most users; users come to the platform because it has the most software.

Well said.

I hope Bill Gates will accept an invitation to keynote the first Yahoo Developer's Conference, should we decide to host one. :-)

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Derek Powazek makes an excellent point in Death to User-Generated Content:

Calling the beautiful, amazing, brilliant things people create online "user-generated content" is like sliding up to your lady, putting your arm around her and whispering, "Hey baby, let's have intercourse."

They're words that creepy marketeers use. They imply something to be commodified, harvested, taken advantage of. They're words I used to hear a lot while doing community consulting, and always by people who wanted to make, or save, a buck.

Think about the rest of the world. Writers produce stories or articles. Authors write fiction or memoir. These are words infused with meaning and romance. Can you imagine a writer saying "I am a content provider" when asked what they do?

I couldn't agree more.

The things I put on Flickr are photos. And the stuff on my blog? That's writing (or ranting, in some cases).

Nobody has ever commented to me about my "content", but they do mention my pictures or writing from time to time.

Why do we need new, less precise, terminology when the existing language seems to work just fine?

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I went to the bank this morning to initiate a wire transfer for the remaining amount due on the plane (pics) and was surprised at how unpredictable the process is.

My goal was to give them all the paperwork, ensure I had sufficient funds, and schedule the transfer such that the money arrives in the sellers' account on a particular date next week.

But they can't do that. They cannot hold the paperwork for any amount of time. They'll process it the same day I turn it in. I guess I can understand that. They're a bank, not a scheduling service.

However, they can't tell me which day to drop of the paperwork to ensure that the funds arrive on my target date. The teller informed me that "it usually takes 48 hours, but that doesn't mean the funds will be available on the other end."

WTF?!

Seriously, this is 2006 and we can't know how long it takes money to get from point A to point B? And they charge $30 for the transfer.

Contrast this with another option: FedEx.

I can get a FedEx envelope, stuff it with $100 bills (or a certified bank check), and send it overnight with a signature required for less than $30 (without insurance). In this scenario, I get to track the progress of my package remotely and am fairly certain that it will arrive on the right day.

It seems to me that FedEx is better at what ought to be a core competency of an organization like Bank of America. Perhaps Heisenberg helped design the system?

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First someone had the bright idea to schedule the Daylight Savings Time (which I hate) jump to coincide with April Fool's Day.

I thought it was a joke and went to bed early, tired from something or other.

So I woke up utterly confused on Sunday, with two clocks telling me different things. I was tired anyway, so I turned off the alarm and rolled over. As you might expect, I woke up promptly at the crack of 1pm (or noon?) and felt a bit out of phase with the world for the remainder of the day.

Strike one.

Today, struggling to stay awake, I called the eye doctor to find out if my new sunglasses are ever going to show up. I'd been without them for a few weeks, after losing my previous pair and having to undergo an exam to get a new prescription. (It's okay. I was due for one.)

"Oh, your glasses are here!"

"Uhm, when were you planning to call me?"

Strike two.

The new glasses fit quite nicely and the prescription is only slightly different from the one I had before. Of course it's different enough that the world appears to be just a bit odd in a way that's hard to put my finger on.

And that gives me a slight headache.

Strike three.

In unrelated news, I'm not actually working at Google. I'm pretty sure most people figured out the April Fool's Day joke, but I did get some strange emails about it.

In more unrelated news, the best headline of the day award goes to: Trust Me, I'm A Jedi Scientist -- Those Aren't The Fraudulent Clicks You Were Looking For.

We need more references to Jedi Mind Tricks in day to day life.

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Now that I'm at Yahoo!, I'm starting to realize just how many different services they offer. Case in point, Yahoo!'s podcast
directory and search. Try this search, for example. Tim Mayer and Jeremy have been doing a once-a-month podcast where they talk to different interesting people in the internet industry. Now that Jeremy has gone to Google and I've come to Yahoo!, maybe Tim and I will do the podcast together? We'll figure it out.

Another feature I've been enjoying is Yahoo! Answers. When you want to find out more about something like playing around with your TiVo, it's a great place to look. Highly recommended. :)

-- Matt
(Looking for Jeremy? Remember, he is over here now.)

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I finally gave in, upgraded my firmware to a never-be-able-to-run-homebrew-code-again level (version 2.6), and started playing Me and My Katamari. If you're already a fan of the series, you'll enjoy this game too.

Two things surprised me about the PSP: 1) the screen is just so gorgeous. I'd heard it was nice, but it's *really* nice. 2) the built-in web browser + wifi is pretty killer. The PSP has faux "tabs" so you can open three web pages at once. It didn't take long until I was surfing Slashdot and checking Bloglines. I took a photo which you can see here:

(This image was obviously taken before I found out that Google traded me to Yahoo! for Jeremy Zawodny. I'll see if I can get a picture with Yahoo! on that screen sometime soon.)

All in all, I'm enjoying the PSP a lot--it's a really nice little device.

-- Matt
(Looking for Jeremy? Remember, he is over here now.)

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I've struggled for a while, trying to figure out how to write this. So long, in fact, that I intended to publish this yesterday but kept stalling. So I'll keep it short and sweet.

I recently left Yahoo to go to work for Google.

In a strange twist, Matt Cutts (who we'd been recruiting forever) recently decided to leave Google and come to Yahoo.

What were the odds of that?

There's a lot more I want to say about this (all the memories and great people left behind), but it'll all happen in good time. Some things are best said after having some time for reflection first.

Anyway, to lessen the confusion (or maybe increase it), I'll be blogging on his site from now on and he'll be here.

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After very careful consideration, I've come to the conclusion that my current understanding of Digg and Reddit can be expressed in the form of an SAT analogy and terms of a pair of "community" sites from the previous generation.

Digg is to Slashdot, as Reddit is to Kuro5hin

Yeah, I kinda gave it away in the title of this post, didn't I?

Oh, well.

Now, I suppose you want evidence for this odd claim.

Unfortunately, a lot of it boils down to qualitative things: the "feel" of each site and the type of content that surfaces there most often. Slashdot and Digg are tech heavy, while Kuro5hin and Reddit seem to cast a wider net that captures more of science and culture (and occasionally some politics).

Slashdot and Digg both drive a lot of traffic and experience a lot of churn, while Kuro5hin and Reddit are a bit more stable and have smaller (but by no means "small") audiences.

See also: Because You Asked which takes a cursory look at one site's experience appearing on both.

Thoughts? What other similarities do you see, assuming you've been a user of or participant in each of them for a non-trivial amount of time?

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I've been thinking a lot about Yahoo! Groups recently. This is partly because I'm a member of more than 30 mailing lists hosted there. But it's also because I find myself running into limitations that seem pretty silly in 2006. More importantly, I feel like Yahoo Groups can serve as the collaborative (not just communications) platform for bringing people together in interesting ways.

There are bits of JotSpot (notable Tracker), WordPress, and Flickr that I think could be sprinkled into Yahoo Groups, not to mention Google Maps and/or Wayfaring, Yahoo! Local, Google Calendar, and a few other things.

This definitely means thinking about Yahoo Groups as more than place to host a free mailing list, which is how most people use it today.

But before I ramble on too long, I'd like to know how you would like to see Yahoo! Groups evolve. What's missing? What killer applications or add-on services deserve to be part of the service? Are there alternative services that are providing a lot of this already?

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After a brief overnight trip to Houston, Texas, I met up with some friends from Rhode Island in San Francisco today. They needed to get from there to their hotel near SFO, so I went up to fetch them and stop for some good brunch along the way.

We visited Stacks, one of my favorite breakfast places. We hit the one in Burlingame, which I'd never been to. I've eaten at the Stacks in Redwood City a few times, and there's one in Campbell, just a few miles from where I live (see locations).

Browsing the menu, I discovered that they've fused two of my favorite breakfast foods: bacon and Belgian waffles.

Not knowing quite what to expect, I ordered a "bacon waffle" and side of scrambled eggs. When the food arrived, it turned out to be everything I hoped it might: an amazing Belgian waffle with many bits of bacon strewn about inside. Just add syrup and enjoy.

To whoever thought to put the bacon inside the waffles, I thank you.

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