Tag Archives: Tumblr

Will Yahoo let Tumblr be Tumblr? Can startups go big and stay cool?

Internet, Media, ,

Can Tumblr still be Tumblr if it’s owned by Yahoo? It’s a complicated question. Even someone who thinks about this stuff all the time like Mathew Ingram at GigaOm acknowledges it “makes a certain kind of horrible sense” but wonders how likely it is that Yahoo won’t screw it up.

Can a startup still remain “cool” if they’re owned by a big company? And what is “cool” anyway? What’s a set of best practices when you’re acquiring something, whether it’s a media startup or a tech startup.

I’m working through some of these questions so this post will be less of a fully-realized piece and more of a scratch pad of thoughts of mine and others. I’ll update as needed. (Please feel free to jump right to the comments and offer your thoughts.)

There are plenty of reasons why acquisitions happen. One company might want the talent or technology of another or want to put a competitor out of business. In these cases, the larger company intends on shutting it down completely. Apple’s done this a few times – LaLa and Color Labs are two examples that spring immediately to mind. As my friend Rachelle Bowden pointed out to me last night on Facebook, when Google acquired Feedburner they shut it down as a company but kept the product (and, I think, some of the talent) though six years post-acquisition, the product may not be long for this world after years of neglect. (So one rule for acquisitions might be “Don’t let it languish.”)

[In the interest of limiting the scope of the discussion here, let’s deal mainly with companies that seemingly want to keep a company running and keep it “cool.” There’s a separate question of how big a startup can get and still remain “cool.” It’s a separate set of considerations but two notable examples of ones that have: GrubHub – which is in the midst of a merger with Seamless – and (as pointed out on Facebook by my friend Carter last night), Southwest Airlines. Off the top of my head, Gawker’s an example of a digital media company that keeps growing but retains its edgy, innovative spirit. It’s new Kinja integration/redesign may just be what Nicco Mele and John Wihbey describe as the future of big media as a platform for brands. Pitchfork is another one to watch as they expand into film coverage.]

So how does one define cool? Gordon Wright pointed out that small doesn’t necessarily mean “cool.” “Some big companies have soul, many startups don’t.” 

I’d say “cool” is remaining relevant and and innovative: continuing to create new features and retain the spirit and soul of the product. (Don’t agree? Head to the comments and give me your definition.) 

Does it depend on the company who buys you? Yes and no. Yahoo’s run of acquisitions is not good as documented in this Valleywag post “A brief history of Yahoo buying and ruining things.” Flickr is a case in point and this Gizmodo post from last year explains how it all happened: they didn’t innovate, they ripped out core features and essentially alienated the audience. (So two more rules for success: Let the company be itself and help it scale.)

How does Google fare? Last year, Google’s VP of corporate development said one-third of Google’s acquisitions failed. Here’s a list of acquisitions by Google. But Google bought YouTube and that product has thrived and grown revenue as it’s become bigger. Hunter Walk explains why it was a success.

A few local examples:

On Twitter, Justin Massa points out Groupon – a company that famously refused to be acquired by Google – has been making many acquisitions as of late including Fee Fighters, a Chicago-based startup.

On the media side, there’s the Chicago Reader and Ars Technica.  The Reader was bought by The Sun-Times about a year ago and is now seeing integration of Reader content into the main paper. (Here’s a Vine I made of what that looks like.) But it’s left the Reader alone and it’s profitable. And around its 10th anniversary in 2008 Ars Technica was acquired by big magazine publisher Conde Nast yet even people who follow media are often surprised to learn this. Another example of leaving it alone, but helping it scale.

But then there’s Everyblock. It was bought by MSNBC in 2009, pivoted into a focus on community discussions and grew but was then shut down early this year. (Leading to this cautionary tale from Everyblock founder Adrian Holovaty this week regarding Tumblr: “My experience: even if people @ acquirer are great, it’s inevitable they’ll one day be replaced by clowns.” (Not sure how you craft a rule around that one.)

Last night I asked friends on Facebook whether you can remain cool as a startup after acquisition. Here’s what they said, though I have re-ordered or compressed some parts of the discussion for clarity (again, apologies for the less than visually stunning look of the below. Fancy plugins next time!) UPDATE: I’ve now made the Facebook thread public. You can read it in full here or read highlights below.

Andrew Huff: Yes so far: Instagram. Yes, though “cool” is perhaps relative: TypeKit (acquired by Adobe). No (I think): Blogger. [Ed note: Google acquired Blogger in 2003 but joked about it in 2001.]

Blagica Stefanovski Bottigliero: Yes: Orbitz. [Ed note: Acquired by Cendant in 2004.] I left before the buy but what I think was cool was the sick search technology that continued on. Motorola: jury is out. [EN: By Google in 2012.) Another thing to explore is how acquisitions that worked altered or kept monetization models.

Jackie Danicki: Qik, where I loved working in 2008-2009, was acquired by Skype right before Skype was acquired by Microsoft. Live streaming mobile video, super innovative before purchase and after. There are literally hundreds of startups that are innovative post-purchase – but they are not all household names. That is no measure of their worth ($) or innovation.

Mike Fourcher: All State and esurance: Yes. Sears and Lands End: Yes. Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s: Yes. Disney and Marvel, yes. [EN: Disney is a great non-media, non-tech example of a company that let its acquisition be itself and helped it scale.]

Benjamin Lipsman: Cisco bought Flip cameras when they were popular, then shuttered it a few years later as smartphones ate into market & Cisco realized they couldn’t market to consumers. Zappos had stayed true to their values after Amazon purchase.

I asked Benjy the following: Do you think that was an example of the market overtaking it or Cisco making missteps?

Benjamin Lipsman: Cisco should’ve seen the market threat before they invested in buying Flip, then they seemed to give up pretty quickly when it was still popular. Had they been able to market to consumers, they could’ve probably sold millions more. David Pogue’s take.

Leah Jones: Considering “Flip” is still the generic word for a small, HD, simple video camera… I’m going to blame Cisco. I think you could look at Twitter acquisitions for examples of how to uncool acquisitions. [EN: Here’s a history of Twitter acquisitions as of 2012. It acquired Vine in 2013.]

Andrew Huff: The time between Cisco takeover of Flip and Cisco killing Flip was shorter than a few years, I think — maybe two? [EN: Two years.] Regardless, I blame Cisco. Flip had and still has strong brand identification in the category, and could probably have evolved to remain relevant — see GoPro’s continued success. [EN: Here’s a look at GoPro.]

Joanna Brandt: Tom’s? Or are they not big enough yet?

Ellen Malloy: GrubHub merger/bigness just happened. Too soon. I’d say Instagram is also too soon. That said: FourSquare is No Longer Cool with too many big years under it’s belt. Groupon was Never Cool and was also Always Big. Toss in: Apple seemed to have muffled the brilliance of Dragon from afar. 

Then Ellen made a great point about how funding startups may affect their ability to grow and stay cool.

Part of the issue you explore is the dynamic of funding cool startups. And they need funding to reach their cool goals. But the goal of folks who do the investing is the exit. Not the coolness. So the system of how startups get from cool to big is set up to ensure big not cool. Which is not wrong… Since the investor is in the business of the exit not in the business of cool. And it is his money doing the funding. 

Carter Liotta: Ben & Jerry’s is an interesting case study. To a lesser degree, Southwest Airlines.

Here, Mike Fourcher noted SWA was never acquired. Still, they got big but still retained what their customers loved about them.

Carter Liotta:  They retained a fun attitude, but their core business changed dramatically. Their prices are now often higher than legacy carriers on many routes, and they no longer serve many small airports (Providence RI and Manchester NH) after starting service to Boston Logan. The whole point of SW was keeping costs low by flying to small airports… At least at first. Now they act more like a legacy carrier. But you’re right- no acquisition that I know of.

Mike Fourcher: Carter, I disagree. Their first strategy was not small airports, it was low-cost, point-to-point flights, rather than the traditional hub-spoke system. Second, they placed a high emphasis on creating value with hiring and personnel, rather than the cost-plus system competitors had been using. SWA is still behaving that way, but now has enough margin to afford gates in more central airports.

Benjamin Lipsman: Something interesting to watch will be to see how effectively Southwest extends their “coolness” and company ideals to the employees of AirTran, which SWA acquired last year and is finally beginning to integrate.

Ellen Malloy: One follow up on Justin Massa: Groupon looks to have killed Breadcrumb, a company they bought a year ago.

On Twitter, Justin says Breadcrumb is “far from killed, a major focus for them. giant booth at NRA show this last weekend. same for Savored.”

Laura Chavoen: Tom’s Shoes/Warby Parker. Easy Jet.

—

I’m going to continue to use this post as the hub for this discussion happening on Facebook and Twitter and pull interesting posts from there as well. Updates to come. But let’s take this to comments: What other examples are there of acquisitions that kept the spirit of the acquired startup? Or ones where it all went horribly wrong? Thanks for contributing.

UPDATE 5/24/13:

This post became the basis for the first hour of WBEZ’s The Afternoon Shift. In thinking this through with host Niala Boodhoo, we started to think about some of the big issues behind Yahoo’s acquisition.

Yahoo is the third biggest display ad server, behind Google and Facebook. Yahoo gets 76% of its revenue from display ads. If you look at what it’s done with Flickr recently, it’s clear they want to scale out Tumblr’s ad business.  Zach Sweard of Quartz looks at how this might work for Yahoo/Tumblr.

So who will Yahoo be serving those ads to? Peter Kafka at All Things D notes Tumblr has 300 monthly uniques but no one’s really sure how many active users; Kafka estimates it at 30-50 million. But it’s not just about Tumblr’s raw numbers, it’s about who those users are, specifically how old they are. If you look at Quantcast’s numbers on Tumblr’s users 29% of them at 18-24 (Internet average is 12%) and 24% are 25-34 (Internet average 17%). Yahoo’s audience is significantly older and the purchase of Tumblr youngs those numbers up quite a bit.

As the news unfolded this week, we also saw Xbox reveal its new Xbox One and how its always-on functionality was meant to deliver a seamless gaming experience. Of course, it also collects data: usage data and data on the physicality of its users. And then during the show, we learned Yahoo made a formal bid for Hulu, confirming rumors about its interest.

Here’s how all of the above played out during our discussion on the show with Samuel Axon, Editorial Director of Sprout Social – with a drop-in from Jim DeRogatis with some breaking news about the Congress Theater. There are a few callouts by me of comments from the Facebook post above.

 

Why I decided to stop posting to Tumblr

Internet, Uncategorized, , ,

With a presence on various platforms – here, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr – I’ve been wondering how to balance  them all without publishing the same stuff in every space. In particular, I’ve been wrestling with the question of how to get myself to blog more. If you’re a writer, you tend to write because you have something in you that needs to be expressed.  And writing it – as opposed to putting it in a song or delivering a monologue – is the best way to express it.

I have those moments and Twitter, for the better and the worse, is the way I usually do it.

For the better because, as an outlet, Twitter is immediate and anywhere, if my phone is available. The laptop doesn’t need to be opened nor do I need to bother with logging in to WordPress, writing a headline, etc. And if it’s only a thought then that’s just fine. No need to climb the hill of composing a full essay.

For the worse because, honestly, becoming a better writer and having some permanence to my writing would be nice. Sure, Twitter forces you to omit needless words, but really digging in on something and not having to scroll back through countless posts to find it would be virtues. How best to take the good and leave the bad?

The “if this, then that” statement I’ve come up with here is if I’ve got three tweets or more to say on a subject, then it’s probably worth a blog post. Not a blog post instead of tweets – and probably not a Storify of posts either unless I’m feeling lazy as that still leaves the problem of having work I’ve done locked up in someone else’s space – but a blog post after the fact, using Twitter as a first draft. Three tweets seems a good number because that’s around 50-100 words which could stand on their own or easily extend into 250 with a few additional thoughts (I’m hitting about the 300-word mark now, for instance). With WordPress’s app, I could even do most of the work on my phone and save it for editing later. This process seems like a good way to encourage blogging without holding myself back from tweeting on the regular.

Even a comment on Facebook might end up as a post, which is what happened when my browser crashed as I was leaving a comment on a Facebook link Marcus posted to his story. Jolted into a realization that I was once again putting a bunch of time and thought into creating work on a platform that wasn’t mine, I threw together a quick post, which got picked up here and here. It’s always the stuff you toss off in a hurry that ends up resonating. There’s something to be learned there.

Seeing what happened with that post was the last push I needed to officially step away from Tumblr. I started on Tumblr in 2008, but mostly used it as an RSS feed from my blog (this post was an exception) until I was canned from Playboy and then really got into it, mostly because I had plenty of time on my hands. The Tumblr bookmarklet allowed me to combine the speed of Twitter with the weightiness of blogging. I’d grab a quick pull quote from a piece and respond without the concern of 140 characters. Loved it.

After a while though the constant outages made me wonder if I was spending a bunch of time on something that was too ephemeral. The last one in November lasted two days and prompted my break. Even now, I tried to find a few posts of value there and got hung up on its lousy search function. (It’s 2013, Tumblr, why don’t you have a decent search function? Compare this keyword search on Tumblr with this search I ran on my Tumblr via Google.) Then I figured out how to create a similar WordPress bookmarklet and create posts like this and that was the death knell for my posts there. I’ll still keep an account there because even in the three-month break from writing on Tumblr, I still enjoyed reading posts from people I follow there.  But it will likely be little more than an RSS feed to this blog.

It just became too important to me to own as much of the work I was doing online as possible. I’ll still post regularly on Twitter because what it gives me is as great as what I feel I’m giving to it. Tumblr stopped delivering on its end of that bargain so I found another way to keep writing.

Curious though: Am I alone here? Have other folks who publish on various free platforms thought about any of this?

UPDATE: Kiyoshi Martinez posted a thoughtful reply to this post here – on Tumblr (heh). He cites the lack of maintenance, the reblogging and the inherent social networking features as reasons that drew him to Tumblr after a less than ideal WordPress adventure. On my Facebook page, Jaime Black praised many of these same features, especially Tumblr’s speed. All solid counterarguments and reasons why I was initially drawn to the platform.

Also on Facebook, I reiterated the outage-induced ephemeral feeling I’d been getting from Tumblr lately and John Morrison said he felt similarly about what he’d done on Gowalla and wondered if Everyblock fans were feeling the same way now, a point I hadn’t thought about until he said it.

And in case you didn’t see the pingback, Matt Wood had some things to say about the above. Interestingly, he notes his post was initially going to be a comment here but he decided to make it a blog post for himself, which echoes what I was saying above about wanting to have more of an owned archive of what I create online. (Incidentally, this also led me to create this page.)

If you’re interested in this kind of discussion, you should come to this event on Monday. I’ll be on the panel there and Jaime is hosting it so we’re sure to get into more of these kinds of issues.

 

Trying to be both here and there

Fatherhood, , , , , ,

If you only follow my work here, you may be thinking that I’m a sad excuse for a writer/commentator. But as I noted in a previous post, I’ve taken to Tumblr and I find it suits my needs better than this blog. (Note: If you follow the link above, there’s currently an image there of me flipping the bird. Trust me when I say it’s for a good reason.)

The biggest surprise, to me, is the consistency Tumblr provides for my writing on media and such. My devotion to this blog always came and went in waves. I attribute this partly to a usability issue. Not to get too wonky, but this blog is tied to an old Gmail address that I no longer use and if I’m logged into my new Gmail address, I need to log out, then log in to this one and if I need a link or piece of text from an e-mail I need to log out again and….you see what I mean. Try as I might, I hadn’t fixed this problem. Plus, I’ve wanted to redesign here and devote this blog to longer pieces though I hadn’t quite figured out what I wanted to write about in this space.

It took an e-mail from my friend Fuzzy to remind me that not only hadn’t I posted here in a long time, my last update made it look like I was still out of work. So it was definitely time to stop thinking and start writing.

I’m now the director of digital strategy and development for Chicago magazine and have been since mid-May. This means I’m ultimately responsible for anything we do online – website, digital subscriptions, mobile, etc. I’ve got a great team of editors and producers under me who work hard and make the site look great. Plus, I’m working with a great boss at a publication with a rich and respected history. It’s a great gig and I’m excited to be there. And hey, I even get to be on TV sometimes.

I spent two months unemployed. While it’s not an ideal situation, you won’t hear me complain about it. I had the support of countless friends and family members, was actively interviewing and chasing down job leads, networked my ass off and had plenty of time for beers on my back porch with my dog. There were times where it was rough, of course. If you’re not someone who does well with unstructured time and your identity is largely tied to your work then being unemployed will make you feel rudderless. I think I was able to adjust my outlook on both of these matters, but it’s an ongoing process. Still, those two months made me realize how lucky I am. When you have a friend who makes an entire website about you, it’s impossible to feel like you lost something in the deal.

The other important piece of news in my life as of late is…my wife and I are pregnant, three months and some change as of this writing. We’ve been trying for about a year now so this was somewhat unexpected as we had begun to make peace with the possibility that our efforts would require some medical assistance or might come to naught. But no, we are with child. A girl, specifically. We could not be more excited. Or – in my wife’s case – nauseous. (Gents who are interested in having a baby: Morning sickness is a lie. Just start calling it First Trimester Sickness now so you get geared up.)

If you’re looking to free your identity from your work, getting your wife pregnant is a surefire way to make that happen (though perhaps it’s not for everyone). Even more so than during my unemployment, I have been a Husband. I didn’t grow up in a house where there was “womens’ work” or “a man’s job” and that’s not how my life with Erin is either. We both work and take care of the house. With the notable exceptions of mowing the lawn (which I insist on doing) and taking out the garbage (which Erin insists I do but to be honest no man’s wife should touch garbage) we share work equally in our home. But Erin’s been busier than usual with having the baby and it’s exhausting work so I’ve had to fly solo on a few Operation: House and Home missions like grocery shopping, making dinner, etc. It’s difficult sometimes but due to a lack of a uterus, it’s the primary means by which I can support our family’s efforts to bring a baby into this world. Also, it’s not like doing a few extra loads of laundry makes me want to throw up, so I’ve definitely got the better end of this deal.

It’s in my nature of be a planner and a researcher so I’ve looked over a few books about pregnancy. Most of them assume the guy is either 1) a jerk or 2) incompetent. As someone who is neither (mostly), I’ve sought guidance from some guy friends who’ve mostly said that sometimes you need to ignore the books and go with your gut. But I highly recommend the books by Arnim A. Brott: they’re written in an easygoing style with a distinct lack of condescension. He’s informative and honest and acknowledges that pregnancy is tough for men, too. (If you’re wondering where to start, Father for Life is a good primer.)

While I love my job, the one thing it doesn’t provide for me is a writing outlet. It’s been an adjustment for me to work on “big picture” tasks and not get wrapped up in the day-to-day. This week, it occurred to me that the best way to allow myself that outlet, separate my work life from my identity, explore where my life was headed and give this blog a reason for being would be to write about all of it. I’ve been hesitant in the past to write about my personal life here, but in all honesty my digital identity is already a mix of the personal and professional so it’s not as if I haven’t crossed that bridge. So it’s time to push through whatever technical issues we’re holding me back and give this thing some life again.

With this next step, there’s a lot to talk about even in a review of the last several months:

* Babysitting my sister’s months-old child alone, a mix of problem-solving and playtime
* The weekend Erin and I watched our toddler niece and discovered what it was like to be solely, if only temporarily, responsible for the feeding, care and diaper-changing of a little human
* Discovering how good a show Phineas and Ferb is during the above weekend
* A purely instinctual moment during church when I went all Dad-mode on our misbehaving nephews
* Holy shit, that’s my kid’s heartbeat!
* What it’s like to be a guy who always thinks about the worst-case scenario which means you can’t truly allow yourself to be excited about a pregnancy until you hit that three-month mark
* How my friends and family knowing about our pregnancy made the whole experience real in a way that even seeing an ultrasound hadn’t
* My inability to do anything to make my wife more comfortable when she’s dealing with first-trimester sickness and how that makes me feel useless especially when I’m “a fixer”
* No, seriously, that’s my kid’s heartbeat!

My hope is that I’ll avoid writing about this stuff as if I’m the first man to have a pregnant wife but still bring something unique to the topic. If nothing else, it’ll give me an excuse to write a think piece on Phineas and Ferb.

Diving off a different platform

Uncategorized, ,

In the month since this happened, I’ve been keeping myself busy with a few things:

1. House-husband-ing
2. Lawn care
3. Beer
4. Tumblr

You can see my work on the latter here.

Why there and not here? The simple answer is that Tumblr allows for quicker publishing of small items that I don’t feel are worth a post here because I usually reserve this space for longer discourse or because the subject matter isn’t quite apropos to what I cover here.