New Yahoo home page: where's answers gone?

If this screenshot is the default test Yahoo is doing:
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/yahoo-redesigned.png

Odd choices, that. Autos? *AUTOS*? That will generate the most clicks of all the links in the left hand nav (Yahoo knows this)...and, 2009 car sales are on track for 50% of the volume they did in 2009. WTF?

Carol...well, you don't know me, but, I pitched to most of the SVP level execs when I was at Yahoo, April 2004 to Jan, 2006. Your removal of the Answers link as the top one is a great idea, for a few reasons:
1) Yahoo Answers can't monetize because of Yahoo Publisher Network issues AND Yahoo Search Marketing Issues...every site in the top 5 US Q&A sites runs Google AdSense.
2) Yahoo Answers *can't* monetize itself properly, when compared with the rest of the companies products, because advertisers *hate* UGC...those big, brand name ones that splash money like drunken sailors on banner buys to inflate their own egos...won't touch the stuff.
3) Ditch paid inclusion, drop your ridiculous 10 cent minimum on Yahoo Search Marketing, *fix* your platform issues...and, most importantly, *stop* putting those "top searches" things on your home page as links. Why? It hurts your advertisers, because they get inflated clicks & the click through on a search result is NOT the same as entering in by hand your intent.
4) Once you've done #3, *then* you can start seriously considering the Adsense beating strategy...not before. Unless & until you build publisher loyalty, you'll fall even further behind.

In the meantime, for anybody that thinks Yahoo doesn't care about them because they are ditching the Answers link...well, feel free to sign up on FunAdvice (shameless plug here). ;)

More old media Iran fail

After the epic fail of old media a week ago with the Iran situation, it got me to thinking about how old media operate. Basically we parachute some journalist into a country, and get him/her to wear a photographers vest so they can get a feel of the locale, file a story, and fly back home after some time.

Over the past decades of modern journalism, not many organizations have taken the time to REALLY develop local sources. Imagine if in the last 20 or 30 years America's media had taken the time to develop sources in the Iran? Could you imagine where we would be now? The kind of coverage we would be getting now, would be better than CNN reciting what they saw on twitter. They're screwed, because they have no one over there.

On my way to my home country last weekend, this came to me, because I saw a journalist that I was acquainted with many years ago, she told me she was flying in to cover some conference. A conference that could have easily been covered by a local person. A conference that would have been cheaper to cover by a local person. A conference that would have gotten local angles that a foreign journalist would have never written about.

Don't get me wrong, a fresh pair of eyes is always good in any situation, but it strikes me that the mentality that we know best is coming to bite us in the ass as old media close their foreign bureaus and shutter their newsprints. Do you know how far the millions of dollars could have gone in paying cheaper and closer to the situation local reporters, rather than paying Katie Couric and her staff millions of bucks to spend a week in Iraq?

Yup, this has come to bite us in the ass now, as brave citizen journalists in Iran are writing the stories that we're reading now, through facebook, myspace, twitter and youtube. Stuff that Anderson Cooper will only imagine in his fevered dreams.

Lemme get this straight: FunAdvice is the *second* fastest growing social network in the United States

For the context of this post, please take a gander at the comScore social network rankings for May, 2009:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007145

(courtesy of emarketer).

Now with that article and those metrics as a backdrop, consider, *carefully* the following facts:

The *only* social network, in the US, that's growing *faster* than FA...

* was on Oprah
* Ellen

and, *daily* on CNN, CNBC, and other shows

...also, not to mention, was in the wall street journal, multiple times, the New York times, multiple times has dozens of celebrity endorsements...

AND gets daily mentions in EVERY tech blog on the planet

Let's not forget: they also raised tens of millions of dollars and received a billion dollar valuation in their last round.

Wow.

WTF is wrong with the media? Can I get a what what?

Thanks, friends, members and partners - we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. And all the media people that ignore us? Please keep you head buried firmly in the sand...because, we have a lot more in store for the people who appreciate our service :)

Just great. In order to be a "success" I have to move to the valley

So today, as always, I'm reading techcrunch. And Mike Arrington 'splains that in order to be successful and get acquired, a startup is better off in Silicon Valley.

He could be right on those terms, but here are some reasons why I'm never moving there:

1. I'm successful enough here already, damnit!

2. My home is here in my home state (FL), just like thousands of other techies live all over the country.

3. Our business already makes money and is profitable! Damnit!

4. Its too expensive in the Valley, Damnit!

5. And Damnit! Talent is not restricted to the Valley.

So there, those are my five reasons. So although I love the egotistical bastard that is Mike Arrington, I ain't moving to the valley, Damnit!

What are the top five social question & answer sites?

This is a stat we've been measuring, internally, based on quantcast data every month for nearly a year. The dream has always been, first top five, then top three and then become number one.

We're thrilled to say that, finally, you guys have pushed us into the top 5:
Yahoo Answers
Wiki Answers
Answerbag
Blurtit
FunAdvice

That's the set of sites that are the highest volume of US unique visitors per Quantcast for the month of May...only two of us (Blurtit & FunAdvice) are smaller companies and have never been acquired or raised outside funding, which I think is both interesting and compelling...sometimes, to build an awesome product, it just takes awesome people to *like* the product to propel it places.

Last night, we just pushed a release...the most notable is probably the setting a custom avatar for your group, so it doesn't always reflect your default photo, adding a co-administrator to your group and some relatively minor GUI tweaks to try to make the experience easier to understand, clearer and more fun.

For new members who've been on the site less than thirty days, we actually shrank the number of ads we show...while ads pay the bills, I've had a fair bit of feedback that the ads we removed were hurting the experience. Sorry, but, if it hurts revenue from our reports, we'll probably add them back (we are a business, after all).

The interest pages like this one:
http://www.funadvice.com/interests/puppies are also much improved :)

As usual, let us know what we can do better and we'll try to add it to our list.

4,916,938 visitors in May, thanks to everybody who came

Last month we had (yet again...) another record month. 4,916,938 visitors in total, and over 4.4 million unique visitors. Retention was also up to a record number...and what shocked me was the fastest growing feature was Fun Mail.

Hm, we're a *question and answer site* yet, the feature fastest growing and getting the most usage is our private messaging system. Interesting.

Maybe our idea of social q&a is starting to take hold, and take off. One thing you may have noticed: our updates aren't as massive in terms of "what you see" on our site, however, they're becomming more critical to the overall functionality and scale we need...eg, it's one thing to build something & make it work for one million people. It's another to make it work for 5 million (or ten) and takes more effort, though members of our site won't see the difference.

As usual we have tons of stuff in the pipeline and we're working hard to make the site more fun, more entertaining and delightful. Drop us a note if there's something you'd like to see us do.

Beating the internet giants at launching features

Our "real time q&a search" went live before Google got their real time search options up, running and out the door. Of course, they have a much larger data set and more difficult problem to solve...even so, it's gratifying as a small company when you beat the big firms at getting to the launch...even if people don't notice or pay attention, you know in your own heart that you did it.

:)

Did you see the TechCrunch coverage?

For those that didn't see it, it's on our news page, here. In summary: no, we had never spoken to that individual before. Yes, all three of the owners of FunAdvice have sold companies before...note, each of us have been involved in the actual sale of multiple businesses that we co-founded. One of those, for me & my wife, was with Ericson (he posts here sometimes, too, and he's an incredible guy).

Fact: if you look up anything about me (Jeremy, aka, thedude, also the public face of the company) you'll note I'm extremely opinionated and prone to rash decisions...my blog is full of them, it's why I have a personal blog, rather than ranting about stuff that's not related to FunAdvice here.

The only time I think it's acceptable to send somebody that kind of email is when you have incredible due diligence to back it up and you include both a confidentiality notice as well as some notion of diffidence...a company like ours is incredibly precious, you don't do what we have done (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, multiple TV mentions, dozens of radio stations) without caring a great deal.

You also don't launch a non profit program that ads zero dollars in value (in face, could easily be argued it costs us money to run)...you do it because you care.

When you raise money to build a business, that's perfectly fine. However it does not mean that you care. In fact, you could be an excellent business person and heartless. That's not what our company is about.

I have a ton of respect for Google. As a former employee (and contractor) of Yahoo, I have a lot less respect for them. Why? It boils down to the mission of the company. You can't have "do no evil" as a famous part of your mission statement, fund an organization to improve alternative energy and environmental projects with billion dollars of your profit without caring, at least a little. By contrast, Yahoo simply doesn't seem to care as much. That's fine and perfectly acceptable...however, I bring this up because I don't want to have an "acceptable" company. Nor just a highly successful one.

The goal with FunAdvice is to make a profound, lasting and positive impact on the world while we also build an economic engine that will support ourselves, our families and our employees. These two goals are not mutually exclusive, however, to obtain success means that we *must* do both, not just one.

Any potential acquirer (we're not for sale, btw) will have to both understand, accept and embrace these ideas for there to be any synergy at all. Few companies that come to mind have these same ideals...

...however, we are in business. If you happen to have $20 million in cash & can get a deal done, let's talk ;) I'll start a non profit with a slice of my share of the sale.

April came and went, how did we do? 900,000 increase

Obviously, April is a day shorter than March...even so, we managed a 900,000 visitor increase as compared to our prior month.

On a daily adjusted basis, that's the *second* month in a row where we grew by a million visitors...wow. Simply put, wow.

Our run rate (if we can pull a few more rabbits out of a hat) will push us past a few various sites to become the fourth largest Q&A site in the United States, behind Yahoo Answers, ANSW corp and Demand Media (owners of the 3rd largest).

With the smallest of these three 10 million visitors per month (their blog post, a few months ago) we're now very close to 50% the size of the 4th largest Q&A service...which is simply awesome.

Thing is though...even with all this growth, I'm not, personally, thrilled. The product we have in mind...simply hasn't arrived yet. It's being developed (sometimes, painfully, as releases don't always go smoothly) but for the first time in more than six years, I can truthfully say we know what components we are bringing together into our site, features and functionalities...time will tell if we're right.

And in the meantime, I'm incredibly happy so many people have been using (with increasing delight and frequency) our 'product in progress', as you might call it.

Very few sites of our size have a president & co-founder who is delighted to help you make the most of your experience on our site, who doesn't hide in an 'ivory tower' and who uses the product daily.

So thanks for the massive vote of confidence in our site, our service and our unfolding vision, drop me a note via fun mail or the contact form if you need help. I'll be happy to assist.

Down for maintenance: apologies for zero notification

FunAdvice is down for the moment, we'll be back shortly, as we're doing some urgent database maintenance.

As the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy says:
Don't Panic.

:)