Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Yo — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:39:56 -0000

Today (12/3/08) was the day it was to be shutting down. And, today, right now, at 3:40 EST Yahoo (main) and Yahoo Mail are having some serious problems. Conincidence, I don't think so.

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Judy Shapiro — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:20:15 -0000

Streaming video is no more a niche than cell phones might have been over a decade ago. The use of rich media -- video, audio, text in our social and communications lives will become more ubiquitous as bandwidth and the technology platforms that support them expands.

The fun part for people is that now they can easily apply whatever rich media they want within their social networks â€“ text, audio or video. And they can easily choose to interact with people they know or with people they donâ€™t with these new tools. These are powerful new choices that consumers are beginning to apply broadly within their lives.

In this sense, the video streaming space is no more a niche than Skype is a niche. I wonâ€™t speculate why Yahoo shut this down â€“ but it can not be because the market is too small. Smart companies, like Paltalk are doing a fine job of monetizing streaming video (see article http://www.alleyinsider.com... so why Yahoo couldnâ€™t make it work is anybodyâ€™s guess.

Judy Shapiro
VP, Marketing Paltalk

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Anrkist — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:27:13 -0000

The problem was they kept banning nudity. Who really wants to watch someone on Webcam just sitting and picking their nose.

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Alan Sanders — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:41:45 -0000

JTV es KeWl man doun't nok it - I luV JTV Bro - I lik the soccer gamez on ther

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

JB — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:32:57 -0000

Justin.tv is getting sued for all its copyrighted content...

** Sob ** Bye Justin. LOL

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

get real — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:25:11 -0000

those compete numbers are extremely misleading. justin.tv is traffic by the boatload. take a look at comscore

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Adam Bateson — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:18:34 -0000

Not to worry, the internet will only get faster and cheaper and then we can all get involved.

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Jay Neely — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:58:40 -0000

Could just be a Yahoo! problem, because of the layoffs and reorgs, but even so, I think that this shut-down, combined with the others Yahoo! has done over the past few months, clearly shows that Yahoo! has been taking a shotgun approach to creating new services. Some have been big hits, but a lot simply haven't gained traction.

I'm a big fan of Brickhouse, the division in Yahoo! charged with creating new services for Yahoo! the way a startup would. But I think their strategy so far has been to create services that they see a lot of interest in, from the web in general. That's not the right way to do things as a startup. If they really want to approach it like a startup, they need to ask, "What problems do Yahoo! users have, that we can solve?"

Yahoo! Live didn't solve a problem. None of their social network attempts solved a problem. Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! Auctions didn't solve problems that weren't already solved better by other companies.

Yahoo! has a huge userbase. Surely there are segments that have problems that Yahoo! can solve better than anyone else.

Re: Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Patrick Sweeney — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:44:48 -0000

I'm glad they are killing this one.......Yahoo Live was PAINFUL compared to Ustream and Stickam.