Y Turns 15
Yahoo held a subtle yet classy birthday celebration for employees this afternoon at HQ in Sunnyvale. We got to hear Carol, Jerry and David share their thoughts in a really fun and spirited way. Oh, and there, was plenty of cake too.
Over the years, Y has contributed a lot to the web including innovations in product, culture and the workplace.
Way back when the company started, the largest web sites and networks (AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve) had like 4mm members and that was big. Yahoo’s audience has grown to over 500mm since then.
Just recently, a BBC survey revealed that 4 out of 5 people in across the globe consider the web to a fundamental human right. Things have come a long way.
Here are some my favorite things that I think Y has had a big hand in making pioneering around the workplace and Internet culture:
- A Hint of Crazy: puts our unique touch and flavor around our market-facing activities whether those be launches, PR campaigns or the look-and-feel of the products. Web products need to bring a touch of fun to whatever they do.
- Individualism: web companies aren’t very command and control; individuals can have a voice and it’s important to be open in the culture and sharing of ideas.
- Energy: walking around the campus of a web company has often been compared to the lively environment of the college campus. When things are going really well, this energy can lead to exhuberence.
It’s no secret that web companies are pretty crazy places for some of these reasons. Many people wonder how rules and organization can be put around such fast-paced, ever-churning, murky visibility environments. Let’s just say it’s much easier to define how conventions will be broken (i.e., innovation) and chaos will be generated for others than to put rules around how you’ll react to it. All web companies need to ask themselves - how much chaos are we delivering (good chaos) vs. responding too (bad chaos).
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Filed under: Web Apps, Innovation, Yahoo! | 1 Comment »
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