For delicious – phew, I’ll continue to use the service in the hopes that this means innovation will come back to delicious. I think Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are solid visionaries who can build and ship product in a meaningful way. I hope they’re going to do something meaningful with Delicious and give it a great second act.

As for Yahoo, all I can do is sigh. I was upset when I first heard of Yahoo’s plans with Delicious but it’s not new. It’s more of the same at Yahoo. More sitting and wasting assets, not only product but the people who came with those products.

I wish Yahoo had empowered Stuart Butterfield, Caterina Fake – founders of flickr – Joshua Schachter (Delicious) Eric Marcoullier (mybloglog), Andy Baio (Upcoming) and the founders of the other great consumer web services they had acquired. Instead of making ex-MSFT, ex-Aol, Ex-Autodesk and even ex-Google executives head of products and innovation and R&D what Yahoo should have done is empowered these visionaries to think across product and across segments for truly revolutionary innovations. I recognise it’s not an easy task, most of these people preferred building start ups, but it can be done, if you put the right structures in place and incentivise correctly.

I truly believe Facebook is kick ass because a number of it’s product executives came from Friendfeed or from VC funds where they were connected to innovation closely. Facebook also has a visionary at the helm. This is something that Amazon, Apple and Google also have. Bezos, Jobs, Page and even Zuckerburg have created things and value true engineering innovation. For Yahoo to compete it will need to find a real visionary, not more managers.

You’re screwed because you’ve shown that you don’t care about your users. The latest announcement to close delicious.com was the final straw and signal to the community that you just don’t get it. You don’t sunset a community, you open source it, spin it off, allow someone else to run with it, to do something with it, to monetise it – even if that means adding a small fee for people to use it. As my wife said when I informed her that you were closing delicious “That’s stupid, even I use it”.

I went to delicious.com and saw people had bookmarked the announcement from Techcrunch, but no post from yourselves, no notes saying how people can maintain their bookmarks or how you’ve worked with another service to allow people to move their bookmarks from delicious to whatever it might be. In the words of Julia Roberts, “Big mistake, BIG, HUGE”. Geeks are the ones who started using facebook when it opened itself outside of Harvard, geeks are the ones who started using twitter years ago, geeks are the innovative first users you need to get on board if a product is going to take off. Why did Buzz stink? It never took off because the geeks were all already using delicious. So if you get rid of delicious.com you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll never ever be able to launch a new product again.

Here’s how you can save your face, give delicious away, either make it open source or sell it to someone for a song (Waving my hand enthusiastically). Why am I so passionate about Yahoo! allowing delicious to stick around and not just letting users move to other services? Because the fact is that Delicious has a lot of users. It has active users and passive users. It has super active users who would be willing to pay a small fee annually, and other users who wouldn’t mind ads on it to keep it around. You’re leaving money on the table, and you’re not really helping anyone by closing off the service. Let’s say 10% of delicious users move to another service and 15% move to another service and 20% move to another service and the rest all start keeping their bookmarks locally (in all likelihood the % of users to move is likely to be waaaaay less) then that’s 3 communities that might be a little bit stronger, instead of the community on delicious.com that could actually provide real value to the internet and (shock, horror) to advertisers.

Look we get it, we understand you need to save some money and services like mybloglog and upcoming will need to bite the bullet, makes sense. Buzz as well – though why you invested in creating Buzz when you had Delicious sitting there I never did understand and was never able to get a straight answer from anyone on. We’re all for capitalism and for you trying to get back on your feet but please, please don’t kill one of the only things that gives you any credibility. What next Flickr? That just gives me the shivers.

So thanks Yahoo! for showing the world once again that you don’t really get it and thanks for getting me to get my butt in gear and to start writing on my blog again – 42 days is way too much, hopefully never again.

Disclaimer: I worked for Yahoo! for 3 years from 2007 to 2010 in London and in Rolle, Switzerland. I have not discussed this with anyone at Yahoo! I am no longer doing any consulting or any other work for the company and I don’t hold any Yahoo! stock anymore, I only have friends at the company and a love for the brand that was home to one of my first interactions with the internet.

I really, really, really hope Yahoo! does not merge with Aol or get’s involved with News corp. The rumour is that Private Equity houses are getting involved and Aol/News Corp is looking at buying Yahoo!. Mergers and acquisitions have not been Aol or Yahoo!’s strong point. They only work when the target is something that’s going to be core and is not being done by the acquirer before the transaction. When Aol acquired Advertising.com or when Yahoo! acquired Right Media, those transactions worked fairly well, because it was about rebranding and incorporating a new technology and it was going to be a core part of the business.

An acquisition makes sense on paper, Yahoo! is priced at a point that would make it attractive. Even if the strategy isn’t clear; the value of its assets alone make it a pretty compelling story. But price is only one factor, what you need is execution. And an acquisition by Aol would handcuff execution at a point where Google, Facebook and other competitors are firing on all cylinders. Just the thought of dealing with the search deals that the different companies have in place is giving me a headache.

I like Carol Bartz style and she was a breath of fresh air in terms of management ethos. But I’m not sure she totally get’s the Internet and has the vision of someone like Schmidt or even Zuckerburg. I’m not sure who the right visionary is but I’m not sure it’s anyone who’s in either Aol or Yahoo! today.

I definitely think Yahoo! would benefit from becoming a private company, I think the lack of having to answer to investors on short term numbers and being able to invest and focus in a longer term strategy would work well for the company. Also having employees move away from being fixated on the stock price and start thinking about how to really disrupt, design or deliver would help the company move a lot quicker. I just don’t believe a merger/acquisition with another internet beast is the right way to make this happen.

I’m not going to comment on whether or not extending this service would have saved Yahoo!’s search business (I lie, it wouldn’t), but I do want to comment on the idea of going big.  Google is launching this service on the main search results; everyone at some point or another will see Google instant – as long as you’re on a supported browser.  This is pretty ingenious for two reasons.

First the users who don’t want this functionality are likely to be on one of the unsupported browsers (you know who you are IE7 and IE6 users).

Secondly they’re launching this big.  I love the fact that they’re not launching this off some subdomain, like google.com/reallyfastresults or something of that ilk.

If you really believe in something going big is an indication of your belief.  It shows the market that you really believe that this is a game changer and something you’re willing to back with all your resources.

Going big is a great signal, it’s also something that Google doesn’t do with all it’s innovations and it’s a great indicator of what things they believe in and what things are pet projects.

When you allow an advertiser to buy the whole page, change your background and put some crap over your content, here’s what I believe you’re saying – “Your advertising dollars are worth more than our costumers experience and our product, so allow us to bend over while you have your way with both”.

Here’s a bolt of reality to media owners; consumers, costumers, PEOPLE don’t like advertising, they tolerate it. We understand that there’s a need for businesses to make money so heck show some ads, some body somewhere will think that this Vodka ad on the side of my NBA scores page is relevant and someone will click, it just won’t be me.

Your content, product, whatever you own, better be twice as good as the competition if you’re going to submit your audience to a takeover of your content by an advertiser, because if it’s not, odds are that some portion of your audience won’t come back. Cause wherever you have people doing it for the money, you have people doing it better for the content and for the audience.

So here’s my advice, stop pimping your products out to advertisers. Stop bending over to make an extra couple of bucks. Start offering advertisers better alternatives, creative widgets or whatever that don’t harm the consumer experience but rather enhance it. Start really focusing on creating a better experience for people. Or accept that you’re lazy, don’t care about the people using your product and are out to make a quick buck and watch your product suffer in the long run.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Yahoo! it was part of the reason I joined. Having taught myself html on geocities, signed up to Yahoo! mail in the 90s, using flickr, delicious and mybloglog all before they were acquired, I loved Yahoo’s products. And in my 3 years with the company I have met some really great intelligent people that I know I will be contacts for life. I’m not leaving because I don’t believe Yahoo! will bounce in the right direction, I’m leaving because I’m excited about doing my own thing, something different and something where I believe I’ll be having a tremendous impact.

To all the Yahoo!’s I’ve worked with thank you for making the last 3 years such a blast. And I’m sure our paths will cross again. To all the haters out there, I’ll remind you that the in 1997 Michael Dell said that Apple should close down and return money to shareholders, think Steve Jobs is glad he battled through all the haters. I’m not saying that Yahoo! will have the market cap that Apple has, but I do believe when it comes to the internet market game it’s not even half time.

Now let me say this first and foremost, I am an MBA so I’m a bit biased. And I’ve talked about this subject before and pointed to Mark Suster’s post on MBAs and start ups, which I really believe is a real must read for people thinking about MBAs and are interested in start ups / venture capital.

I know about 5 MBAs I went to school with who are either now working with or have started a start up. I know a bunch more that went to B school the last few years after myself and are doing the start up thing. I also know a couple of ex-Yahoo!’s who have left Yahoo! to start really successful, venture funded and in some cases acquired start ups who happened to have MBAs as well. There’s also a bunch of friends I have in North America who are MBAs who are working in or have started companies. So it is possible to have an MBA and do the start up thing well – in fact I believe that so strongly that I’m leaving Yahoo! in the next few months to do start my own company. Then there’s Loic Le Meur, Ballmer (though he left after one year at Stanford), Zuck might not have an MBA but bet your socks that Sheryl Sandberg does, and if you really want a list press me and I’ll put together a hundred start ups who have MBAs at the core.

An MBA can stand in your way as well. I remember hearing James Hong (who started Hot or Not) saying that he didn’t like saying he had an MBA because he was worried that people might think he was a prick (or something like that). A lot of MBAs have an ego problem. I remember being at B school, and I was working at the same time, and thinking “man, some of these people are really egotistical for not having done very much”. But then success breads ego so there’s not much you can do about that. There’s also the costs, doing a start up can mean having to take a reduced (if any) salary, and with a B school debt that can be difficult. There’s also age, coming out of B school people are in their late 20s early 30s and there’s pressure to have a family etc and doing that while working in a start up can be a difficult balancing act.

Here’s the solution that worked for me, I went to work for a big brand in a space I was interested in, I made some investments, I saved and I paid off debt – I was also lucky. Now I’ve got some runway. I’m able to leave the security of having a full time gig to go for it myself. I’m not saying that this is the only solution, but if you’re committed to doing the start up thing you can find a way.

A lot of people say you can’t teach entrepreneurship, I don’t prescribe to this theory. I agree that you can’t teach passion or tenacity, creativity or dedication, all of these things you need to be an entrepreneur, but you can teach fundamentals and the basics around starting a sustainable business and I do believe Business School can do a good job with this. The right Business school also does give you a solid network and this can help you succeed as well but it’s not a panacea, it doesn’t guarantee success or the right job in the right company – that takes hard work.

Seeing myspace bring in former facebook staff do I think it’s going to help myspace take over facebook? No. Seeing AOL bring in former Googlers do I think it’s going to help AOL take over Google (or MSN or Yahoo!)? No. Seeing MSN bring in former Yahoo!’s do I think it’s going to help MSN search take over Yahoo! search. No.

People work together with products and markets. You can’t just swap the market by swapping over the people. It doesn’t work like that. People leave organisations for reasons. Van Natta left facebook because (IMHO) facebook brought in someone better. People get stale and it’s hard to re-innovate or reinvent to create the next wave of success. Just cause someone had success at a competitor doesn’t mean they’ll have success with you. All it means is that they understand what the competition did well.

I believe to truly take market share, bring in someone who doesn’t have the same “we did things this way at the competition” crutch. You need someone who can look and see what the competition does well, but also where the competition is weak. You need someone who can think laterally and spark innovation rather then just jockey for position.

This is about platforms platform. Things are being built on top of twitter. I rarely use the twitter web interface to interact with twitter, I user tweetdeck, I used twitterfox in the past and I’ll probably use a couple of other tools. In fact businesses are being built around twitter, like stocktwits which, according to the WSJ is going to start charging users 20 USD/ month. Howard Lindzon’s a smart guy, he’s started and sold businesses before, and I trust this will probably be another win for Howard.

Facebook is also trying to be a platform, opening up Facebook connect so users can login to sites using their Facebook login is a pretty sweet move. A lot of sites are already incorporating this technology and I’m sure others are all over this. There are also a number of businesses that are trying to leverage facebook’s platform capabilities.

The iPhone, Blackberry, Google and yes Yahoo! too are all trying to open up to applications and become platforms. It’s a very cool movement but I think it’s one that’s not completely understood yet. Like network effects, where you need people to be using the channel to make it a worthwhile experience, application effects mean that you need a number of smart, cool interactions before the platform is legitimate and not just trying to be a platform.

Window’s did this extremely well in the 80s when so many applications were built to work on Windows. It will be interesting to see which platforms app developers will chose to be the success stories of the next ten years. There’s been a lot of discussion, analysis and work done on the effect of network effects but I can’t really see a lot of work on application effects, would be great to see some analysis and theory on what makes a platform application worthy.

But the one thing I can’t get over is the impact of the web on this year’s election. So far we’ve seen

• The “Yes We Can” video on YouTube months ago
• Signed onto the Facebook groups in favour of Obama
• Checked out Obama’s flickr
• Read Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson’s blog posts (among others) on the candidates and the policies
• Checking out Yahoo’s Political Dashboard
• Watched the debates on CNN online the day after the debates – and fact checking what the candidates said
• following the twitter broadcasts for the election
• watching clips of Matt Damon rip the potential VP
• and Saturday Night Live – my God Tina Fey looks like a double, surely she’d make a better veep candidate?

The bottom line is this election has been heavily impacted by the web, the information that those of us who live outside of the US – and in fact people who live in red and blue states – have access to is phenomenal and is likely to only grow. Also the access to data and opinions has also grown exponentially through the internet.

Even this late in the day we’re able to see new online tools come across online to help citizens and users make their decision – Obama’s just launched a tax calculator to combat the remarks that people will face hire taxes under an Obama administration, unreal. Freedom and information are totally empowering, I don’t think Obama could have come this far without the internet, can’t wait to see how this thing finishes.