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.

I started wondering about whether you need to support local teams when you play for a local team. Tom Brady was spotted wearing a New York cap while he played for New England (Karma may have gotten to him with his recent injury). Michael Jordan tried out for the White Sox while on a hiatus from the Bulls, but if he had played for the Dodgers or the Tigers would Chicago Basketball fans have been less welcoming when he came back to the Bulls? I find Cleveland fans attention and venom towards LBJ amusing, if he takes a franchise from nowhere to the NBA finals in two years my take is let him do what he wants.

But I also started thinking about the similarities between this and when you work for one company and use products from a rival. If you work for Nissan and drive a Toyota, if you work for Microsoft and use a Mac, or, heaven forbid, if you work for Yahoo and use Google, does this make you disloyal?

Personally, I think its okay for an individual to use a rival product. With the caveat that you’re using something because it’s better and meets your needs better (whether in terms of cost or design or some other important feature) and that you use your own products to a point where you know what the market needs are and work to your best to improve the company you work for.

However, one company that has kept its doors closed and managed to succeed is Apple. iTunes has to be the most closed bit of software I know. And DRM is just plain evil, very evil. But yet Apple kills in this market and is showing no signs of letting up.

So my theory is that design can trump good and evil in the short term. If you ensure that users have a great experience, and that it’s simple, efficient and effective users and the community in general will overlook the fact that it’s closed, proprietary and evil – how else would you explain DRM? The iPhone is another example of closed and well designed but yet super successful. The fact that Apple was bricking unlocked phones is another great example of evil but well designed.

Is this sustainable? I don’t believe so. I believe if someone comes up with a really useful, easy, super smooth system that has a wide variety of content and is good, open, basically DRM free, then iTunes could go down. And if someone (RIM/Nokia I’m looking at you) comes up with a phone that meets the standards Apple has set for usability for browsing and interacting online on your handheld device and is open as well, well then Apple could go down there too. It’s not easy, because Apple’s set the design bar so high, but it’s not impossible.

At Yahoo! we have pool, foosball and ping pong tables and though I rarely get the chance to play these days it’s good to know they’re there. I’ve had some good conversations about life, work, philosophy and politics around these tables. One of the best times I’ve had at Yahoo! has been when we went out to play golf in the middle of Soho, not only was the golf fun but in winning the closest to the pin competition I’ve been inspired to play more golf. There was also some great work-related conversation that evening in a relaxed non-traditional environment.

And then I read about the Google Games (hat tip: Brad Feld) where students from MIT and Harvard came in and played various physical, mental and just plain fun games. Great recruitment technique if you ask me.

Last week I came across an article in the London Business School Business Strategy Review regarding the role of play at work. It’s weird but I’ve always felt that having a playful outlet was important to being able to work effectively. And this article makes that case.

If/When I start my own company I think play will play an important part in recruitment, engagement and strategy. If for no other reason then the fact that its fun and we spend way too much time at work not to have fun there.

More information on the Flickr blog and there’s a video group that has some great content already.
Personally I think this will be different to the other video sites already online (thinking YouTube and Facebook) because the community on Flickr is pretty strong and puts up solid content. People on Flickr are passionate about photos and getting the same people to put up videos will lead to great video content.

Loving Dunstan’s beach close ups for example.