How Microsoft will kill Yahoo's cloying culture
Posts on Yahoo's corporate blog and its internal Backyard website seem to be written in a parallel, purple-tinted universe, one where everything is "Great! Just great!" The company's stock tumbles, pending layoffs, and hostile takeovers are nowhere to be seen. Why? Well, all that's just not nice. And nice is what has been killing Yahoo, an ex-Yahoo who's now at Microsoft tells Valleywag.
The ex-Yahoo writes:
Microsoft is not afraid to put bad news in its electronic newsletter (it routinely gives us stories of how Dell customers reject Vista or of Xbox live network failures). Yahoo (Heidi, Brian or whomever) would NEVER write anything even remotely negative on Backyard. And I think more than a few Yahoos will appreciate when the cloying, dopey, and frankly infantilising tone of internal communications (the "Yahoo Voice") is replaced with a more straightforward, professional style that understands they can (and must) handle the truth.
