Una franquicia emblemática de software de escritorio, líder indiscutido en su nicho y claramente el jugador establecido a vencer ha decidido que la pata online de su negocio es demasiado grande para ignorar: Adobe lanzó Photoshop Express, destinado claramente a competir con Flickr, Picasa, Facebook photos, y todos los demás.

Lo estoy probando, la integración con Picasa promete, pero si querés leer una reseña sugiero la columna de Walt Mossberg en WSJ, siempre son muy objetivas.

Más interesante que el servicio específico es la tendencia del mercado. Claramente tendremos cada vez más aplicaciones críticas online, dependiendo menos y menos de los programas instalados en una terminal específica. Las ventajas de esto son fáciles de notar, desde portabilidad, limitación de overlap y sincronización, velocidad de actualización e integración entre servicios.

Me divierte mucho, stay tunned.

Update: probé el servicio y lo amo con delirio.

Etiquetas: business, tech

Google aparenta estar tan preocupado por una posible fusión entre Microsoft y Yahoo que ya empezó a hacer una movida legal para impedirlo. Incluso el WSJ reporta que Eric Shmidt, CEO de Google, llamó a Jerry Yang (co-fundador y actual CEO de Yahoo) para ofrecerle ayuda en repeler invasores indeseados.

Mientras que eso en si mismo pareciera indicar que es una buena idea, yo dudaría. Es más bien una suerte de takeover hostile, sin mucho sentido en términos de choque cultural pero sí en términos de masa total. Sin embargo cuando ese tamaño no es adquirido orgánicamente tiende a ser difícil de manejar.

La nueva unidad online de MSFT-Yahoo ciertamente no abarcaría todo el negocio tradicional del gigante de software, pero pasaría a ser el g grupo con más tráfico de internet, aún perdiendo en la parte más redituable del negocio, las búsquedas.

Algunos números cortesía de Wired nos ayudan a entender el contexto competitivo:

• Yahoo's stock price three months ago, versus its stock price today: $31/$28
• Microsoft's stock price three months ago, versus its stock price today: $37/$31
• Yahoo's current market capitalization: $37.10 billion
• Microsoft's current market capitalization: $283.96 billion
• Number of Yahoo full-time employees as of the fourth quarter earnings report (before the recently announced 1,000 layoffs): 14,300
• Number of Microsoft full-time employees as of the fourth quarter: 79,000
• Combined search market share of Yahoo and Microsoft (according to Nielsen): 31.5 percent
• Google's search market share as of Dec. 2007: 56.3 percent
• Number of unique visitors to Microsoft Domains in Dec. 2007 (according to Compete): 120,216,186
• Number of unique visitors to Yahoo.com in Dec. 2007 (according to Compete): 133,685,137
• The ranking of a combined Microsoft/Yahoo in terms of domain level traffic (as measured by page views to Yahoo.com and all of Microsoft's domains): No. 1 at 70 billion
• The number of page views a merged Microsoft/Yahoo would get over its closest competitor, MySpace: 35 billion
• Value of each Yahoo visitor based on Microsoft's $44.6B offer: $1,200/visitor
• Dollar amount of each Facebook user based on Microsoft's $240 million stake (and $15B valuation): $306/user

El volumen total adquirido sigue siendo irrisorio comparado con el share de Google. También es ridículo que Google pretenda frenar esto desde el lado del anti-monopolio: ciertamente seguirán dominando el mercado de avisos de texto (AdWords), mientras que el conglomerado nuevo tendrá atrapado el (fallado) mercado de banner ads.

No veo que la fusión revierta esa tendencia. Se podrá convertir en un error muy caro para Microsoft e implicar el fin del sueño para Yahoo.

Etiquetas: business, tech

El valor de una red es exponencial en relación a la cantidad de nodos que tiene. Esto es una verdad irrefutable. Sin embargo en el caso de las redes sociales se debe considerar además el valor de esos nodos.

Para sitios como LinkedIn es crítico que las conexiones entre profesionales sean valiosas, que quienes conozcan a quienes vos conocés sean realmente socios de trabajo signficantes, de modo tal de poder pedir recomendaciones, referencias o presentaciones y ellas tengan algún valor.

En el caso de Facebook el valor de los nodos es menos crítico pero igual de interesante. No solo sirve entender quién conoce a quién sino que es valioso que esas conexiones no sean triviales o superficiales al extremo. Si todos tuvieramos a todos entre nuestros contactos dejaría de tener relevancia el listado de amigos de cada uno.

Esta premisa aplica para el valor de la red en su totalidad, representa el valor que tiene esa red para su creador o administrador. El óptimo para quienes manejan una red social es que cada nodo tenga el valor más alto posible.

Para un miembro individual los incentivos son opuestos. Mientras más conexiones tenés más valor tiene la red para vos. El óptimo para el individuo es maximizar la cantidad de intercambios entre personas, no maximizar el peso del vínculo.

Esto tendería hacia una trivialización completa del valor del cyber-networking, pero el límite nunca se va a aproximar a infinito porque los participantes de las redes no están 24hs por día agregando gente a sus listados.

Del mismo modo que los mercados sólo son perfectos en la academia y las oportunidades de arbitraje existen, en teoría las redes sociales no tienen valor en el largo plazo, pero en la práctica son increíblemente útiles (y divertidas).

Etiquetas: business, sociedad, trash

Hace más de un año que fui a tomar vino sin escupir al Alvear Palace Hotel. Tenía otra roommate, otra compañía, estuvo divertido.

Etiquetas: business, sociales

El casamiento fue un 10, more on that later.

Ahora mismo solo quiero hablar del viaje.

La ida fue un poco lenta pero razonable. Vinieron los chicos a casa para festejar que Ale M. entró a más de un prestigioso programa para doctorarse en Economía en USA, financiamiento incluido. 1am, con más de una copa encima, voy a Retiro esperando tomar el micro de las 230am. Tengo suerte y llego justo para el de las 130am, con lo cual 530am me encuentro en la terminal de ómnibus de Rosario. Me sentí Zoolander cuando va a visitar a su padre y hermanos a una mina de carbón todo lookeado y con una Samsonite con rueditas. Yo estaba con remera rosa escote-en-v de Kosiuko, campera estilo militar de Zara, pantalones cargo de Airborn y una valijita igual. Parecía una propaganda de TNT. Huí hacia un bar externo, tomé un café y leí Economist hasta que se hizo la hora.


A las 815am (en vez de 730am como estaba estipulado) partimos hacia Ascochinga, un pueblo cerca de Santa Catalina, donde estaba el hotel en que se quedaría la mayoría de los amigos de mis primos. El micro en el que fuimos era el más lento de la historia del transporte motorizado. Tardamos 9hs en hacer un viaje que usualmente demanda 6. Encima en una parada de rutina eligieron una estación de servicio con una sola vendedora y un micro lleno de barras de Estudiantes. Nos dejaban entrar de a 4, estuvimos una hora perdiendo tiempo para comprar algo de comer.


En teoría ese mismo micro nos llevaba y traía del casamiento, a 13kms de Ascochinga. Cuando estamos llegando nos enteramos que no les había avisado nada, y lo que es peor, se negaban a hacerlo por miedo a romper el micro. Conclusión: nos dejaron a pata. Tuvimos que empezar frenéticamente a coordinar auto particulares complementado con combis para poder tener transporte hasta el lugar. (Buen trabajo, Martín C!)


La vuelta fue más divertida todavía: el micro que nos llevaba a Rosario llegó 415pm en vez de 330pm, tardamos 8hs en llegar, muertos, a Rosario. Mi ilusión era tomarme un micro tipo 8pm y estar 2-3am durmiendo en mi casa. Resulta que no había espacio en ninguno hasta las 3am, en una empresa de segunda. Lo acepté y un amigo me hospedó durante 2hs en su casa, al menos para dormir un poco. (Gari y Teté, les debo una. Gato, la intención es lo que cuenta, gracias!)


Por supuesto que no podía salir todo bien. A las 630am, cuando deberíamos haber estado llegando, se rompió un eje del micro, a la altura de Campana. 40mins después pasó uno de la misma línea, lechero, y levantó la mitad de los pasajeros. Claro que no entramos, así que terminé sentado en el pasillo durante los últimos 80mins de viaje.

Llegué 915am a mi casa y 1030am al laburo. Feliz.

Etiquetas: barcelona, business, economía, familia, personal, sociales, travel

Nunca me canso de hurtar articulos del Economist. Tengo un gusto especial por artículo críticos sobre la economía kirchnerista:

Tucking in to the good times
Dec 19th 2006 | BUENOS AIRES
From The Economist print edition

The durability of economic recovery has surprised many. But is the government mortgaging the country's future?

IN DECEMBER five years ago, crowds of Argentines angry at years of deflation and recession took to the streets of Buenos Aires and ousted the president, Fernando de la Rúa. Amid chaotic scenes, three further presidents came and went in ten days, one of them declaring the biggest-ever sovereign debt default. In what a century ago was the world's seventh-richest country, the economy shrank by 15% in the year to March 2002, poverty rose from 38% to 56% and unemployment climbed to 21%.

To the surprise of many, recovery from this national catastrophe has been swift. Since the nadir in March 2002, Argentina's GDP has grown by 45%, an average of 8.6% a year. “You have to look back to the Argentine golden age to see this [rate of growth],” says Ricardo Delgado of Ecolatina, a consultancy. “No one was expecting it.”

On the streets of Buenos Aires, the change is tangible. Cars and white goods are flying out of the showrooms thanks to cheap credit. Cinemas and restaurants are packed at weekends. Seaside resorts are heavily booked for the southern-hemisphere summer. Unemployment has fallen to 10.2% (excluding people on make-work programmes).

The question, as it has been for the past four years, is how long the growth can continue. The debate has an ideological edge. Supporters of the fixed exchange-rate that brought growth and then collapse in the 1990s have poured scorn on the sustainability of the recovery. Fans of Néstor Kirchner, the president since 2003, like to claim that Argentina will continue to grow apace because it shrugged off the IMF's advice and is following “heterodox” policies.

Many economists in Argentina are now coming round to the view that the country can continue growing at a reasonable rate—partly because some of the policies are less “heterodox” than is claimed.

At a brutal cost, the collapse rebalanced the economy. A steep devaluation and the debt default turned deficits in the public finances and the current account into surpluses. Roberto Lavagna, the finance minister from 2002 to 2005, kept spending under control. The government relied mainly on monetary policy to boost demand. The central bank stopped the peso from appreciating, issuing pesos to buy up exporters' dollars. The government meets its fiscal targets partly by taxing farm exports, which are unusually profitable because of the artificially cheap peso and high world prices.

These policies have had the effect of supercharging growth. Their obvious drawback is inflation, which began to rise again in 2004 as spare capacity was used up (see chart). Mr Kirchner's response was to bully producers with “voluntary” price-freezes, outright price controls and export bans. Similar tactics caused several foreign investors, such as France's Suez and EDF, in privatised utilities to pack up and go.

Mr Kirchner's critics said these measures would halt investment. Anyway, they said, investment was of the wrong kind, in housing rather than factories. So far they have been wrong. Argentina does lack foreign investment. But its own smaller companies have moved quickly to expand capacity in response to demand. The boom in construction and tourism has created many new jobs. Overall, investment has almost doubled as a percentage of GDP since 2002, from 11% to 21.4%, enough to sustain growth of 4% a year. “Most people thought that security, credibility and structural reform were the key to attracting investment,” says Javier Alvaredo of MVAS Macroeconomía, a consultancy. “But it's actually profits.”

Some serious doubts remain. The biggest worry is energy. Because of the price controls Argentines pay less than half as much for energy as their neighbours in South America's southern cone, according to Daniel Montamat, a former energy secretary. In this industry, the arguments of Mr Kirchner's critics ring true. Consumption has risen but investment has collapsed. Argentina has depleted its gas reserves, from 15 years' worth of production to fewer than ten. Industry sources warn of blackouts in 2007 if weather conditions are unfavourable. Fear of blackouts has suppressed investment in energy-intensive businesses, such as steel, aluminium and petrochemicals.

Other bottlenecks will make it harder to sustain growth even at a more modest pace. The economy is still benefiting from private investment in infrastructure under Carlos Menem in the 1990s. Now roads are again becoming congested. There are some shortages of skilled workers, too.

After Mr Lavagna's sacking, fiscal policy has become looser. Provincial governments are already running a deficit. On the other hand, the central bank is quietly tightening monetary policy. Many assume that Mr Kirchner will relax price controls and allow the peso to appreciate after an election next October at which he is likely to seek a second term.

The risk is that inflation might then take off, unless the authorities act to slow the economy. But officials remain bullish. “What do we have beyond two more good years?” the foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, asks. “We have higher investment than ever before. We have an extended commodity boom. We have cancelled our debt. We have a favourable exchange rate. We have trade and budget surpluses. This growth can be sustained.” At what pace remains to be seen, but it has become harder to doubt the overall argument.

Etiquetas: buenos aires, business, economía

Si mudás a Caballito, horrorizando a todos tus amigos, jodete si te pasa esto.

En mis últimos dos viajes a Montevideo paré en un hotel centrico rodeado de pizzerias y "chiviterías" (juro que les dicen así). Lo único que tienen para almorzar son milanesas napolitana, chivitos y "franfurters" (PANCHOS).

Estoy subsistiendo a base de merluza a la plancha con puré de papas. Puré de calabaza es demasiado sofisticado, ninguno tiene.

Etiquetas: business

Me encanta cuando encuentro un artículo similar a un post mio. Acá va un ejemplo:

Blogging
Going pro

Nov 16th 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
More people are quitting their day jobs to blog for a living

ON HER blog, called Dooce, Heather Armstrong chronicles her life as a disenchanted Mormon in Salt Lake City, her former career as a high-flying web designer in Los Angeles, her pregnancy and postpartum depression, and so on. A year ago, her blog started generating enough advertising revenue to become the main source of income for her family. She is not alone. There are now just enough people like Ms Armstrong to signify a new trend: blogging as a small business.

Until recently, there were two main kinds of blogs. Most of the 57m blogs in existence are personal diaries that happen to be online. These blogs have tiny audiences and make no effort to sell advertising. Services such as Google's AdSense, which places text advertisements on blogs and generates a few cents per mouse click, might bring in some spare change. But according to Pew, an American research organisation, only 7% of bloggers say their main motivation is to make money.

The second main kind of blogs are, in effect, niche magazines that choose to publish in a blog format. These blogs are explicitly run as businesses, with paid staff doing the writing and sales departments selling advertising. The best example is Gawker Media, a stable of blogs that includes Gawker, a New York gossip site, and Gizmodo, a blog devoted to gadgets. Collectively its 14 blogs get 60m page views a month. Such blogs are “the most profitable media business today,” says Jason Calacanis, who runs Weblogs Inc, another stable of popular blogs that he sold to AOL, the web arm of Time Warner, a year ago. His sites, including Engadget, another gadget blog, are “an eight-figure-a-year business” with negligible distribution costs compared with the huge printing and shipping bills of traditional magazines.

Now, however, a third category is emerging: the mom-and-pop blog. “In the old days, we used to be called newsletter publishers,” says Om Malik, a technology writer who quit his job at Business 2.0 magazine in June to work full-time on his blog, GigaOm. He has hired two other writers, and his blog now attracts about 50,000 readers a day, generating “tens of thousands” in monthly revenues. Costs, including salaries, are around $20,000 a month.

One big reason why his blog works as a small business, says Mr Malik, is that an ecosystem of support is appearing. Like Ms Armstrong, he farms out advertising sales and administration to a firm called FM, launched last year by John Battelle, who once ran magazines such as Wired and the Industry Standard. In his old business of magazines, says Mr Battelle, the cost of acquiring an audience was “stupendous”—at Wired it was about $100 per subscriber. The cost of building a readership for a blog, by contrast, is nil. Once you have a lot of readers, however, the bandwidth costs become significant, and most medium-sized blogs cannot afford to hire the sales people needed to generate sufficient revenue. So FM's 15 sales people negotiate with advertisers on behalf of blogs they represent, keeping 40% of the resulting revenues.

For people like Ms Armstrong, who has about 1m visitors to her site a month, this makes blogging worthwhile. But it is not for everybody, she notes. She works about seven hours a day on her site, and continues to work while on holiday. Mr Malik concurs. “It's not easy,” he says. Building his audience has “taken me five years, and a lot of sleepless nights.”

Etiquetas: blogs, business

Mala onda: llegar agotado al hotel y que no tengan listo tu cuarto por un check-in ridículo de 15hs
Buena onda: que te den un upgrade con hidromasaje

Nota: el Four Points by Sheraton Montevideo recibe la calificación de WWW (tres W's de cinco posibles, por un muy lindo edificio, cuarto enorme con vista excelente, mala atención en el front-desk y un desayuno más pobre que el de mi novia con mi heladera vacía - no saben cómo se las rebusca para hacer cosas ricas!)

Etiquetas: business

Salió a la luz un documento interno escrito por Brad Garlinghouse, senir VP de Yahoo! Este tipo de cosas me fascinan. Lean el memo, y después vean este artículo de BusinessWeek para ver el impacto.

Three and half years ago, I enthusiastically joined Yahoo! The magnitude of the opportunity was only matched by the magnitude of the assets. And an amazing team has been responsible for rebuilding Yahoo!

It has been a profound experience. I am fortunate to have been a part of dramatic change for the Company. And our successes speak for themselves. More users than ever, more engaging than ever and more profitable than ever!

I proudly bleed purple and yellow everyday! And like so many people here, I love this company

But all is not well. Last Thursday's NY Times article was a blessing in the disguise of a painful public flogging. While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much needed wake up call. But also a call to action. A clear statement with which I, and far too many Yahoo's, agreed. And thankfully a reminder. A reminder that the measure of any person is not in how many times he or she falls down - but rather the spirit and resolve used to get back up. The same is now true of our Company.

It's time for us to get back up.

I believe we must embrace our problems and challenges and that we must take decisive action. We have the opportunity - in fact the invitation - to send a strong, clear and powerful message to our shareholders and Wall Street, to our advertisers and our partners, to our employees (both current and future), and to our users. They are all begging for a signal that we recognize and understand our problems, and that we are charting a course for fundamental change. Our current course and speed simply will not get us there. Short-term band-aids will not get us there.

It's time for us to get back up and seize this invitation.

I imagine there's much discussion amongst the Company's senior most leadership around the challenges we face. At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to share my take on our current situation and offer a recommended path forward, an attempt to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Recognizing Our Problems

We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone. We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don't talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn't to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.

Our inclination and proclivity to repeatedly hire leaders from outside the company results in disparate visions of what winning looks like -- rather than a leadership team rallying around a single cohesive strategy.

I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

I hate peanut butter. We all should.

We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization. We now operate in an organizational structure -- admittedly created with the best of intentions -- that has become overly bureaucratic. For far too many employees, there is another person with dramatically similar and overlapping responsibilities. This slows us down and burdens the company with unnecessary costs.

Equally problematic, at what point in the organization does someone really OWN the success of their product or service or feature? Product, marketing, engineering, corporate strategy, financial operations... there are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it's not clear if anyone is in charge. This forces decisions to be pushed up - rather than down. It forces decisions by committee or consensus and discourages the innovators from breaking the mold... thinking outside the box.

There's a reason why a centerfielder and a left fielder have clear areas of ownership. Pursuing the same ball repeatedly results in either collisions or dropped balls. Knowing that someone else is pursuing the ball and hoping to avoid that collision - we have become timid in our pursuit. Again, the ball drops.

We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late. Without a clear and focused vision, and without complete clarity of ownership, we lack a macro perspective to guide our decisions and visibility into who should make those decisions. We are repeatedly stymied by challenging and hairy decisions. We are held hostage by our analysis paralysis.

We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.

• YME vs. Musicmatch

• Flickr vs. Photos

• YMG video vs. Search video

• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb

• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets

• Social media vs. 360 and Groups

• Front page vs. YMG

• Global strategy from BU'vs. Global strategy from Int'l

We have lost our passion to win. Far too many employees are "phoning" it in, lacking the passion and commitment to be a part of the solution. We sit idly by while -- at all levels -- employees are enabled to "hang around". Where is the accountability? Moreover, our compensation systems don't align to our overall success. Weak performers that have been around for years are rewarded. And many of our top performers aren't adequately recognized for their efforts.

As a result, the employees that we really need to stay (leaders, risk-takers, innovators, passionate) become discouraged and leave. Unfortunately many who opt to stay are not the ones who will lead us through the dramatic change that is needed.

Solving our Problems

We have awesome assets. Nearly every media and communications company is painfully jealous of our position. We have the largest audience, they are highly engaged and our brand is synonymous with the Internet.

If we get back up, embrace dramatic change, we will win.

I don't pretend there is only one path forward available to us. However, at a minimum, I want to be part of the solution and thus have outlined a plan here that I believe can work. It is my strong belief that we need to act very quickly or risk going further down a slippery slope, The plan here is not perfect; it is, however, FAR better than no action at all.

There are three pillars to my plan:

1. Focus the vision.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership.

3. Execute a radical reorganization.

1. Focus the vision

a) We need to boldly and definitively declare what we are and what we are not.

b) We need to exit (sell?) non core businesses and eliminate duplicative projects and businesses.

My belief is that the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a deliberately sculpted strategy -- that is narrowly focused.

We can't simply ask each BU to figure out what they should stop doing. The result will continue to be a non-cohesive strategy. The direction needs to come decisively from the top. We need to place our bets and not second guess. If we believe Media will maximize our ROI -- then let's not be bashful about reducing our investment in other areas. We need to make the tough decisions, articulate them and stick with them -- acknowledging that some people (users / partners / employees) will not like it. Change is hard.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership

a) Existing business owners must be held accountable for where we find ourselves today -- heads must roll,

b) We must thoughtfully create senior roles that have holistic accountability for a particular line of business (a variant of a GM structure that will work with Yahoo!'s new focus)

c) We must redesign our performance and incentive systems.

I believe there are too many BU leaders who have gotten away with unacceptable results and worse -- unacceptable leadership. Too often they (we!) are the worst offenders of the problems outlined here. We must signal to both the employees and to our shareholders that we will hold these leaders (ourselves) accountable and implement change.

By building around a strong and unequivocal GM structure, we will not only empower those leaders, we will eliminate significant overhead throughout our multi-headed matrix. It must be very clear to everyone in the organization who is empowered to make a decision and ownership must be transparent. With that empowerment comes increased accountability -- leaders make decisions, the rest of the company supports those decisions, and the leaders ultimately live/die by the results of those decisions.

My view is that far too often our compensation and rewards are just spreading more peanut butter. We need to be much more aggressive about performance based compensation. This will only help accelerate our ability to weed out our lowest performers and better reward our hungry, motivated and productive employees.

3. Execute a radical reorganization

a) The current business unit structure must go away.

b) We must dramatically decentralize and eliminate as much of the matrix as possible.

c) We must reduce our headcount by 15-20%.

I emphatically believe we simply must eliminate the redundancies we have created and the first step in doing this is by restructuring our organization. We can be more efficient with fewer people and we can get more done, more quickly. We need to return more decision making to a new set of business units and their leadership. But we can't achieve this with baby step changes, We need to fundamentally rethink how we organize to win.

Independent of specific proposals of what this reorganization should look like, two key principles must be represented:

Blow up the matrix. Empower a new generation and model of General Managers to be true general managers. Product, marketing, user experience & design, engineering, business development & operations all report into a small number of focused General Managers. Leave no doubt as to where accountability lies.

Kill the redundancies. Align a set of new BU's so that they are not competing against each other. Search focuses on search. Social media aligns with community and communications. No competing owners for Video, Photos, etc. And Front Page becomes Switzerland. This will be a delicate exercise -- decentralization can create inefficiencies, but I believe we can find the right balance.

I love Yahoo! I'm proud to admit that I bleed purple and yellow. I'm proud to admit that I shaved a Y in the back of my head.

My motivation for this memo is the adamant belief that, as before, we have a tremendous opportunity ahead. I don't pretend that I have the only available answers, but we need to get the discussion going; change is needed and it is needed soon. We can be a stronger and faster company - a company with a clearer vision and clearer ownership and clearer accountability.

We may have fallen down, but the race is a marathon and not a sprint. I don't pretend that this will be easy. It will take courage, conviction, insight and tremendous commitment. I very much look forward to the challenge.

So let's get back up.

Catch the balls.

And stop eating peanut butter.

Etiquetas: business, video

Etiquetas: business, fotos

Extendí el viaje y no tenía vuelo para volver... finalmente anoche me confirmaron que se abrió un hueco en el de las 6am. Una paja, tuve que estar 4am en el aeropuerto. Encima tenía ganas de ir a una Expo que hay en Asunción, y volver por la tarde. El problema es que no tenía ninguna garantía, quizás me tenía que quedar hasta el martes por la noche! Ni en pedo... así que ya estoy en casa.

Para colmo anoche el hotel se quedó sin internet. Me quema la cabeza cuando pase eso, ¡de la peor manera!

Etiquetas: business

Etiquetas: business, deportes

• Me hice un masaje porque desde el domingo que no puedo mirar para la izquierda.
• Me tocaron todo. TODO. Fue genial.
• Viene room service: sopa de esparragos con entrée de suprema de ave, mar y tierra.
• Este artículo de Bill Simmons, de Page 2, es lo más gracioso del mundo
• Creo que es porque estoy sensible de tanto que extraño a mi hijo, pero cosas como esto me enternecen al infinito
  

Etiquetas: business

La reunión finalmente no fue en Estoril sino en Cascais, cerca de ahí. Es un pueblito costero muy paquete, con un hotel lindísimo llamado Albatroz.

Voy a empezar por el medio del viaje: Portugal 0 (3) - Inglaterra 0 (1).

Estaba cansadísimo pero igual hice lo mejor que pude, intenté no decaer ni ceder ante el cansancio, para poder aprovechar el viaje al máximo.

Hablando un poco del Mundial, aclaro acá que la racha de Felipao se cortó, ese partido contó como empate. Una lástima, me encantan ese tipo de records, especialmente cómo marca la diferencia que hace un entrenador. Que no tuvimos en esta copa.

De todas maneras no se puede ignorar la eliminación de Argentina.

Acabo de oir en la radio una gran verdad: "A Bilardo el papelito de Lehmann no se le escapaba".

Para mi las claves de la derrota fueron claras:

• No se preparó bien la llegada al partido con Alemania, Messi debería haber estado para entrar
• Los cambios defensivos de Pekerman no son aceptables
• Mala suerte la salida del Pato, le deberían haber inyectado algo y listo
• Fuimos muy superiores pero la pelota no entró, no deberíamos haber llegado a eso
• Leo Franco es buen arquero, pero tiene que al menos amagar a atajar, aunque él diga que los grandes pateadores cambian el palo

Por lo menos el sábado tuvimos premio consuelo. No es lo mismo quedarse afuera y que también quede afuera Brasil e Inglaterra, en la misma ronda. No sacó la pena pero al menos ayudó un poco.

Me alegró mucho el festejo Portugués, a la noche hubo un gran festejo en Lisboa, pero no podía evitar pensar: "Ese podría ser yo."

Hace mucho que no veo un festejo tan desaforado. Realmente era envidiable, contagioso. ¿El grito de guerra? "Portugal 0lé, Portugal olé, Portugal olé"

Por otro lado los brasileros en Portugal son miles, del mismo modo que en España hay argentinos.

De todas maneras sostuve todo el día que me alegraba de sobremanera, y exclamaba "Allez les Bleus!" Me di cuenta después que eso podría ser interpretado como aliento para el partido Portugal-Francia.

Sé que están todos sensibles, pero para mi la final es Alemania-Francia y ganan los locales.

Etiquetas: business, personal, portugal, work

Etiquetas: business, familia, mujeres, personal, portugal, work

Estoy escribiendo esto desde una sala de reuniones en el Hotel Albatroz-Cascais, cerca de Estoril, obviamente en Portugal.

Iba a poner más pero me voy a almorzar!

Etiquetas: business, portugal, work

Parece que quieren meterse con todo el mundo. Ebay correctamente empezó a hacer maniobras defensivas, además del sistema de pagos tipo Paypal "Gbuy", ahora los señores 'hago todo' van a lanzar una extensión del sistema AdSense.

Sería pasar a tener una red de gente afiliada (sitios) que recomiendan productos. Es más que una publicidad, más bien una recomendación directa de compra. Es como que yo ponga un link en este post, dicendo "Esto es bueno, clickeá para comprarlo."

Además de tener mucho más valor para quien paga el aviso, permite que Google cierre más el loop, habilitando la transacción con Gbuy.

Etiquetas: business, personal

Para mi que llega un punto donde hay dos personas haciéndose café en Google y tienen una conversación más o menos así:

"¿Nosotros no tenemos una página del arte del azulejo, no?" Lo miran con cara de nada y dicen: "No, no tenemos." "¿Lo hacemos?", se encoje de hombros y dice "Y dale, total."

Así nacen cosas como Google Finance.

Etiquetas: business