Holy cow with the grandiosity of the title I would expect a master 5 year plan about how Pipes will take over the world. Instead it's just another 'aggregate my aggregators non-problem' that will be relevant to a fraction of a fraction of nerds. Of course as soon as the value prop for the piped companies becomes lower than the value prop for Yahoo they will simply turn them off. But that's not to worry, because the value prop for the piped content will ALWAYS be higher than for Yahoo. How exactly does one go "all in" on schlepping around other people's content? Yahoo was in fact just that, to begin with...
Parent was disagreeing with all the downvotes this story had, and you said you had 'saved' (which, in HN, means you had to upvote, since that's the only way to add a story to the saved list) this story because of the comments.
So my point was that instead of upvoting to save the story, you could've just bookmarked it.
I think you need the re-examine the term "all in".
All In implies something like IBM with System/360. Spending more than annual revenue (5,000,000,000? in 1960's - I can't find a great source for the actual number)on a product line that still drives significant profit 40 years later... That's all-in. Buying IFTTT so people can post tweets to Twitter and App.net? Not quite in the same league.
The blog post doesn't make a compelling business case beyond "it'd be cool". If Yahoo! were to buy IFTTT for the purpose of consolidating their mobile experience (and I'm not even sure what that is supposed to entail), what's to stop Twitter, Facebook and all that from turning their feeds into the service off? Twitter have already pulled that kind of stunt.
Currently, IFTTT is a fun toy for hackers and power users who want to do slightly off-the-wall mashups. If it got bought up and became a more critical part of the infrastructure of a big company like Yahoo!, you can bet there'd be some intervarsity tech company politics going on.
This post does not deliver what it promises in the title. It gives no reason why Marissa Mayer should acquire IFTTT. It's not particularly insightful either.
I'm trying to guess why it has 53 votes. The only explanation I can come up with is that there must be a number of IFTTT fans who upvoted it just because it praises IFTTT. That would mean there is a high likelihood that this comment would be downvoted.
That is an idiotic reason for downvoting a comment. However, I wouldn't downvote you if I could.
By the way, as the CEO of Justin.tv you may want to be more mindful of your personal image. I wouldn't want to see comments like the above if I were your investor or your employee.
> I wouldn't want to see comments like the above if I were your investor or your employee.
Why? He called you out and he's 100% correct, why would it matter who he is? Personally, I think it speaks to his "personal image" that he doesn't give a shit about your feel-good CEO image demands. There's also no shortage of hilariousness that you think him taking a shot at you lowers his "personal image"; no harm done for telling the truth, you just don't see it that way because you're on the wrong end of it.
If I were shopping around for a company to invest in and I came across a comment like that, I'd be more likely to toss my money at him. You know why? Because I know I'm dealing with a person, not someone repressing all personal feelings and emotion to create this caricature of someone that they're really not. A person like that is more invested in their failures and successes, and, in my experience, is a better person to work for.
Becoming the leader of a company, as you know, is not a magic threshold after which you have to change who you are. I wish we'd get over this ridiculous assumption that we must hold people to a higher standard based on who they are. It underlies pretty much all of politics, and makes it a newsworthy event when Obama is seen drinking a beer. It's depressing.
"I wish we'd get over this ridiculous assumption that we must hold people to a higher standard based on who they are."
I agree that it would be nice, jspthrowaway. Unfortunately you, Emmett (whom I've met in person), and I are not representative of all investors, employees, user, or customers.
Emmett quoted me incorrectly, and made questionable use of the downvote button (which comes with great responsibility, especially if you are a YC partner like he is). To his credit he probably went back to work and forgot about this thread.
> and made questionable use of the downvote button
In your opinion. I think it was right on target. Complaining about downvotes is in the guidelines as something to be avoided, and predicting their onset is a slightly differently colored shade of the same thing. It manipulates peoples' reactions to your comment, and you are not at all oblivious to that.
I'm actually glad he told you why, even though it cost him karma. I wish every downvote came with a reason.
> (which comes with great responsibility, especially if you are a YC partner like he is)
I laughed out loud at this. It's the downvote button, not a loaded gun.
I'll summarize.
The CEO of justin.tv, who you've met personally (as if that's important to the issue at hand), downvoted you and you've gone after his personal image as a result. Now you're citing his responsibility "as a YC partner" to act fairly. Can we circle back toward you just not liking being downvoted eventually?
Your comment was so devoid of insight that the downvote jab at the end just became icing on the cake, and I agree with it being called out. People upvoted the article. It's a dumb article. Commenting on the people upvoting the dumb article and characterizing them as mindless IFTTT fans is just noise, and this entire thread which has now launched off from your noise is even more noise.
Because I'm pedantic this way... I just need to know...
ggp wrote: I downvoted you just for the jab about "that will mean this gets downvoted".
I don't get how that gets you to write:
Why? He called you out and he's 100% correct, why would it matter who he is? --> he's 100% correct about what? what claim did he make? He certainly didn't seem to make any claim about it not mattering who he is.
no harm done for telling the truth, you just don't see it that way because you're on the wrong end of it. --> What truth, and just what is diego on the wrong end of? ggp made no claims, if anything, just insinuated that one shouldn't make comments about some company or product's fanbase. Or I'm not sure what. It's certainly not an outright clear claim of anything to me, just an explanation of what he just did. And what is diego on the wrong end of? Judging from the community reaction, people are agreeing more with diego than not.
And now my being pedantic will get me more downvoted, especially because I'm contributing to something so off-topic and non-value-adding? I just want to understand what it is you're saying because my mind felt like it just experienced a GPF.
I see a lot of people commenting now and then about how HN is not as nice or civil as it used to be anymore. Am I contributing to it or pointing it out?
But something that is worth discussing.
Becoming the leader of a company, as you know, is not a magic threshold after which you have to change who you are.
I see lots of examples out there that seem to disagree. There are lots of anecdotes about how Mark Zuckerberg had to take CEO coaching to be able to do his job. Stories I read about Marissa Mayer when she was named Yahoo's CEO said that she was not CEO material because of how she was unable to lead people, then I read further stories quoting people who said that was the old Marissa Mayer before she matured. I read another lengthy article about how Steve Jobs would not have been the high-quality CEO 2.0 he was at Apple if he didn't have the interim experience at Pixar to refine his CEO style and skills. And I can go on and on about the stories I've been reading. So it's difficult for me to agree with you on that statement.
edit: I mean, if this really were the case, I don't think we'd see blog posts like this one that are so respected: http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-diff... I think it's quite natural that becoming a leader requires you to change who you are, unless you were a natural at it. And part of that change includes how you have to carry yourself and present yourself to others and in the public eye. It's part of leading. One of the best articles I've read on the subject I think is an interview that happened with the leader of the Firefox effort, because he was originally so introverted.
I'd suggest also that maybe he would be better off fixing his website. From my iPad where I click any of the links in the footer I get a 404, here's the about link as an example:
I know 3 startups trying to solve aggregation of metrics for analytics.
I worked for a management consulting company and produced such a system based on aggregating data from across a global corporate network and producing dashboards in SharePoint.
Yahoo could have an enormous impact on KPIs, dashboards and metrics for consumers and business were they to want to. And with it, one hell of a revenue stream.
IFTTT could solve data/metric aggregation for consumers, marketeers and other less technical users.
And if an export from IFTTT could produce a Yahoo Pipe, then a developer (or slightly more skilled user - a good Excel user perhaps) could then make it do even more.
It could be used to read from Excel. From CSV. From SharePoint. From databases. From web pages on the internet and intranet. Everything.
Aggregate news headlines concerning your company. Create cohort charts with data from different and unconnected systems. Combine data from servers to mailing list campaigns to observe impact much quicker and to identify fully which campaigns work best. Or just grab the numbers from many systems to find out which system is showing the wrong value.
So much is possible that companies struggle with today because their data is siloed in disconnected systems... or some of it is external and they have no interface to it.
Glue between Twitter and App.net? That's just trivial. A real prize will be to aggregate anything and everything and allow it to be processed before reporting on it.
It's not glamorous... but I can say from experience that the company I worked for successfully sold the product I made for £50k licenses to large companies. The demand is there.
Not at all, I'm really excited by all of them. Particularly as they may make this capability available to really small companies and consumers. I dislike that this stuff is currently just a large enterprise capability.
I like this comment better than the OP because it contains some real specifics of how the integration could make life better for real customers and, by extension, Yahoo. It would be interesting to see how Yahoo would see something like that.
I worked for a management consulting company and produced such a system based on aggregating data from across a global corporate network and producing dashboards in SharePoint.
No. But a few of our clients did use their web parts for dashboard.
What I build was an assortment of plugins to products (Project Server, Excel for SharePoint, SharePoint) as well as some simple scrapers (HTML, XML and CSV from web sites and windows shares). These were either event triggered or attached to timers.
Data was extracted from all of the backend systems and then deposited in a local database, and the local databases (usually office or department specific) were then rolled up nightly to produce the HQ view of all of this data.
Finally, that data was dumped into OLAP cubes and surfaced through reporting web parts into SharePoint so that people could slice and dice however they wanted.
And now think of what IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes can do.
Right, so they're just missing a reporting layer to act on the output of all of that, potentially a database if they want to add trending.
When I say "I built" I mean that I designed it, coded it, delivered it. We were only a small 2 person team, though we had support assistance from a couple of developers in other timezones to support multi-national clients.
DeliveryHub wasn't solely a technical solution; sure it could trend any data on your intranet and inside your project management software. The real selling point was that we shipped a suite of charts and reports designed by project and programme managers.
Every business wanted to produce those reports, but none had systems that gave them a record of their data that allowed them to generate such reports.
Sales were easy, and the only factor that limited sales potential was that Pcubed as a services company never sold software without headcount. I understand why they did that, but never agreed with it.
And if you're an investor then I know one of them is currently looking for funding. That one is based in London and has started with web accessible data that can be scraped and then storing that data to specifically create trend charts. If you want to know more or are interested in trying their software get in touch as I can introduce you via email even if they don't want to be outed on here.
I'll ask all three whether they would mind being outed, all are currently flying under the radar and are below 6 months old.
Actually yours is one, like I'd miss that out Stavros. I pay attention enough. And when are you coming by London again? That said I'm tempted to come blag some floor space from you next spring. You're right that Athens wasn't great, so now I need to see Thessalonika.
Another one is http://unmagnify.com/ who aren't yet ready to open but have an MVP being used by a few people with data gather, store (inc' trending) and visualise solution with good potential.
The other unnamed one I haven't spoken to yet. If they want to unstealth themselves I'll share.
Ah, good :) My house is always open, just let me know when you want to come over, I just moved into a nice studio. I'm not sure when I'll be coming to London, but it probably won't be that long, I'm due for a visit!
I'll check the other two companies out, thanks! How's yours coming along? I haven't heard any updates...
Mine has been, well the last 6 months have been... interesting.
No technical challenges, but wow on the kind of distractions that can occur when you have user generated content. I've gone through a dark patch and came out stronger for it, doubling down now... rented an office, got a co-founder, honed the vision.
The users of the cycling forum have witnessed most of this and have been badgering to support me, so because of user demand I'm just about to crowd-fund a 1 year runway on the basis of patronage (donations with no returns).
Haven't felt as positive and as focused in a long time. But in hindsight wish I could've avoided some of the distractions this year.
Looking to just turn into a bit of a hermit now. Want to get the v1 out there and used. I've gone and built up demand so now I need to deliver before I lose the interest of those forum admins.
Yeah, that can happen, especially when you're a single founder. I'm glad you're getting things in order, and the patronage model sounds increasingly more tempting. It's bootstrapping and market validation rolled up in one, so if you can get it, it's great.
Do try to get feedback from the target market as early as possible, it'll save a lot of hassle in the long run. A closed alpha works very well, I've found.
I'm looking forward to see what you're making, let me know when you're ready to show it! Also, if you need help with analytics, just email me.
If something like Feedburner, (which was several orders of magnitude more popular than Pipes and IFTTT combined) is forced to shutter, I don't think a tiny service for power users is going to turn around a publicly traded company as large as Yahoo. Call me crazy.
> Will Twitter deprecate support for RSS to lock down our tweets? Will Facebook block IFTTT to control how we share our filtered photos?
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they did. Doubling down on Pipes with Twitter heading in the direction it is right now would be a really stupid move.
The entire version 1.0 API will be turned off March 5, 2013. Version 1.1 only has JSON, and more importantly requires authentication on every endpoint.
Uh.... requiring authentication and using an industry standard communications language is hardly what i'd call "not wanting your data to leave their network".
So Yahoo should buy IFTTT to help people migrate from Twitter to App.net?
There are probably some good products to be built on integrated social experiences (or internet glue), but Pipes+IFTTT doesn't sound like an actual end-user product.
OP doesn't realize that big companies like Yahoo cannot sign API contracts; they get terminated immediately. Remember Ping/Facebook?
I think the ToS termination issue is the single largest risk facing start-ups operating in another company's ecosystem. How can Yahoo buy you if your API key is deactivated as soon as the deal closes?
I love IFTTT, but I think their long-term prospects are bleak. Urban Airship had the same problem.
If the market opportunity here is defragmentation of social networking, then Yahoo should acquire Buffer[1], and get themselves a dead simple product that "just works." IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes are awesome for technically savvy folks, but it's a non-solution for the vast majority of the market.
This is hardly a convincing article for justifying why Yahoo! acquiring IFTTT is a good idea. I get IFTTT is a great service, but it's nothing particularly special, there's even a Rails clone of it on Github that Yahoo! could modify and use to start their own IFTTT like service.
I am however an avid Pipes user and fan. It's definitely one of the strongest tools Yahoo! have in its arsenal with exception for Yahoo! BOSS which I am currently using for my new startup which relies on search engine data instead of scraping it myself.
It was a nice try. I don't understand how this reached such a high spot on the homepage.
IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes are completely different products with different business models. The customer excitement around IFTTT is great to see, but IFTTT is still figuring out their business model, and they need to finish development of their new platform and SDK. Once they get these things rolling I can see them being an attractive acquisition target. But even then, I don't see Yahoo Pipes and IFTTT co-existing nicely, and I'm not sure that Yahoo would make sense as an acquirer.
I've no idea about the finances of it all, but in terms of usage, the two services are a natural fit. IFTTT has easy integration with lots of services, but Yahoo! Pipes has a lot more flexibility in terms of functions and logic.
That said, I'd like to see some sort of hosted version or library to do this. Yes, you can do a lot of this yourself, but if the plumbing (hrrr) already existed, you'd be free to focus on the actual logic instead of the infrastructure.
I kinda feel sorry for Marissa Mayer, the internet collective has put a lot on her.
I can see why, many great and well loved services have faced death by yahoo over the years. Clearly people do still care about the future of yahoo (or at least the services they consume) otherwise we wouldn't keep seeing these kind of posts.
I just hope that there is a plan, and it would do much for me if MM made some sort of statement to the effect that Yahoo will properly support acquisitions rather than let them slowly die.
I think about this a lot. Not just for my personal accounts but then add in the pages and micro-brands one has to manage if you have a small business, or a band, or just a blog you have an identity for. It becomes a juggling mess.
Ha, lets have an master service that manages user-created services on these platforms. Then let Twitter play wack-a-mole with that...
A question I've always had about posts like this in general: What would happen if Mayer actually did this? Would she not bet met with derision for apparently guiding the company with advice gleaned from a blog post? Do "Company X should do Y" articles actually hurt their own chances of being fulfilled?
The monday morning quarterback is a staple of the genre. This is the "pre-game" version. =D No different, I suppose, a NY times Op Ed on XYZ political policy. They are written to "influence" the lower members of the power structure who surface ideas, not directly to the decisionmakers. Decisionmakers (in general) are too busy doing other stuff.
Nice article, however Yahoo! could probably figure out a way to ruin the awesome UX IFTTT currently has. And with the track record Yahoo! has, I would hope they wouldn't buy it. Yahoo! is where good apps go to die. Haha
I miss the point. Of course if this setup becomes common they will block it as well. They don't want you to do that. If you find a loophole they will fix that.
