Clunky Flow

Damien Mulley updates us with “Google kills Jaiku…another dodgeball it seems”.

This set me to thinking again about the marked differences between being acquired by Google and being acquired by Yahoo!

I mean, if Jaiku is to be condemned to the same fate as Dodgeball, it’s a crying shame. If I had been part of either Dodgeball or Jaiku and was acquired by Google I’m sure I’d be extremely pleased. At first. But I can’t help feeling I’d also feel a bit hollowed out as the reality of what I’d achieved got slowly diluted into “…oh yeah..he’s one of the guys who had a social app that was cool for 15 minutes back in the day… what was it called? baiku or bodgeball or something..anyway that was a long time ago…couldn’t really say what he’s been involved with since..”

I mean, I assume most of us are doing what we do because we have a vision and a burning desire to make meaning with that vision. In most cases its probably a vision so compelling it won’t go away. Maybe even a vision that exhausts us if we try to ignore it.
The kind of vision that drives the creation of great services like Dodgeball and Jaiku. The same vision-powered energy that lit up the room whenever Jyri from Jaiku took centre stage. The same vision-powered energy that you can see everyday if you care to look at the Irish startup scene. Its the energy that unites us, what draws us together, its what makes things happen. Its the essence of what we are about. Its the one thing we have in common.

That’s why I say its a crying shame to see that kind of vision smothered and extinguished. What’s that about? I mean if the Dodgeball or the Jaiku guys wanted to be subsumed into a large corporation. A world where they would lose any sense of their own identity, vision, and drive. A world where they could lose their ability to make meaning and contribute to the world in their own unique way.

If they had wanted to lose all that, I am sure they would have aimed at careers as middle-ranking civil servants, corporate lawyers or accountants or some such. I doubt that’s what they wanted. But its what they got. And all they could do is watch as their unique contributions to the world were subsumed, smothered and quietly killed off by their new partners. Personally, watching that process from this remove makes me feel pretty bummed out. I can barely imagine how it must feel for those guys. As I say a crying shame.

Now compare that experience of acquisition by Google with that of acquistion by Yahoo! From what we saw on Paddy’s Valley with Yahoo! they have policy of keeping the original brand alive and maintaining a strong link between the acquired talent and the original brand. During our visit to Yahoo! Brickhouse, Salim Ismail roped in Jumpcut entrepreneur and co-founder Mike Folgner. Mike is still the Jumpcut guy and also leads Yahoo! Video and came over to talk to us all about his continuing involvement with Jumpcut and Yahoo!Video as a whole. Noticeably, Mike was introduced as Jumpcut entrepreneur first and leader of Yahoo!Video second. And noticeably Jumpcut still maintains it own brand and presence with a barely noticeable ” a yahoo! service” discreetly tucked away where you might never see it.

And this wasn’t just special treatment for one guy on the day. This is policy across the business. I know because a couple of days later when we were in Yahoo! Sunnyvale I refered to Dodgeball when asking one of the main acquistions guys about their policy and the likely fate of acquisitions after the jump. He was keen to emphasise that they enter a process to learn as much as possible from the entrepreneur about their vision for the project so that they can work out a mutually satisfying game plan going forward. This fitted with what we witnessed wrt Jumpcut and appears to bear out across many of the companies acquired by Yahoo!

Which all make me think that if Google and Yahoo! got into a bidding war for the wholesale acquisition of something I was doing*. I’d be strongly inclined to favour Yahoo!**

* Of course, it goes without saying, that the services to come out of the RelevantM stable will be built to become great companies in their own right and will never be built with a view to being acquired (cough)

** And of course, the above conclusions have nothing to do with the fact that Salim Ismail of Yahoo! Brickhouse is totally ***king sound and a good man to go on the beer with - Note for foreign readers (says he aspiring to have one): ‘a good man to go on the beer with’ is an Irish colloquilism reserved to connote someone held in especially high esteem. Not be confused with the more common or garden ‘a good man to have a beer with’

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