Jeff JarvisWhat have we learned? Never again should we go to a social company that does not promise portability and interoperability, that does not federate with others, that is not sufficiently open-source to allow emergent innovation from users. This is a test.
Ernie Smith@jeffjarvis When I left Tumblr eight years ago this was the lesson I took for my website. It’s a little surprising we’re only learning it now about social media in general
@jeffjarvis At the time Tumblr was owned by Yahoo, who I’ve said in the past might be the worst company in the history of SV because of how quickly it discards communities and products
@ernie Yahoo and AOL, where things go to die (including each other)
bangwin 
@jeffjarvis @ernie That's right Ernie, I used to be a community manager at Yahoo, handling Yahoo's community products such as Yahoo Answers, Flickr, Yahoo Groups and others. I feel when they turn off all their community products just to focus on the media business which they think can generate more profit. Whereas Yahoo's strength at that time was precisely on community products. I was transferred to handle editorial for several years before I finally resigned because there was nothing else for me to do there.
@bangwin @jeffjarvis This is great context, thank you for sharing. Out of curiosity, do you know why they never choose to protect this old data by keeping it online somehow, rather than just shutting it down? This has been one of my biggest frustrations with digital culture for years. Groups and GeoCities were the worst examples.
@ernie @jeffjarvis I also don't understand, to the best of my knowledge, at that time they always wanted to be at the forefront of display ads, beyond that they didn't think it was important. Traffic is a god for them. Maybe that's what causes them not to think long and hard when they kill their products that are deemed not in accordance with business lines that generate direct profits such as ads.
@bangwin @jeffjarvis It’s very unfortunate. We lost a lot in those closures. I appreciate you offering this context because it’s been on my mind for a long time.
@ernie @jeffjarvis It has also been my frustration for many years Ernie. The question is why a company as big as Yahoo could slip because of something they are really good at. At that time I could only ask because I was only an employee.