Many people wrote about the possible acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft and I wanted to wait for the dust to settle before talking about it. I will be quite direct; I think this is a pathetic move from Microsoft in order to attempt to gain a little bit of space in the Internet playground.

Why pathetic? Well just like everything else they do. If you haven’t really noticed, Microsoft hasn’t been innovating lately. When I say lately, I say in the last 10 years or so. Microsoft buys its way. Look at most of their product and you’ll see that most, if not all nowadays, are acquisition. But is this bad? Not really, however giving a loaded weapon to a kid is not a good idea either. What will Microsoft do with Yahoo that they cannot do with their own (pathetic) products? If Microsoft can’t get people to jump in their bandwagon, will using the fading “Yahoo” brand really help them out? Because let’s face it: Yahoo isn’t the shining star it used to be. Their best products (Flickr and Delicious) are, you guessed it, acquisitions.

Warning, I will use the “S” word a lot until the end of the article so please be careful as some people are allergic to this word. Both Yahoo and Microsoft are struggling to get users. Will a synergy help? My feeling is that instead of being beneficial for the company, this might hurt them. I really doubt this synergy will increase the number of users. For example, who’s using Yahoo’s social network? Not a lot of people. Who’s using Microsoft’s social network? Not a lot of people either. So if you’re forced to move your Microsoft account to Yahoo’s, what will you do? Chances are you will quit and focus on Facebook or MySpace (especially if you’re in the younger generation).

Email will be even harder to “synergize” as people love their email. By that, I mean that people love Hotmail or people love Yahoo mail. They love the interface, not the fact that it’s Yahoo or Microsoft or Google. Especially older people who used the product for a while. Change is hard. I tried to convert many people to Gmail as *I* thought it was better but a lot of people don’t see it that way. They think Hotmail is better or that Yahoo mail is better. It’s all about user perception. Think of it the other way around. If Microsoft were to buy Google and you’d have to use Hotmail from now on, how would you feel?

One place where I see a potential synergy is IM. If I look at myself, I used ICQ back in the day. I switched to MSN when everyone else did and felt lonely on ICQ and now I’m on Goggle Talk. Where will I be in 2 years? Who knows. I think that Microsoft can easily migrate Yahoo’s users on MSN but then again, that might be a small number of people as many people have accounts on MSN and YIM. Is IM a great business to be in? I don’t know about you but I think it barely pays the hosting and bandwidth bills.

Microsoft is a dead dinosaur. They laugh at every innovation coming from Google but when they see that they missed the bandwagon, they shamelessly attempt to duplicate the products. Examples? Hotmail for businesses, Live Domain Apps, Microsoft AdCenter, Office live, and I think their online map could be included in this list but I’m not 100% sure as they had their StreetMap software in the past. I don’t mean to bash on Microsoft but their lack of innovation and the fact that Steve Balmer is laughing at anything that is truly innovative (while attempting to duplicate it “secretly”) makes Microsoft a dying dinosaur that actually started to rot.

As far as Yahoo, not much luck there. It seems like everything they do these days is a flop and they know it (Yahoo 360 anyone?). Even some hardcore flickr users left the site for other niche sites. They also had a big censoring backslash (especially in Germany). I don’t know about you but I haven’t used any of Yahoo’s products in a while. I don’t use their search tool, their email, their news site, nothing. I guess it’s like going to a bad restaurant. Chances are you will never return no matter how hard they advertise.

So, I forgot where I saw this (it was a startup blog) but very often, 1+1=0.5 (or DEADBEEF)

I probably know you won’t read me but here it goes. I promise to keep it short and sweet. Looks like both of you are working on some “secret social network” so here’s what I think about this.

1. Please don’t reinvent the wheel.

There are dozens of popular networking sites out there and there are hundreds if not thousands that are not so popular. You have a dog? There’s one for you. You’re a single mom, there’s one for you. You like to play tennis underwater in underpants? I bet there’s one out there jusssst for you. Sorry to say but Youtube won over Google Videos. Why? there were some factors (I’d say lack of innovation) but the mean thing is that Youtube won and that cost the Google guys a few billions. But that’s ok, you guys still have some cash left so let’s move on…

2. All sites require you to register and fill out this lengthy questionnaire.

I’m on a few networking sites and I don’t want to waste my time joining others. Will I join Yahoo’s or Google’s? Perhaps I will if they use the same ID and keep it short. It was a great idea to move Orkut to the centralized account but that should’ve been done a long time ago. Because of that, I never bothered migrating my Orkut account so it’s basically dead. I’m probably missing out on some things but I don’t know and don’t really care at this point. So a lesson: keep it easy otherwise people will move.

3. Build stuff people want.

First, I don’t care about what my friend’s music preferences are and I really don’t want to hear his/her favourite song while I visit his profile. I hate the music they like anyway! I’m very picky as far as music so I couldn’t care less about the fact that they like the latest Madonna album. In fact, I don’t really want to see my friends’ profiles. They’re my friends, I know who they are, right? They could be allowed to “push” things onto my profile (like shared pictures and such) but I shouldn’t have to visit their profile every day just to see if they uploaded new pictures. Lesson to learn: everything should be customizable. Not only your own profile but others as well.

Second, any network site around is just that: a network site. That really sucks! I beg you, please build something on top of it. As I mentioned in the past, Facebook started their “classified site”. This is what I’m talking about! Think global! Think Linkedin meets eBay meets Digg meets Monster meets rent.com meets CNN meets Facebook meets Expedia meets Delicious meets Youtube and so on. Why go to eBay when you can see who has what you want around you? Yes these things already exist but they are pointless and should be centralised into a giant site if you prefer. Yahoo!: you guys already have all this but spread all over..! Please fix this! Yahoo 360 is nice but it’s too complex even for a geek like me. Your services are still not integrated! Are you getting too big to act quickly?  Google: you guys have many pieces of the puzzle, keep working on it but hurry up..! Both of you need to hurry up as Facebook is expanding (that was a great move, but hurry up and get features!)

4. Build something fun, new but interesting.

Tag not only images to events, places and so on but also people to images. If I read critics about a restaurant or some travel destination, I should be able to see pictures people took while over there. Same goes with profiles. If I see my friend’s pictures, he should be able to tag people in the picture so that I can visit their profiles. That way, your network grows easily as you can search not only your friends’s friends, but also their friends in their pictures. Now that’s something new and fun, no?

Why not make a social network of social networks? For example, I like cats so my front end should be about cats (sort of like catster). My friend like motorcycles? Well he should have a bike front end (sort of well… you get it). When I search for friends, I would see their “cat view”, meaning I wouldn’t really know they have a Kawasaki bike, but I would see they have a brown tabby named “Brownie”.

Micro blogs are also a neat thing. Add micro blogs to anything you can think of. From pictures to restaurant ratings to travel destination. Now something important!

Build something interesting and long lasting! I’m pretty sure Myspace will be deserted as soon as the latest trend pops out. That remains to be seen but knowing the current generation, their attention span is not very long and if the word is out that Myspace is sooo 2006, people will move on. What do you get from Myspace? Not much… It is really the convenience store from the 90’s but now online. People are still hanging out and wasting their time…! Now this also brings in a serious question: who is your market? Lots of pre-teens and teens with no money? Middle-age people with lots of money to spend and don’t know where to spend it? That’s a marketing issue that I will leave up to you to decide but remember: build something for everyone. Even my mom should be able to enjoy this place. I definitively don’t see my mom using Myspace. No way.

5. Hire me :)

Just joking (well maybe not), but you see, this is only 1% of the ideas I have in mind. You guys need to listen to the early adopters and start building something new and useful. I haven’t seen anything innovative coming from you guys lately. Perhaps those two projects will make me go “Wow!” but I’d say the drag and drop map thingy on Google Maps was the greatest thing in the last few years or so. Smaller players are catching up and acquiring them doesn’t always work out as you want (Where’s Dodgeball now?).

6. Good luck

Will there be a “winner”? I doubt, it’s like TV stations. You need all kinds of TV channels to keep everyone happy but you need to keep everyone happy. Some people don’t like when I say that but I think “niche” is a nice way of saying that you failed with mass market.