browngeek

The big news this weekend in the leak of Yahoo’s so-called “Peanut Butter Manifesto“. Full text is published in the WSJ. It is a memo written by the SVP Garlinghouse blasting upper management (doesn’t it include himself?) for incompetence and inaccountability. He ridicules the peanut-butter-like strategy of Yahoo-

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.

Garlinghouse continues to scold about all the problems at Yahoo and lays down a set of actions-

There are three pillars to my plan:

1. Focus the vision.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership.

3. Execute a radical reorganization.

And concludes with the war-cry-

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.

At first glance, Garlinghouse looks like a freaking hero. A brave man trying to fight the system. An underdog. Root for him!

At second glance, however, the whole thing falls apart faster than my dieting plans.

• Did Garringhouse really think this memo will not become public? In this day and age, anything you send to more that one person has a potential to be leaked. And I think he knew it will be leaked. Carefully crafted PR for himself.
• And the content itself is pretty boilerplate. You don’t need a Harvard MBA to comeup with his “3 pillars”. Pure drivel.
• So why would he do such a thing? Read this - you will know his sights are set higher - CEO of Yahoo? I hope he does not.

Its obvious that Yahoo needs to do something radical to beat Google. Letting the whiner Garlinghouse get his way will only hurt them more. Wake up Yang and Filo!

In case you missed the Web 2.0 bubble (that is, if you have a life AND do not live in the Silicon Valley), you are in luck. Web 3.0 is upon you!

This article in the NY Times equates Web 3.0 to the upcoming Semantic Web - the notion of data mining the webosphere. Semantic Web is something where you can search “for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child”. That query will return vacation packages, complete with activities for the child etc. Practical AI.

Semantic Web is getting a lot of attention these days and rightfully so. It is real technology! Unlike Web 2.0 - which was, ummm, all fart and no shit, data mining the web is no trivial task. I have spent a great deal of my career in that industry and I am very excited about the prospects of the Semantic Web. If slapping the “Web 3.0″ moniker is what is going to make shit - I am all for it.

As an aside - Bladam has already staked claims on Web 4.0 (SMELL the Web. FEEL the Web. TASTE the Web). Well, brownGEEK is officially copyrighting Web 6.0 (skipping Web 5.0).

Web 6.0:The ThinkWeb ^TM - where you think of something, anything, and a webpage (standards compliant) is created for you automagically. If anybody else has the same thoughts, you get paid! The ThinkWeb^TM.