Susan Mernit, who used to run product at Yahoo Personals, had this to say about deal where Match now powers Yahoo Personals.
During the time I was running product at Yahoo! Personals, we had at least 3 different SVPs the unit reported to. Not only did the group get switched around repeatedly, it was clear no one at the top had strong interest in managing this kind of transactional revenue, despite good ROI, strong team, etc.
…And it is a great idea if Yahoo’s best plan is to be an aggregator and make $3-4 MM a year in affiliate referrals via partner payouts for customer acquisition rather than manage greater revenue against greater cost.
But is a great idea?
Not really, But Yahoo! stopped having great ideas a long time ago.
More at Susan’s blog.
