Ariel Seidman, former Director of Mobile Search and Discovery at Yahoo, has a new post on his Tumblr page about product management at software companies.
In Seidman’s view, one of the major problems that Yahoo has had in recent years is poor product management across the company.
Rather than treating the entirety of Yahoo as a service, individual teams had total control over their own applications. This led to a lack of cooperation and a worse experience for users.
In comparison, Seidman writes, Tumblr is a “rare breed” – a product that has gained functionality and grown to a global scale yet has actually become simpler for users to work with. Seidman says this is because Tumblr’s managers have maintained control over all aspects of the service.
Now that Yahoo owns Tumblr and has access to the leaders that have made that happen, Seidman hopes that the company can learn from the social network’s successes.
“Tumblr is the rare breed,” he writes.
“Whereas most products inevitably add complexity Tumblr got simpler and easier to use over its many iterations.”
“I am hoping the Tumblr DNA spreads through Yahoo.”
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