Meh, I'll still take that over corporate newspeak, at least he doesn't sugar coat it.
Please, tell me what's on your mind with simple, straight-forward language, and let me get back to my work.
This email has the tone I'd expect a kindergarden teacher to use when they want their class to eat their vegetables at snack time.
I don't get this sentiment. I know plenty of people who are very productive with Outlook and see no reason to sway them away from it. In fact this is why Office 365 is killing it right now.
Desktop only in this day and age is pretty anachronistic too.
It has less to do with the quality of the service, its ease of use, or whether or not people actually like using it than the above note about entrenchment.
EDIT: Come to think of it, this is an interesting attempt at manipulating people. He claims that Outlook is an outdated piece of technology straight from the 90's and literally paints the picture of a dinosaur. Tech people - who are probably the main target audience for this memo - oftentimes take pride in being in the know about the latest technologies and invest quite a bit of time and effort in being on the bleeding edge. Those paragraphs are actually an insult in disguise designed to get people by their pride about being behind the times.
1. If you're going to promote design-thinking in a company (which I believe Yahoo needs to do in order to grow) than making comments like this is a disservice. This creates a culture of "well if it's old and looks like shit then it must be shit" that should instead be "listen to your audience".
2. This is also talking about the sentiment from outside of Yahoo (and possibly in the echo chamber of HN). I get why Yahoo internally would say it, which I would then revert back to my point #1.
Yahoo Mail looks like GMail and it pretty much works the same. Same goes for the new Outlook. So theres no motivation to switch when I have all my stuff at Google already.
Making things "cutesy" and "funny", is just an obnoxious way to hide your true intentions. It's disrespectful to the intelligence of the people you are talking to. If you're the boss and you insist your subordinates use some product, then straight up say that. Don't try to be "nice" about it because it sounds fake and insulting.
very few ppl uses webmail as their 8h dAy business email in a fortune 500 company
This is more than just Gmail. Well, I never worked at Google so I don't know how they manage meetings and room booking. It can be pretty useful in my opinion. For work, you really should forward mails to your work email and I mean a separate email account.
1. the claim that dogfooding would be helpful for feedback and improvement, followed by
2. listing only superficially positive feedback.
Given this memo, I don't think I would feel comfortable giving negative feedback, which then negates one of the major points of the memo.
Granted, that's how I feel about most "give us feedback" forms. I'd feel a lot better if they listed a few things that actually came out of the suggestions, or things that were popular from that suggestion form that were changed using some feedback (frequently devs actually already know whats wrong and feedback can just be for a little prioritization, but there's nothing lost in giving the userbase a pat on the back).
==================================
Hello Yahoos,
Earlier this year we asked you to move to Yahoo Mail for your corporate email account. 25% of you made the switch (thank you). But even if we used the most generous of grading curves (say, the one from organic chemistry), we have clearly failed in our goal to move our co-workers to Yahoo Mail.
It’s time for the remaining 75% to make the switch. Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team, as a company it’s a matter of principle to use the products we make. (BTW, same for Search.)
For some reading this email, you are saying, “Jeff, shut up, you had me at hello.” hug Jump over to yo/dogfood, click “Corp Mail/Cal/ Messenger” and you are ready to join our brave new world at yo/corpmail or https://mail.yahoo-inc.com.
For others, you might now be running in your head to a well worn path of justified resistance, phoning up the ol’ gang, circling the hippocampian wagons of amygdalian resistance. Hold on a sec, pilgrim.
First, it doesn’t feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana. At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl. There was a similar outcry when we moved away from Outlook’s suite-mates in the Microsoft Office dreadnaught. But whether it’s familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic...go deep in this pun, it is layered].
Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes. In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds.
But wait there’s more. By using corporate Mail, you’ll automatically get to dogfood our new features first. I’m especially excited about a new feature premiering in just a few more days: smart auto-suggest, powered by a platform from the still-have-that-new-acquisition-smell Xobni team. We have been testing this feature with select users in and out of the company and the response has been fantastic: “Whoa!”, “Amazing”, “Already in love with it. Woot!” and, my favorite, “So nicely integrated that it appears as if it’s always been there. I already can’t imagine it not being there again.”
Feeling that little tingle? Take a deep breath, you can do this. We want you on board, sailor!
Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!). And, like all dogfood offerings, there is a feedback link in the product. Use it generously so we can make the improvements to make Yahoo Mail the unquestioned inbox champion of the world. I pitty [sic] the fool who resists.
Thanks for your support. It really does matter and we appreciate it.
Jeff Bonforte, SVP Communications Products
Randy Roumillat, CIO
Oh dear. You know, if you can't convince your people to use your offering, that's a signalling mechanism, if you make people use your offering that's denying you that mechanism,
Hello Yahoos, Earlier this year we asked you to move to Yahoo Mail for your corporate email account. 25% of you made the switch (thank you). But even if we used the most generous of grading curves (say, the one from organic chemistry), we have clearly failed in our goal to move our co-workers to Yahoo Mail. It’s time for the remaining 75% to make the switch. Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team, as a company it’s a matter of principle to use the products we make. (BTW, same for Search.) For some reading this email, you are saying, “Jeff, shut up, you had me at hello.” hug Jump over to yo/dogfood, click “Corp Mail/Cal/ Messenger” and you are ready to join our brave new world at yo/corpmail or https://mail.yahoo-inc.com. For others, you might now be running in your head to a well worn path of justified resistance, phoning up the ol’ gang, circling the hippocampian wagons of amygdalian resistance. Hold on a sec, pilgrim. First, it doesn’t feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana. At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl. There was a similar outcry when we moved away from Outlook’s suite-mates in the Microsoft Office dreadnaught. But whether it’s familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic...go deep in this pun, it is layered]. Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes. In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds. But wait there’s more. By using corporate Mail, you’ll automatically get to dogfood our new features first. I’m especially excited about a new feature premiering in just a few more days: smart auto-suggest, powered by a platform from the still-have-that-new-acquisition-smell Xobni team. We have been testing this feature with select users in and out of the company and the response has been fantastic: “Whoa!”, “Amazing”, “Already in love with it. Woot!” and, my favorite, “So nicely integrated that it appears as if it’s always been there. I already can’t imagine it not being there again.” Feeling that little tingle? Take a deep breath, you can do this. We want you on board, sailor! Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!). And, like all dogfood offerings, there is a feedback link in the product. Use it generously so we can make the improvements to make Yahoo Mail the unquestioned inbox champion of the world. I pitty [sic] the fool who resists. Thanks for your support. It really does matter and we appreciate it. Jeff Bonforte, SVP Communications Products Randy Roumillat, CIO