Yahoo “Sunsetting” New “LiveStand” Service

(Editor’s note: this article is parody, as in total parody, as in I made all this up and as in parody is protected speech under the First Amendment).

In a surprise leak from today’s Yahoo/Goldman Sachs conference call, an updated slide showing additional sites Yahoo plans to shutter in the weeks ahead included today’s newly announced “LiveStand” service.

When pressed by analysts as to why “LiveStand” was listed under the “sunsetting” column on the Yahoo slide when it was simultaneously being announced as a new Yahoo product just today, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving put it bluntly:

“Look,” said Irving, wearing a velvet purple blazer,”we can spend a couple of mil trying to build some stupid magazine subscription thing that nobody will ever use over the next year, or we can just nip it in the bud now and save our shareholders a boatload of money,” Just imagine if we’d killed Yahoo Buzz 8 months earlier, he added. This makes more sense than even switching your auto insurance to GEICO.

My job here is all about maximizing shareholder value and by God, the last thing I’m going to do is waste a bunch a good Yahoo money on some stupid idea just because Jerry Yang and Terry Semmel say I should. I figure that if we can save three mil by sunsetting this puppy early that’s another 2 mil each for Carol and I.

Irving said that he planned to amortize the savings now, in time for executive bonuses, but wouldn’t actually be laying unit employees off until shortly before Christmas. “Trust me,” he added with a sinister laugh as he sipped his Red Bull, “it will be better that way.”

When asked where Yahoo would actually get new revenue Irving replied, “Is Yahoo! committed to Flickr? Hell yes we are! We love this product and team; on strategy and profitable.” Irving then went on to tell a story about his recent visit to Flickr HQ where he showed Flickr Staff how to milk a margarita. I love those guys he added. Can’t stand all those pesky photographers who use the site, but those guys in the main office are just swell. Irving went on to talk about the newly enhanced version of Flickr for the new Windows phone. “Trust me,” added Irving, “six or eight months from now when everyone’s ditched their iPhones and Android phones for these killer new Microsoft phones, we’ll look like geniuses. Irving then pulled out a new prototype Windows based phone called “The Chumby” from his blazer and gave a personal demonstration on how cool Flickr looked on a Microsoft phone. This phone is PHAAAAATTTTTTTT crowed Irving.

Towards the end of his presentation Irving added an important disclaimer, “all of this ‘sunsetting’ stuff is just between us girls. If I find out anyone here leaks these slides I’ll have their nuts on a platter for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Got it! And nobody better’d breathe a word of this to Carol either he added, she’s going to be demoing the new service next week at Mobile World Congress and we’ve already booked John Stewart and Serena Williams to come out and hype this thing for us. Carol will look like an idiot if she knows I’d already planned this. And we can’t have Carol looking like an idiot.”