IF you need a case study of how to launch a change or update to your service and upset existing users, drop in on the Yahoo! Profiles blog and read a few comments.
Without any warning Yahoo! swapped across its members to a new profile page system, which they thought would prove more open and popular, problem was they didn't give users a chance to check it out first.
So the blog has now received close on 1,000 comments, and there are only two articles, many of which complain of lost information, endless verification loops and most probably will see Yahoo! membership numbers plummet.
Maybe the only way out for Yahoo! is to try and turn things around in the style of Dell Computers who pulled the whiskers of Jeff Jarvis by providing poor service, yet listened to Jeff and other customers to disentangle themselves from a real mess.
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