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''' WHEN *YAHOO! RUMMAGED '''
BACK FOR ROUND 3 : Nine years ago, Gordon Hurd quit Yahoo for the second time. In June he began working for the company again -Round 3- this time as a freelance writer.
In the intervening years, Mr. Hurd toured the struggling new-media landscape -first, the Yahoo archrival AOL., then, Interactive One, a network of black news and culture sites.
Later, First Look Media, created by the eBay founder Pierre M. Omidyar; and most recently, a men's fashion site, Man's Life. There was even a brief stint at McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm and ''the most corporate place you could go,'' he said.
He is one of many surfers who left, then came back through the revolving door, sometimes unexpectedly.
One group of ex-surfers jumped to Polyvore, a social shopping startup founded by three Yahoo engineer's in 2007, only to wind up back in Yahoo last year when it bought the company.
Mr. Hurd's first run with Yahoo started in a 1998 when he was organized to the business and finance parts of the directory.
The starting pay was only $35,000 a year, he recalled. But there were stock options.
''I didn't make millions by any means,'' said Mr.Hurd, 45, in a phone interview from Brooklyn, where he lives. But he bought a house.
In 2007, he hopped to McKinsey and then quickly to AOL , where he ran Asylum.com, a lifestyle site aimed at men age 18 to 34. The business model was to create vast amounts of content in the hope that visitors would click on ads.
That didn't happen. ''What it underlined is how much of a commodity content was,'' Mr. Hurd said. Asylum was shutdown.
Mr. Hurd moved on to Interactive One, the digital arm of Radio One, the largest black-owned radio broadcaster in the United States, which struggled to crack the content code, too.
Volume trumped quality. ''You know people will click on a subway-fight video, but you want to talk about what it's like to be a millennial of color,'' Mr. Hurd said.
First Look Media, although funded by a tech billionaire, was plagued by internal strife. Man's Life wound down after less than a year.
Which is how, today, Mr.Hurd is back at Yahoo, writing article for its style site while he ponders his next move.
More than ever, he thinks there is a need for the type of work that Yahoo's surfers did 20 years ago. ''The web has gotten so big that you need people to curate it,'' he said.
However, he sees that curation coming from subject experts, not mass-audience sites like Yahoo. Niche sites with a devouted following could work with select sponsors hoping to reach a particular audience,'' he said.
''If you are a person who's really dedicated to the art of of handmade knives, and you set out to categorize the size of handmade knives, only you can do that,'' Mr. Hurd said.
Grand Adventure
When Becky Uline graduated from Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1996, she didn't really know what she wanted to do with her life.
A friend was raving that he had discovered paradise -living in Southern California and working for a company few people had ever heard of, Yahoo.
She and another Bowling Green graduate, Michelle Heimburger, thought it would be a great adventure. They both got hired as surfers and rented an apartment together.
The building was so empty at first that surfers would rip through it on inline skates. ''We would sleep under our desks,'' Mr. Uline, 42, recalled during an interview, at her current home in Oakland, Calif.
Her roommate, Mr. Ms. Heimburger, made headlines a few years later when she spent $350,000 part of Yahoo stock windfall -to buy the century old Franklin-Castle in her hometown, Cleveland.
To celebrate she threw a huge homewarming party, inviting all of Yahoo and Cleveland Indian baseball team to the festivities.
The Honour and Serving of the latest ''Operational Research'' on great companies, -once, continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward. And see you on the following one.
With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of all Business Schools in the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and !E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:
''' Great Uprising '''
Good Night and God Bless
SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless
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