The latest round of games in the instant messaging arena

Yahoo IM stupidity. Yesterday, I noticed that Yahoo! IM was refusing my connection through Fire, the multi-protocol IM client I run on OS X. It seems Yahoo has decided to stop providing access to non-Yahoo client software. CNET says this affects Cerulean Studios… [RatcliffeBlog – Mitch Thinking Out Loud]

Yahoo and Trillian aren’t playing nicely here, so my pain level has risen. I think Mitch is right to compare this to the phone company’s efforts in the 1960s to keep foreign devices off of their networks.

I’m wondering how to account for the rash of clueless behavior we see of late. The people at Yahoo (or the RIAA for that matter) aren’t stupid. So why do they do things that look so stupid from my perspective?

I have two hypotheses.

Hypothesis one is that modern training in marketing succeeds in conditioning marketing types that markets consist of statistical abstractions that have no connection to the living, breathing human beings they interact with on a daily basis.

Hypothesis two is that training in strategy ignores any notion of dynamic change or any notion that people outside the organization might behave in ways inconsistent with the assumptions in the strategic plan.