[noahm]

Actually, one of the conflicts I felt while I was at yahoo related to the fact that the customers aren't the same people as the users. "Customers" at yahoo are the advertisers, and they're the ones who generate the revenue. "Users" are just the eyeballs looking at the ads. When business is good, there's little conflict, which is why this isn't a big deal for Facebook or google. But when business falters, advertisers start making demands that ultimately compromise the user experience. Bigger, more prominent ads make the customers happy, and may generate more short-term revenue, but they ultimately drive users away. I feel like yahoo is in the middle of this right now, and I'm not sure what they can do to appeal to their users and their customers simultaneously.