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Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today notified my friends and I that the time we spent last night on our fantasy football draft was wasted because of server problems. Excuse me?
How can Yahoo not have enough server capacity to accommodate the scores of fantasty drafts that happened last night? It's not like Yahoo hasn't done this before or that this weekend's start of the football season is a closely guarded secret.
"We have fixed the issues that caused the problems and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you," the company said in an email. It set up a new draft for my league for this evening. I'm not sure my friends and I are going to bother.
This could have serious problems for the Internet portal. People who play fantasy football are desireable to advertisers since they stay on Web sites for long stretches of times while they live out their NFL dreams. That means that they are more likely to notice advertisements.
As it faces growing competition from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and everyone else under the sun, Yahoo can't afford to anger its loyal users particularly for popular features such as fantasy football users. Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE: DIS) ESPN, Time Warner Inc's (NYSE: TWX) AOL and News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox Sports are bound to benefit from Yahoo's misstep.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-05-2007 @ 3:44PM
jb said...
i will never use espn after their '05 football issues (i've been on fleaflicker since).
it's too bad for the yahoo people but at least it's only one day.
9-05-2007 @ 4:30PM
Jeff Herz said...
How did you get Yahoo to respond? Half my league was unable to login to the draft last night, it then proceeded to auto pick for almost everyone as the server booted people as the night went on.
I have sent emails and filled out forms, but so far I have heard nothing or seen anything. This is a major debacle for Yahoo in my opinion
9-05-2007 @ 6:47PM
mi777ke777 said...
this is what im getting now as of 5pm est
Please note before resuming your draft that we have preserved the most recent draft order for your league as well as 13 completed rounds of picks. We realize live drafts are difficult to coordinate and apologize for any inconvenience the interruption in service has caused your league
9-05-2007 @ 8:47PM
Matt043 said...
I feel extremely bad for all of you. I know how frustrating it is when something like this messes up. I too had a draft with my friends but it was on ESPN and for some reason it would like freeze and you wouldn't be able to select the guy you wanted.
Imagine how pissed you would be if you couldn't choose which guy you wanted. Anyways, I feel like huge company's such as Yahoo or ESPN should be way ahead of the game and have the support needed to hold their users.
There is no excuse for this. Anyways, I just wanted to express my anger as well. Talk to you later
9-06-2007 @ 1:12AM
Scott said...
The Yahoo message boards are totally packed with complaints. Yahoo has not sent me (paying commish) any comments at all.
Sadly, experienced something similar with ESPN also.
Fantasy Rev up - Servers DOWN! They need better hardward and/or software.