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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