Wealth, greed and reality TV - the new (un)holy trinity in contemporary politics?!

   

Even for those trying hard not to notice, it's just about impossible to not feel bombarded with daily blasts of both politics and nonsense arising out of "the filth and the fury" preface to the upcoming presidential election of our neighbours south of the border. Now, while it may seem slightly extreme to use a term coined to describe the ascendance and behaviour of a since-celebrated iconic punk band in the seventies, I might vouchsafe that the antics of certain individuals in the Republican nomination race very closely resemble those associated with a group of punks!

Never has the run-in to such an election been so rambunctiously raucous and ribald, and I don't think anyone could even attempt to explain that in terms other than the words "Donald" and "Trump". With Super Tuesday just around the corner, his sustained presence and unexpectedly (by many) meteoric rise to the very forefront of American politics is not only changing politics in heretofore unforeseeable ways, but may have changed it irreversibly. We've gone down so low so far, that it may well simply become the new norm - and it's far from over yet.

The current Republican nomination race has become a race to the bottom, sadly, and if the Donald makes it as the candidate, you can bet your bottom (American) dollar that the Democratic-Republican race will reach ever-new lows. That will be particularly true if, as expected, Hillary Clinton makes it as the Democratic candidate. The Trumpster is going to go for the jugular every chance he gets, and one way that he will do that is by using one major aspect of Hillary's appeal, against her. 

The USA has had eight years under the leadership of its first black President, and many are anticipating that Hillary Clinton will be America's first female President, not least because of the enormous support she is quite naturally building up from that section of the electorate. But her nightmare will be going up against the Trumpster, and he has already not been shy (as if that word was ever associated with him) in using Bill Clinton's history against Hillary, in terms of how inspiring she is (or isn't) with regards to abuse of women. 

The Trumpster may end up making Ken Starr look like an angel by comparison, and you can bet that neither Clinton looks forward to debates with him. He knows almost no bounds particularly when he is cornered, and you can forget politics-as-usual because not only does he not follow the rules - he doesn't know what the rules were to begin with - and that would be because he's not actually a politician. He has zero experience and clearly extremely limited knowledge of politics, period - whether that be state politics, domestic politics or international politics - and this should scare people more than it apparently does. 

It has been said that you can never win a debate with an amateur; the amateur will always win because the amateur never plays by the rules. I honestly thought that the "entertainment" provided by Trump's early run for President would have been behind us by now, and yet here he is as the likely candidate. Although that is almost inexplicable, there must be something in his bluster and stated intent to "make America great again" that appeals massively to the disadvantaged, the marginalised, the unemployed, the forgotten, and generally anybody with an equally massive chip on their shoulder. 

For those working in drug discovery and development, and big pharma, this election has some serious significance, not least because of recent troubles the industry has faced under the current regime, involving names such as Michael Shkreli and Turing, Valeant, Ovation and Questcor, among others. That spotlight and its associated stress may well have played a part in the hospitalisation of Valeant's J. Michael Pearson with severe pneumonia at year's end, in fact. 

Congress itself has subpoenaed some of these players, and both democratic candidates have taken swipes at what they see as excessive greed in the pharma industry. Quite what the stage would be like with the Trumpster at the helm is open to interpretation, but given his hunger for making money it is possible that it might look more favourable. Only time will tell on that one, as inconceivable as a Trump presidency might be. 

Canada itself may feel more fallout than imagined from the shenanigans south of the border for a less-than-obvious reason. The apparent popularity of the Trumpster, and the unpredicted success of his blowhard approach, the unprecedented rise of both neophyte and demagogue, has clearly impacted if not actually inspired a similar TV personality up here north of the border. 

We are of course talking about Kevin O'Leary, a talking head (or to many a loudmouth) investor who like Trump has made his name as much for his TV performances as anything else in recent years. It now transpires that Mr. O'Leary has shown an interest in running not only for the Conservative leadership spot, which raised eyebrows inandof itself, but as usual he wants to keep his options open and has not ruled out running for the Liberal leadership either! He recently predicted that there will be an opening in that party also, even if Justin Trudeau may have something to say about that. 

For sure, O'Leary and Trump have a lot in common, both being brash TV personalities and both have a "healthy" appreciation of (corporate) greed, in total contrast to a Bernie Sanders or even a Justin Trudeau. I read a scathing report yesterday on how much O'Leary's success as an investor has been overstated and romanticised by TV show chest-pumping, while the reality is a lot less financially healthy or glamorous. 

O'Leary Funds didn't even make it to the five year mark (not that he was ever licensed to manage other people's money in the first place) before being evaporated by Canoe in the wake of redemptions of the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, and Mattel's acquisition of O'Leary's TLC flagship was referred to by Businessweek as "one of the worst deals of all time". Both Mattel CEO Jill Barad and their shareholders probably agree too; the former was forced out less than a year after the deal, which at its worst saw the latter face losses in value of some $2 billion, in a single day!

Quite why such types have the capacity to garner so much adoration is something that one could dissect for hours, but the bottom line has to have something to do with their bottom line. Yes, they may be greedy, and nasty, and in love with themselves, but they have made vault loads of money, so then their antics are easier to stomach especially if they are seen as working class joes who railed against the system, stuck it to the man and rose above the masses. Notwithstanding the fact that they often overpromise and underdeliver, they are full of confidence and bluster while proclaiming to the populus from the pulpit that they are the nation's new saviour. 

And if you saw it on TV, it has to be true, right? And unquestionably, such types don't get to where they are by being modest nor by being wary of adding some extra layers onto the cake. But as much as reality TV can often be seen as pure fantasy, we are now witnessing the emergence of the crowd-pleasing and entertaining rabble rouser as serious political figure, and that's a worrying trend. The even more worrying thing about it is that the trend seems to have already crept north of the border, and we may have seen the birth of our very own Donald Trump! 

Whither the individual? Social media gone full circle, making individuals become unsociable!

Something that occurred to me recently was not only the incredible impact that social media have had on people's lives, but additionally, how they have purposefully invaded the privacy of the individual, and further, that they have even affected one's ability to appear to be an individual, anymore. 

Initially, there was not too much concern over privacy in social media use, even if people were slow to realize that basically anyone with a computer and internet access could dig into your Facebook profile, and see photos not only of your family and friends, but also as was the case for many members, to peruse their entire social life and circle, all from the comfort of the spying eye's own home. The photos can be blown up, easily copied, and even messed with as the end-user sees fit. Quite why anyone would want, say, photos of themselves on sandy beaches in tiny bikinis on holiday, being readily available to their teachers, bosses, co-workers, bartenders and effectively anyone who remembers their name is beyond me. 

Facebook never did have much concern for member privacy, but under pressure it introduced new features to allow the member to decide how public or private certain aspects of their online identity were, and as worry spread over privacy issues due to the media highlighting it, one saw a more cautious approach to publishing one's entire lifestyle to the world. At the same time, many still felt that it was not a major problem until the inevitable happened: some bright spark realized that social media were the ideal marketing tool for business.  

The effect of this was not felt immediately, as the business world struggled to use social media productively, while trying to find anyone over 35 who had any idea how to use it at all. Eventually they managed to catch up somewhat, at which point the effect of the business world joining Facebook became significantly more noticeable if not downright pervasive. Once people started getting fired from their jobs for compromising photos, or comments such as "I hate my f***ing boss!" on their profiles, people began to realize that the party was over.

When courts began to reinforce the new status quo by upholding various cases of unjust dismissal, the message was hammered home more clearly: it does matter what you post on your "personal" Facebook page, and even if you go totally private, employers still want to see it. Yes, they have absolutely no legal right to see it, but do you want the job or not?! When it comes to jobs, employers are always in the driving seat and you telling them that they have no legal basis for demanding to see your Facebook page just helps them move on to a candidate with a lovely pastel-colored flower-filled timeline profile, and it's all over. 

With the introduction of Twitter (by default, an intentionally public gossip service) and LinkedIn (specifically for job seekers/employers), social media as quality control analysis of the individual expanded in scope. It became totally the norm for employers to not only go digging surreptitiously (initially) into your online profiles, but later on, employers began to actually ask for your online profile addresses and usernames as part and parcel of the interview process. 

Saying no is not an option, which is frankly, outrageous, and while they claim that if you are not willing to share then you must have something to hide, I say that it is none of your goddamn (for want of a better word!) business - period. The other side of that coin is those who freely use their association (rarely is the key word alignment) with the brand, but then conduct themselves questionably online, and don't see the disconnect. It's cool to say that they are a tech geek at Apple, or a director at Facebook, or a programmer at Google, so they put it in, but follow with a disclaimer. 

That disclaimer covers all sorts of sins, right? They feel free to dive in and often use expletive-filled comments and replies to friends, and make strange sociopolitical commentaries on the side. It's a case of wanting to have it all. They want their famous employer's brand on their profile to up their status in life, but then want to make it clear that their voice has got nothing to do with that employer: so what does that mean? It means that they should have nothing to do with each other, outside the office, that's what it's saying! Hell, it might even be saying very clearly that they simply fake it at work, and in fact do not fit with their employer's brand, at all. 

But the very fact that they associate themselves with the brand means that the profile is not exclusively theirs, and will be up for scrutiny. A disclaimer changes nothing. Do you think that an employer would not change their opinion of that charming blond girl from the design team, upon seeing that she has tons of hidden tattoos and has a wild Twitter profile full of radical politics and language that is more commonly heard on a construction site? Of course they would look at her differently, and human resources would be alerted to it. 

As always, employers have the upper hand, especially if you want (to keep) that job. The Catch 22 of making your online life private to all but close friends/family (which is the totally normal thing to do) is that it raises a red flag in the human resources department. "What are you trying to hide?" The other Catch 22 is that if you do perform a quick spring cleaning and get rid of those drunken college trip pics, and the one with the football team eating sushi off your almost-naked body, then you have joined the club. Once you go public, with an employer, then you are public - period. Squeaky clean is the new norm.

This might not be such a serious issue for someone who lives a fairly quiet life and generally has nothing to hide, although someone in your circle could still post something wild onto your profile which your employer may get to see before you do, if you are busy. Or, if you are prone to compete in wet T-shirt contests in your local Hawaiian bar on Friday nights, then it's not enough to make sure that you don't post any pics of it online. Why? Well, because someone else might. There's always some sneak who loves to catch people in compromising positions on their cell phone camera, with no one aware of the recording of it. Just ask Michael Phelps or Robin Thicke (among many others), for example!

So where do we stand today? In many ways, it has returned us to where we were before: where our private lives were private, and our public face (which now includes our online identity) at work and outside was public. In other words, social media have become so pervasive and even career-threatening that for many they now represent only the public face of  our real lives. The public face and the reality are now formally separated once more. 

This is highly ironic in that many used to use social media to show off their private lives in public, but they now are forced to massage and sanitize that life, to make it suitable for public viewing. All because employers became sneaks and demanded to see a Facebook profile as if it was their right: it is not. But guess what? Telling a potential employer that you don't have a Facebook profile because you think it is worthless, as a way of avoiding the invasion of privacy, will only get you classified as "old" or "a potential sociopath" and you still won't get the job!

So now Facebook becomes a place to present some kind of fake sterilized version of ourselves, doing our best to strip away any individualistic traits, so that we appear to be the standard issue well-balanced production line humanoid model that employers theoretically believe in. Even though, if they believe that candidate employees have any higher form of intelligence whatsoever, then they know that they are looking at a clean cloned profile, or a purposely bland standard (i.e. mind-numbingly boring) identity - right?!

Whither the individual? Whither one's right to stand out, fiercely and proudly, and be as exuberant as one wants to be and is, on a social media website? It has got nothing to do with the workplace, and as long as one is doing a great job in the office, and does not go out of one's way to put down the boss/company online, it has nothing to do with the office. It has almost come to the point of people needing one fake public face, for employers, and also a real but private online identity with a different name or nickname, that only one's true blues are aware of! Once you know that your employer is watching you on Facebook, it is no longer either private or free: you pay a price on a weekly basis for being there, whether you realize it or not, and whether you like it or not. 

There is way too much sharing in this brave new world of social media. Those that hide or are mysterious have become outsiders, and are peered at suspiciously by the rest of the herd. But let me ask you something - when you were in a class at college, or in an office at work, who was/is more intriguing and interesting - the guy/girl who insists on telling you their entire life story over a thirty minute lunch, or the one who is friendly but a little more mysterious and aloof, and who only shares themselves in detail with a select few? There is value in dignity and privacy!

To each their own, but being one of the sheep is such an undesirable state of affairs that it is simply a quite tragic proposition, I'm afraid. We need to celebrate the individual, and individuality; it's a characteristic that is admirable and one that does not need to live in eternal self-promotion and does have a total right to privacy. The individual can be experienced in real time and as a living person, only, because he/she is much too busy and way too happy living life to spend even an evening trying to present some scrapbook version of that life on some social media website! 

The right to privacy has been a major issue just this past week (and is what prompted today's topic) what with Apple being ordered by a magistrate to help the FBI penetrate the phone of certain individuals, and additionally the FBI effectively ordering Apple to produce a new software tool to get around encryption that was put in place to protect the data belonging to an individual in the first place! Apple changed their encryption software in 2014, after the Edward Snowden affair caused outrage over how much information the government was accessing from individual private lives. 

This is a very touchy subject and is bringing to the surface a not-so-well-kept secret that companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have been the source of a huge amount of data-gathering by Uncle Sam since 9/11. Both the Bush and Obama regimes have benefited from special relationships with these companies, via the clandestine PRISM program, and I daresay that in return, a blind eye was drawn to their stockpiling sufficient billions of dollars offshore that the taxes themselves would run into the billions!

That convenient marriage appears to be reaching its end, not least with Obama himself referring to such tax-avoidance activities as actually "Un-American". So the love affair is over, with Big Brother trying to bite the hand that fed it (data and information) for over a decade, while Silicon Valley in turn rebels against that Big Brother. Google, Facebook and Twitter have all come out in support of Apple and their refusal to facilitate a backdoor for the benefit of the FBI.

This story is going to be fascinating to watch evolve, not least because in one way or another it impacts each and every one of us. But, in the meantime, on this cosy, snowy Saturday morning it is time for this boy to grab a mug of my new Djibouti Darkest Delight roast and catch up on the world using my backdoor-closed doubly-encrypted Samsung Galaxy Tab S2! 

Are we finally on the pathway to the holy grail?!

      

Cutting-edge research has allowed clinicians to get better and better and more personalised than ever in treating an individual's individual cancer, and one area that has been simultaneously exploding is the area of cancer diagnostics. It's not only that modern-day research is coming up with companion diagnostics for specific cancer therapeutics, but more generally, a currently red-hot area is the emergence of the "liquid biopsy". 

The liquid biopsy is a non-invasive blood test that detects circulating tumour cells (CTCs) or cell-free tumour DNA (cfDNA) that are separated from the primary site or a metastasised one, which would provide clinicians and patients a much more efficient (as well as less painful and costly) means to monitor the success of an ongoing treatment. The days of lumping everyone into the same boat, for say, chemotherapy, are fading fast, and better stratification of patients such that they can avoid painful, toxic treatments that they won't benefit from is the new norm. 

Although the underlying concept is new in today's cancer treatment, the use of circulating DNA for diagnosis purposes is not, and as far back as 1997, it was discovered that a future mother's blood contains DNA fragments shed from the growing foetus inside her; this became the basis of new tests for rapid, early assessment for Down's syndrome with which over one million women have since been screened. 

The beauty of liquid biopsy is that unlike a painful tissue biopsy, one can not only get a read on the true heterogeneity of the current tumour population at any given time, but additionally one can follow it in real time to monitor both benefits as well as genotypic changes that may facilitate resistance. Serial biopsies would allow an ongoing analysis of the make-up of a patient's tumour type and subtype, and it's direct response to a chosen course of therapeutic(s). 

Given the impact that this will have in cancer centres around the world, it's no surprise (of course!) that that the race to develop the best liquid biopsy is on, and that it is going to be big business. In fact, it is estimated that the market for liquid biopsies will reach an impressive $22B US by 2020, and that number is only going to grow thereafter.  

There was a lot of hullabaloo at the recent healthcare summit in Silicon Valley about personalised medicine and diagnostics, and just last night I stumbled upon a "CBS News Investigation" piece, on this very exciting new medical development. Two companies who have already jumped into the liquid biopsy milieu are making (the) most of the news. First up is San Francisco-based Grail, which was created via a massive $100M Series A round that included big names such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, and who with support from former NCI head honcho Richard Klausner are developing a test that in principle could tell a person with no symptoms that they have cancer. The choice of name for the company is no coincidence: 

"This has the potential to totally change not just cancer but all of medicine. That's the holy grail!" said Klausner, referring to catching cancer early enough to be able to cure it and not just treat it. Having said that, Klausner is less sanguine than particular rival companies with regards to the when. "The answers are not going to be clear until we do definitive and large scale studies. We just don't have the clinical data yet, and we have to get it."

That is an opinion echoed by many I am sure, not least the FDA, but seems to be less top-of-mind in the other company featured in the story, Pathway Genomics in San Diego. This company is of note for both having heavy hitters with White House connections on their board, as well as making the news via the totally lightweight phenomenon known rather hilariously as "Keeping up with the Kardashians". Quite why any serious scientific, medical or biotech company would choose to use that family as a vehicle for promoting their biomedical value proposition is beyond this writer.

It's probably the result of an equally serious (and seriously ambitious) social media-communications director, who thinks any big audience is worth having. Even, or particularly if, that audience is not a sophisticated nor educated one. As long as the kits sell, right?! But pseudo-frivolity aside, Pathway CEO Jim Plante is not able to just shrug off such commentary, and he faced tough questioning from CBS's Jim Axelrod about claims made on the company's website. 

Of note is one of Pathway's newer tests, called CancerIntercept™ Detect, which is available for as little as a few hundred dollars, and which has caused considerable controversy for claiming what critics say is simply not achievable today. In a video posted on their site, Pathway stated:

"CancerIntercept can detect a growing tumor in the body, before the patient may notice symptoms - it's like a cancer stethoscope for detecting and monitoring cancer". 

What I find most offensive about such claims is that they are in fact targeted at that totally (well, let's agree to say "totally" in terms of science!) unsophisticated audience that hangs off every word a Kim or Khloe Kardashian says. All it would take is for one of them to praise the company and claim "CancerIntercept saved my life!" to then have a million wannabe-Kardashians (that species known colloquially as Kandashians) screaming their way to the pharmacy to order the test. 

However, and of greater concern for Jim Plante, is the fact that a much more sophisticated audience is watching, and the FDA has come out and said that they think Pathway's test might in fact be dangerous and actually harming public health. And in case anyone is in any doubt, it is the FDA who (will) approve such tests, not some candyfloss TV show and their audience. While the audience is keeping up, they are simultaneously being pandered down to, it seems, and that's just not going to be strong, sustainable business for Pathway - period. 

"We just watched a video upstairs and it says the liquid biopsy will detect cancer before symptoms," said Axelrod in his interview with Plante. 
"It may." 
"That's not what the video says."
"It says it may. We don't say-- we don't say will. We say may."
"You don't make the claim that you can detect cancer?"
"We say the information can be used to help guide potential early diagnosis." 

Axelrod went on to grill Plante further, but it got kind of painful, and I am sure you get the point. It's one thing to be an ambitious company pushing a hot new product, but when it comes to potentially taking advantage of the weak, the sick and the old, one is treading an extremely fine line. Reputations can go south in a heartbeat, and the FDA can bury such reputations with a swish of their pen. No surprise then, that the video in question on the Pathway Genomics website suddenly disappeared after the CBS News interview. 

As Axelrod said to Stanford professor Dr. Max Diehn, it's going to take thousands of patients, several years of testing, and many millions of dollars before claims made by an entity such as Pathway can be substantiated; Max Diehn agreed, and implied that until then the test is effectively meaningless. Not least because physicians themselves have not been educated in the correct interpretation of the outcome of such tests. 

In what seems to many as incongruous (or even inconceivable), Pathway is now running three clinical trials to validate their test, but these tests were initiated after the product was already marketed! Such is the scenario for these laboratory-derived tests (LDTs) at the FDA currently, and Pathway took advantage of the lack of regulation involved in marketing these kits, and cranked them out. But everyone knows the clampdown is coming, and so they had no choice but to get into the clinic and get the data that is truly needed, if they are to have a future in this business. 

For now, I much prefer the less aggressive non-media-driven approach of Grail, who seem to want to obtain hardcore scientific evidence and solid data to back up their test before or when it hits the market. The fact they are majority-owned by sequencing giant Illumina doesn't hurt, either. They state that they will be in clinical trials by 2017 and hope to have a pan-cancer test ready by 2019, or so, and that seems to be a much more measured and realistic claim. 

Here at AmorChem, we have been interested in personalised medicine and better cancer patient stratification/treatment for some time now, and in fact one of our portfolio projects is focused on development of a test for more effective diagnosis and stratification of patients presenting with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Intense research is ongoing to additionally come up with tests for detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) in that condition, as well as ideally to develop a novel therapeutic(s) for such companion diagnostic tests. For now, we will take the Grail approach, and state that while we are not there yet, we are most definitely getting there! 

Less time feeling cool, looking hip, posing for Vogue, "hanging with the kids" - and more time in the boardroom - doth a CEO make!

        

It's only been less than four years since Google employee #20, otherwise known as Marissa Mayer, was appointed President and CEO of the struggling brand known as "Yahoo!", which effectively maintained business-as-usual (and little positive change); if it feels longer than that to me, well it must feel like a decade or more to Ms. Mayer herself!

Unquestionably, the recruitment and hitching of  Marissa Mayer's star to the aging, aching, ailing Yahoo brand and logo could only have been viewed as a positive move for a company that had completely lost touch with the times it lived in, and had thus left many with few reasons to believe. Anymore. But Marissa was the bright, blonde, shiny future, and Yahoo certainly bought into that dream, with a reputed reward of some $36M for her first six months alone! 

Yahoo somehow had let it all slip away; formerly glittering bejewelled crystals of sand flowed out through the widening pores of a veritable pillar of salt of their very own making, converted into a cold, hard new composite that was interlaced with the reality that the dream was almost over. Today in 2016 it is over, with bedfellows Google (along with Microsoft, Facebook and Apple) having changed the world we live in, and their conglomerate, Alphabet, now listed as the biggest company on the planet. 

Marissa initially went on a shopping spree like almost no other, and threw some twenty-plus start-ups into her shopping cart (presumably using a much more mobile-friendly and up-to-date provider for the online transactions!) since taking the reins at Yahoo. Kudos to her for realising that the linchpins of the company's online image and business (Yahoo News, Yahoo.com and various online communication tools) all needed a serious high kick in their low-tech rears. 

Things did change on the 17th floor of their Manhattan offices, with a clear and purposeful switch to start-up atmosphere, with teams of engineers running amok riding the new wave. Someone smart (I wonder who?!) made the conclusion that mobile media (make that mobile life!) was the way forward - yet there won't be any Nobel prizes for coming up with that pearl of wisdom. At other companies, it is neither the way forward nor the future. Why? Because that "future" is already here - it is now. Today. No, make that yesterday!

The fact that Yahoo is so far behind is a total indictment of how long and how deeply they have been asleep at the wheel. Somehow, as a shareholder, pictures like the one above, with Ms. Mayer arm-in-arm with a bunch of kids and tech geeks, would not exactly make me go all warm and fuzzy nor all "oh-ah" as I check the share prices, which are far from romantic. Profits did rise under her tenure, but revenue has slipped, again. 

"I'm pleased with Yahoo!'s performance in the first quarter," Mayer said back in April, 2013.  "I'm confident that the improvements we're making to our products will set up the company for long-term growth."

While I am glad that our Marissa had confidence, that is hardly a surprise for such an over-achiever, yet it is not enough to keep most of us warm at night. They can create a tech locker room nerdy boys club type of office all they want, and engineer the bejesus out of their creaky old rusty ship but there is one critical aspect that I think that Ms. Mayer let get buried in her clear desire to be hot and hip.

To what do I refer? Well, we will have to go back to web presence 101 for that one. It was called "web content" for a very good reason. I continue to be appalled at the lacklustre (often that's at best, sadly) and much too occasionally woeful excuse (at worst) for content that appears on many news items and blog posts directly associated with the Yahoo brand. 

It's all very well recreating the great-free-snacks-and-pinball-machines-and-basketball-hoops playroom office already hash(tagg)ed to death by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Facebook - but engineering can only do so much. You can build the most accurate and pristinely perfected car out of some magnificent engineering, all you want, but what if someone fills the tank with diesel and not fine grade unleaded? It's not going to be long before the inevitable stall.

It's all about end-user(s) and that user's experience, hands-on, when it comes down to it. Mobile versions of the major Yahoo online offerings will only carry the car so far - unless the gas fueling it is of the highest quality possible. In this case, the analogy is that the content is the gas. You can go ahead and spend millions developing the new tools, but unless you attend to issues to do with the content accessed by those tools - you can forget it. Content is king, with a capital K, and there is still much work to be done. And there's a huge difference when you're a Facebook or a Yahoo between being "cool" as opposed to being "cold" - as in left out in the cold - on your own. 

Now it's not shocking that Ms. Mayer is heavily focused on engineering and product development - that's her core expertise. But as CEO, she needed to dive into the deeper end of uncharted waters, and address (among other) the content posted with the Yahoo brand tagged to it, especially the Canadian franchise. There are still way too many posts (blogs in particular) with titles and a blank space beneath, or a sloppily written excuse for content with typos, grammatical errors and words that mean nothing at all - collectively implying that the people she called back to head offices for "phoning-it-in" continue to do so - only they do it now from head office! Need an example? Here is an opening sentence on a top news piece from October 10, 2013, on the announcement of the first Canadian writer to win the Nobel prize for literature:

"Celebrated Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro, who announced her retirement earlier this year, has won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian-based to earn the honour."

Did you spot it? This is a less egregious version of what I am referring to, but it's a major piece of news that was just cranked out, hurriedly, with clearly zero proofreading. If this is how big news is handled, imagine reports on basically anything else? These people ripped Yahoo off, and I sincerely hope she knows it. There were one or two names in particular who regularly posted titles with zero content, and I have a funny feeling that these people billed Yahoo for producing "x"such pieces per month, and no one bothered to check the content. Or the blank space beneath the title in many cases. It was, is, and should always be a total professional embarrassment to all senior management at Yahoo, and that means Ms. Mayer too. 

Or how about this one, hot off the presses in March, 2016, and it remains on the website's homepage right now. 

"She no computer, washing machine, television or car – instead cycling to work on an 80-year-old pedal bike."

Brilliant, huh? Shameful, duh! Yes, I know she bought Tumblr, thereby accessing some real content (making a nice change), but it cost her over a billion dollars to do so; in the end just to look cool. But it's hard to call your company "The biggest start-up in the world" when you can afford to buy other real start-ups for over one billion dollars to boost your own brand! To date she has acquired over twenty of those real start-ups. 

Just this past month in 2016, Yahoo finally acknowledged that Tumblr has fallen in value by $230 million since it was acquired. Although there has been some Yahoo growth since she was acquired, much of that growth was attributable to the company's stake in e-commerce giant Alibaba, but that entity was acquired before Mayer's tenure so there is only so much credit she can take for that. But the actual loss in value of a previously red-hot start-up just emphasises Yahoo's complete incapacity to innovate, even in the presence of real, raw talent! 

In terms of her presence and leadership as a boss, she was heavily criticised for her fashion of evaluating employee performance, with her famous bell curve quite literally dictating one's very survival at the company, if you were at the wrong end of that curve. A "toxic environment" is how it has been described by some. But worry not, people being ushered out the door were not classic "layoffs" which was a dirty word to her, she preferred the term "remixes". One of those "remixed" human beings just filed a lawsuit in California against Yahoo claiming that their firing procedures violate state law. That is going to be interesting to see playing out. 

Both The New York Times and The New Yorker have walloped Yahoo! as stocks continued to freefall by more than 30% throughout 2015, along with the departure of a dozen top executives. Both SpringOwl and Starboard Value have been scathing about Mayer's performance, which was underscored by estimates that Yahoo's core business was worth less than zero dollars for most of 2015! Now it is becoming an auction, with Mayer stating that they may well in fact sell their core business, which is, in my opinion, an outright admission of failure on what she was brought in to achieve, i.e. to bolster the core business! 

In terms of content, calling Yahoo a "big start-up" is disingenuous. It's only like a start-up in terms of where it's not today, in relation to where it should be, already being a household name and part of the zeitgeist. Yahoo the "start-up" is a true oxymoron. One that Ms. Mayer is not going to get away with much longer. Yahoo was officially a 20-year-old in 2014, which makes it no longer an adolescent in 2016, and in fact it should be all grown up today and on a clear(er) path forward - not selling its core business! 

On the upside, it probably is a little cooler to be a yahoo today. But the baby is all grown up, or should be. And we had a Mayer honeymoon, which is sadly now officially over too. Either Mayer and Yahoo deliver on the promise of transporting the brand into this decade (or beyond) or I fear that Ms. Mayer will be visiting that beyond in the form of the circumference outside Yahooworld - maybe even before all her young engineers hit their big 3-0!

An angelic blonde star at the helm needs to be more than eye candy, which is what activist investors have been getting at recently. Engineering is just the mechanics. Acquiring cool start-ups is great for photo opps. But you need the gas and you need the best drivers - and that can only come with a renewed and reinvigorated overhaul of that dirty word - content - and a re-established commitment to end-user experience and not just living for advertising. 

The clearest problem at Yahoo's helm stems from having hired a stellar product developer and manager, and assuming they had both the personal bandwidth and managerial depth to transform themselves into the CEO of a giant behemoth like Yahoo. Today I cannot help but feel that the penny has finally dropped and change now once again has to come to the company; whether that change will involve just Mayer or the entire C-suite remains to be seen. Either way, currently there's no "Woohoo!" in being a Yahoo!