Many years ago, I do mean many, when your company screwed up, when you were faced with a big customer problem, silence was a reasonable response. Companies could hunker down, take as much time as they needed to formulate a response and respond when  they were ready with the best public response they could.

In today’s world, silence is just not an option.

I play Yahoo Fantasy Football with a few of the readers of this blog and some other sales consultants.  My typical Sunday, watch football and track my fantasy team with the Yahoo Fantasy Football app.

Today the app has been down all day.  As of this writing it is still down. What makes it worse is Yahoo has not said word one. They have not made any statment on Twitter, their blog, via email, on the site or anywhere letting Fantasy Football players know what’s going on.

Yahoo Fantasy Football is NOT a life saving service. However, millions of people and 10,000’s of leagues spend their Sundays like me continuously looking to follow thier teams status and see if they are winning.  Fantasy Football is a Sunday past time for millions of Americans.

Yahoo’s live Fantasy Football app and service being down on a Sunday morning is the equivalent of the cable company losing broadcast connection of the local football team’s game just as it’s about to begin and then not telling anyone what happened. Could you imagine?

Not communicating with their customers just doesn’t work anymore.

The Twitter hashtag #yahoofantasyfootball is blowing up and yet @yahoo, @yahoofantasyfootball, @marissamayer etc. are quiet, crickets. Not a word.

If you are a company of any size. If you have customers. If you think you don’t have to communicate any longer, you don’t have your companies best interest at heart.

Communication is easier and cheaper than it’s ever been. Hey Yahoo, you reading this?

It doesn’t look like it.