What is Yahoo!s’ Business?

The dust is still settling from Jerry Yang’s announcement that he is to step down as Yahoos’ CEO. I wonder if Yahoo! has any idea what it wants to be. Search, Advertising or Neither.

There is still talk of Microsoft buying Yahoo! Search, which is fair enough take the least toxic bit of Yahoo! But what are you then left with. Yahoo! Mail, Delicious & Flickr they are the only remaining big properties that Yahoo have on the books.

Delicious & Flickr have yet to be monetized and the user base on both platforms would kill the person responsible for upsetting the status quo. That leaves Yahoo! Mail, which has some ads but the willingness of Yahoo! to go with the Google advertising deal means they are likely making no money on that either.

So how is Yahoo making money?

Sure its got deals with BT in the UK providing the homepage and mail service to all BT Broadband customers, and it has some News properties which are well trafficed. User growth is going to be negligible anybody who would want to sign up for a Yahoo! Account probably have, its a problem many big companies face and sure there have been attempts to get the workforce re-invigorated but so far nothing new and astounding has made it through the door, and what has been something a bit different had to be bought in.

I have said many times before that Yahoo! doesn’t have a clear sense of what it wants to be; Search, Advertising, Content or Video, it just doesn’t sit nicely anywhere and it can’t be the agregator for all because Google has sewn that one up however, thats not to say Yahoo! couldn’t compete – they could if they become a strong leader in the tech sector again.

If I where Yahoo! I would invest heavily in cloud computing services, rather than following try and jump ahead. Just like Apple did in 1997.

Is Yahoo! dead in the water?

After Microsoft left Yahoo! at the altar, its got me thinking is Yahoo! ever going to get back to what it was. Most of all the scorched earth policy that Yahoo! used against Microsoft has done them more harm than good.

Its apparent to anybody with any common sense, that Yahoo! has too many fingers in too many pies. Even down to having competing products within the same company, they have some stellar internet properties but mis-manage them or let them go cold and the talent leave.

Yahoo! needs to focus and innovate not play catch up (more) also they need a clear brand stratergy are they a search, advertising or community company. They cannot be everything to everybody in the short-term they just need a stellar product that works and can propel them to where they should be. Yahoo! Live is a good product but not enough time was invested at launch and it failed, del.icio.us and Flickr are also good but they haven’t really seen any development since their acquisition. Pipes is also another great idea (and powers some of the backend systems of this site) but is difficult to get into and under promoted.

Yahoos’ best bet is to pick one of its web properties such as del.icio.us and develop and innovate that platform and put some fire back into the thing, then move on to the next product. Build fantastic products in social areas such as Bookmarking, Photo, & Video and they could be in with a chance of re-gaining some market clout that they once enjoyed.

Links
Yahoo’s Tumbling House Of Cards – TechCrunch
del.icio.us – Social Bookmarking
Flickr – Photo Sharing
Pipes – Rewire the Web

 

Oops! What about Flickr

I have gone from thinking Microsoft buying Yahoo! might be a good idea to thinking its a truly terrible idea.One simple thing Flickr they will make a complete hash of Flickr, if they don’t sell it first.

Also alot of the features I like in Yahoo! mail which they aren’t gonna keep because it doesn’t use a Microsoft Product i.e ASP or whatever the backwards language is called.

Boo Microsoft! Leave Yahoo! be.

Good God – Redmond makes offer for Yahoo!

Yahoo Logo2008 has just got a whole lot worse if the deal comes off.

Microsoft has offered $44.6billion to buy Yahoo! At least if Microsoft does by Yahoo!, Live! search becomes half decent and there are some real brains in the web division, it could also go the other way and Yahoo! becomes what Live! is now. 

Even with the combined forces of Microsoft & Yahoo there will still be a long way to go before, they can topple the impressive lead Google has over them both. Only time will tell. 

I missed Yahoo!

Google.com and Yahoo.com LogosI am doing some work/research into SEO for myself and also northernmusiconline.co.uk and I have almost exclusively being looking at Google. It was only until last night when a yahoo’ed myself that a realized, ‘god i forgot these’

I think its weird that I didn’t think of it sooner, but seen as I use google almost exclusively its slightly understandable, but by that logic also if you advertise with Yahoos equivalent of AdWords are you going to get less results than using AdWords. This is once again Googles biggest asset slapping me around the face, the Brand.