Where to, Yahoo!?

by Richard Watson

These are interesting times for global Internet companies. I say “Internet” companies because it’s impossible to limit the expansion of services that haemorrhages freely from every industry giant’s heart onto the intricate arteries of the Web. (Even as we speak, Microsoft has just released Live! Search News as a competitor to Google News)

Earlier in the week, Yahoo! acquired the best web analytics tools, like, ever, in the form of IndexTools. This has massive marketing repercussions for demographic analysis and advertising platforms. Hell, at one stage, Yahoo! was linked to AOL who according to ComScore now has the best Ad platform, like, ever. It makes me wonder about the emphasis Web 2.0 can put on marketing now that site structures and the sites themselves are becoming increasingly formalised, albeit with different rules to traditional offline marketing.

One can see the vast landscape of, well, the Webscape is really more like an Oceanscape, constantly changing because a lot of power-players are making waves. Throw in some stock prices, takeover bids and soap-opera like intrigue, and you have a complicated (i.e. business) situation in which Yahoo! could conceivably go the way of Netscape.

On the one hand, it does seem like Yahoo! realises the way things are going and is struggling to find somewhere to jump. If they side with Microsoft, then the Nature Of The Search (NOTS) changes because different engines have different criteria for indexing pages. Some things may have to be reconsidered in a Webpage optimisation kind of way, and that’s big business right there.

But! There’s Google! Now they’re tough NOTS to crack. After already having a trial run of using Yahoo! Search to run Google Ads that yielded ‘positive results’, one wonders whether there’s a Google-Yahoo!-AOL eMarketing behemoth in the works, with Yahoo!’s new IndexTools and AOL’s Platform A (both arguably the best in their fields).

For those given to conspiracy theories (like Tim the Office Pirate), it could be that Yahoo! is trading all its valuable business data to Google before selling to Microsoft and reforming inside of Google. Far-fetched? In business, it’s called ‘Murders and Executions’. I mean, of course, ‘Mergers and Acquisitions’.

Perhaps things aren’t as dramatic as all that… After all, the Web is a fast-moving place and things like this have come and gone before - mere ebbs and flows in the inexorable tide of Web-evolution. The smart pirate would probably follow the money.

Either way, time is running out. Quarter 1 financial results are due for Yahoo! today and Microsoft’s three-week deadline is up this Saturday. It doesn’t help that projected earnings are down to 9c net income per share, down from 2007’s 19c. This might inspire Microsoft to offer less than the $46 billion it already has. That would be the worst thing. Like, ever.

2008/04/22 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

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Recent Comments

Kat on Engaging as a Company

I agree with you. There are some things that should ideally not be discussed by an employee in the public sphere.
Would a communications policy have stopped the said journo from speaking out? He/she must have known a huge risk was being taken? I suppose it's also an incredibly difficult thing to predict. The lack of control can be alarming.
I'm definitely interested in seeing a more specific list, so if you find it do share.
Thank you for your comments :). Here's hoping there's a good coffee shop close to you..
vincent on Engaging as a Company

I guess the mark of a well crafted brand starts at HR policy for new recruits - ensuring that they fit the brand's/corporate's persona. So in that sense yes you could argue that left to their own devices employees would, regardless of an online communications policy, communicate in a style the sponsor would approve of. Not sure if that's always the case but I'm inclined to agree with this generalization.
I think what is also important is that the individual writing within the bounds of a sponsor's site does so in a restricted locale. You can police your own domain if you're a corporate, you can't necessarily control the individuals mouth outside of it. For instance on twitter, personal blogs and forums. Owing to the nature of niche stardom you could argue that the employee comes to represent the brand, more so than that personifies the brand in organic conversation with consumers and would carry significant weight both within corporate sites and externally. Making some individuals very wary to write for their companies at all.
For instance in our not too distant past a prominent journo got the boot for publishing his gripes with his employers and their professional ability - he was promptly fired...He would no doubt have been policed on a company blog but owing to the fact that he chose to represent the company elsewhere he took his brand and the papers brand with him - dragging both through the mud as traipsed on towards epic-failuredom...
So to come back to a point, there is definitely a sense that the policies as listed above are quite ambiguous. Even you yourself suggest that requisite legalese is absent, and I have to assume that such legalese would include a fairly long list of do's and dont's. I have a list somewhere laying about which dictates in a very bland corporate fashion how to represent the brand in public - if I find it I will share it with you.
Perhaps its worthwhile to enforce points like "don't tell secrets" and my own favourite, "for the love of god don't gripe about the boss who you've publicly named online"...
That's my mental-riff for the day, I'm afraid I veered rather uncharitably off course but such is the nature of thought.
Now if only the company I worked for had some decent coffee!!
Kat on Engaging as a Company

Transparency is a key issue - as is allowing people to carve their own niche.
My thinking is that people engage with a personality - an individual personality - in conversation more than with a collective. It's just easier. A company personality surely reflects the people who work there as well as a crafted (constructed?) image that the stakeholders choose to present. While you want engagement it's not the same as speaking to an individual.
There are definite risks involved - but I would lean towards allowing people to carve a niche.
vincent on Engaging as a Company

Couldn't have said it better. Nice post, it is most certainly something corporates are going to struggle with. How much transparency is too much? Who should be allowed to represent a brand and to what extent should the individual be given the opportunity to carve their own niche rather than extol the virtues of the mother - brand?
Who knows. We shall soon see as this year pans out and we find out how the big media players tackle the rise of the cost effective digital media channel.
Kat on Engaging as a Company

It is a tough issue, and I can understand why you've never published. I would encourage you to do so though - you probably have a feeling for when your writing reflects your voice and when it doesn't - and the rewards are worth it.
Thanks for reading Wendy. :)

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Where to, Yahoo!?

by Richard Watson

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