Once-celebrated Terry Semel is out as Yahoo!’s CEO. In his place, founder Jerry Yang. No doubt shareholders and many employees are celebrating as a result of Semel’s departure. So, what now?
A few thoughts:
- Fix your whack search engine. According to new Hitwise data, Y! is now down to 20 percent of the search market. Google is slapping Y! around so much they’re practically nonexistent.
- Buy Bebo and Revver – now. In 6 mos. this social network and video service might be too expensive. Y! needs some cards in the game and this would do it.
- You own Flickr and del.ici.us, remember? Y! has some really cool properties that need to be better integrated into search results (see No. 1).
- Answer in Answers. Yahoo! Answers rocks the house. It should be better integrated into search (see No. 1) and the portal overall.
- Scorched earth. Surfing from section-to-section on Y! has very little consistency, let alone an ease-of-use factor. Stop the Microsoft-style, duct-tape programming and design and get your sameness on.
- Where’s the Wow? While playing it safe and resting on the success of having one of the most trafficked sites on the planet, Y! has lost any sense of remarkability. Jump off a few cliffs.
- HotJobs. Start integrating job postings into relevant search queries (see No. 1). Overnight, traffic numbers would be majorly competitive to CareerBuilder and Monster.
- Forget Hollywood. Semel promised to bring Tinseltown to the Web. Waste of time, mostly. Y! was born tech and needs to get back to those roots. Bonus: Maybe techies will once again dream of working in Sunnyvale.
- Go local; go mobile. A horizon of untapped gold. Go get it.
- Fix your whack search engine. Oh, wait, I said that already. Well, it’s important!
I get slack for slurping up as much Google as I do, but the fact is they’re the only one doing anything really remarkable on this playground, and the numbers back that up.
Make no mistake, I’d like to see someone else give Google a run for its money. As a spectator, it makes things much more exciting. So, here’s to hoping Y! (or MySpace or Microsoft or IAC), minus Semel, can make a horse race of this thing.
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June 19th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
It makes business sense to integrate everything, of course, but Yahoo is complicated enough as it is. Yahoo and the Internet has changed a lot since Jerry Yang began the company. But as a Standard & Poor’s analyst reminds us, Jerry Yang is not exactly new blood. I wonder if he will be able to look at his company with fresh eyes, enough to really see what’s happening on the screen.
– Michael from the U.S. Desk at TheNewsRoom.com
June 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
All excellent points, except:
1. Bebo is interesting – but only if you’re interested in the UK market. It’s too similar to MySpace to get major traction in the US, even with Y! synergies.
2. Revver has been dead for a long, long time. 2 of the 3 founders even left last Fall. Why are you hot on Revver?
3. Flickr and Delicious are destined to remain geeky. These sites won’t gain that much more traction. I do think they are both great properties however.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/is-myspace-worth-12-billion/
BLOG YOU FOOL!! BLOGGGGGGGG!
June 20th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Yeah, MySpace would pretty much cover the video and social networking issue.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I also like your point number 5 for Y!…because between your wiki, ucheez and your blog you could really use a bit of your own advice. And when did having 20 percent market share make you nonexistant? By your very definition Apple Computer should be nothing but a little multi billion dollar multi national operation that only services about 2% of the PC market…hardly anything for microsoft/dell/hp/etc… to worry about.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Joel -
Great post, totally agree.
Regarding delicious and flickr –this is a huge point. Many, many people (living within the entire spectrum of geekdom) have integrated these websites into their daily life. You *never* see Yahoo integration, not even a quaint search box, on any of those sites. Pushing out their content and tools to a variety of web channels should do wonders for their traffic growth. And HotJobs? Same thing. Bigger challenge there; the face of the online job market is changing.