Open Thread: How Would You Fix Yahoo!?
Easily the biggest tech story of the past two weeks has been Microsoft's unsolicited $44 billion takeover bid for Yahoo! It's not just the enormous amount of money that has brought it so much attention (though it would rank among the biggest tech mergers of all time), but also because of how drastically the combined company would alter the Internet landscape. If Microsoft succeeds in its proposed acquisition of Yahoo!, the combined entity would be by far the most trafficked on the web and control a third of US web searches.
Since Microsoft dropped its surprise announcement on the web on February 1st, a lot has been written about the deal, including by ReadWriteWeb. We wrote about how the merger would ultimately be a good thing for users. We wrote about the effect the acquisition might have on OpenID. We wondered if Google had made a misake to go hostile about the proposed merger. We suggested a plan B for Microsoft. We wrote about how publishers would fare under Microhoo. And when a rumor surfaced today that perhaps Microsoft was considering buying Facebook instead of Yahoo! we wrote about why we thought that was actually a good idea.
There have also been a good deal of alternatives proposed by bloggers, analysts, and pundits that would keep Yahoo! out of Microsoft's hands. The most popular of which are probably the suggestion that Yahoo! outsource its search and text advertising business to Google, that News Corp. trade MySpace and other web 2.0 properties for equity in Yahoo!, or that Yahoo! merge with AOL (after AOL dumps its broadband business).
This is a topic that everyone has an opinion on. We've more than said our piece, as has the rest of the blogosphere. So inspired by today's Mahalo Daily we'd like to turn the mic over to you. How would you fix Yahoo!? Would you take Microsoft's offer? Hold out for more money? Or explore one of the other options? Or do you have a completely new idea that no one has talked about yet? Let us know in the comments below, and remember that the best daily comment on RWW (as chosen by our editors) wins a $30 Amazon gift card.
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Monster 1(bugs) + Monster 2(bugs) = Monster 3 (too much bugs)
The advertising market is the key to Yahoo's future. Whether as a part of Microsoft or not, it has to offer something unique to get past Google in that area.
As such, it needs to push hard into location-based and personalized advertising. How? Buy up already existing local advertising players. This doesn't just mean newspaper ads (although they need to consider something like Quadrant One), it also means boring things like bus-stop ads.
Then, you can combine the sales of both online and offline channels. When you sell someone a billboard or an ad on a park bench, you know that they are interested in people within a particular geographic area seeing that ad. You instantly have a gigantic database of hyper-localized ads to work with and suddenly you're able to define that aspect of the online market going forward.
Now, the goal is to extend this into personalization. Between location-based information and improved demographics, you're suddenly in an ideal position to push yourself as an ad platform that can actually monetize things like social networks.
With advantages in these areas, you at least have a shot at competing with Google in advertising. At very least you have a selling point for sites looking to monetize through ads which is something Yahoo currently lacks ("we're number 2" doesn't cut it).
Assuming that Microsoft is willing to leave Yahoo a great deal of autonomy in pursuing this, the strategy is actually easier with those kind of resources backing the move. However, that's what decides things: what kind of deal are you able to get in terms of management structure. If Microsoft is talking about how much Yahoo will gain from MS quality control methods and managerial talent, run the other way. If they are willing to contemplate this more as a sharing of resources, it's worth listening...
Agreed, advertising is the killer for monetisation. With all those eyeballs and page views Yahoo should by rights be very profitable. I'm think that what they need to sort themselves out is:
1. A decent behavioral ad serving system integrated into all their properties; thus tracking users and serving ads to them based on what they do on one Yahoo site on another.
2. Some kind of joined up approach to their strategy... They have so much property on the web and yet it all seems really disjointed (unless you're on the main Yahoo portal). If I was them I'd be working hard to get their services speaking to each other so they know who users are and what they like quickly and effectively.
3. Get social features into their single sign on and profile functionality.
All the above helps make their advertising more targeted and opens opportunities for them to monetise in ways they currently don't.
1. Create a messaging platform between their various web and mobile properties.
2. Create an app development platform and open it up to the world.
3. Partner with FB or buy Bebo then offer search that leverages the social graph as follows:
a) Converts unresolved search queries into questions for selected friends and anyone who has registered an interest in the topic.
b) Offers the option of filtering search results based on user and friends' profile data. Note that there is potential to factor in delicious and mybloglog data here too.
It is war and Yahoo is clearly on the defensive. The first question that yahoo needs to ask itself is "What do I have that my competitors do not have?". The answer is its large user base. Most importantly most of the products in which yahoo has a lead, enjoy a tremendous amount of network effect. Take yahoo messenger for example. Google may come up with a 100 times better product but if all my freinds are on yahoo messenger then I will rather log onto yahoo messenger. Same is the case with yahoo answer, yahoo finance, flicr and delicious. Yahoo has some really strong brands that are not going to die out anytime soon. That gives yahoo a strong base. Yahoo needs to launch attacks from this base.
I would turn Yahoo's Sunnyvale campus into low and moderate income housing and small business retail and technology incubator space.
Clean up the home page of Yahoo and remove all that crap leaving just the search button like Google. Leave all that crap for people that want start pages. Make Yahoo's home page fast to load and the search results come up instantly and be relevant.
Sounds obvious and it is. I think the advertising/marketing dept. are in too much control and are focused with selling space on the home page that causes clutter and makes people want to use something simpler like Google.
reno is right, the Yahoo main page looks like Times Square. It may please the committee that designed it, but it hurts my eyeballs.
Yahoo finance main page has the same problem, although if you look up individual companies the resulting page is pretty good. But content could be improved: add something(s) in between a 5-day and 3-month chart. Add options analytics (it's only a little code but even Google is too lazy for that, fobbing the user off onto a Morningstar page).
And the HTML stock screener -- another good page layout, but features apparently decided by novice investors. No negative P/E search allowed? No way to combine industries? Etc.
Yahoo, Google, etc. are sitting on tons of financial data but apparently think there's nothing useful to do with it. They're losing a lot of high-net-worth eyeballs...
Yahoo Movies -- crappy main page, but once again, turn the page ("Get Showtimes") and you find something decent. Reviews and ratings are hard to find and poorly presented amongst page litter, but give credit for having them.
With eBay raising prices there's a golden opportunity to undercut them on margins in a low-risk environment. Just think of the demographic data Yahoo could collect: consumer preferences in search, purchasing, investing and goodness knows what else.
The list goes on and on. But do these Yahoos even care about improving their site?
Yahoo's strength has always been in search. They have always gone for qualitative over quantitative (unlike Google).
I would not take Microsoft's bid, but would want Yahoo to concentrate on three factors, search, marketing, and social media. Jettison the other concerns and work on its blogs (360), photo sharing, email, and other social media that it has. Make its search the main focus again, and the ad space that goes with it. Get a little bit into a video site, and beef up its directory.
Until the silos are broken down that keep Yahoo! properties internally separate, no other change or move that is made will help out the company.
When I first announced my Yahoo offer, the headlines were positive, glowing, gleefull, dowright Giddy! They proclaimed, "..a new day of technological convergences which will lead to radical changes in computing as we know it! Ballmer is a genius!" ... I read this kind of stuff all day!
BUT NOW!
The tide has turned! I Yahooed the deal and could not find one story where anybody thought the Yahoo acquisition will be a good idea!
"Will Yahoo Feel The Love?"
"Yahoo's investors impatient!"
"Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang ..... in no hurry to accept its $44.6 billion takeover offer, ..."
"Yahoo makes no decision yet on Microsoft buyout offer!"
"Yahoo seeking ways to avoid a Microsoft takeover!"
"Scrutiny for Microsoft-Yahoo deal!"
"Murdoch says no plans for Yahoo! bid"
Why is it that when people start thinking about details that they become skeptical? Details are unimportant! It's our good intentions which are paramount! I'm calling our PR guys, kicking their tales, they are supposed to control this kind of stuff!
I AM GOING TO BUY YAHOO NO MATTER WHO LIKES IT! Do you people understand, or do I need to stick a bullhorn in your ear?
Sheesh!