What do you have planned Yahoo!?
Posted by Phil Smulian on 30 Jan 2008 at 09:14 am | Tagged as: Common SEO Topics, Search Engine News
There is a general air of question around what Yahoo has up their marketing sleeve. Looking at some recent blogging around the subject. There are some varied ideas on what Yahoo has planned to generate profits from all their vested interests.
Aaron Wall mentions the recent lay-offs – 30 people fired with a rumoured 2000 to follow, in his post about branding ideas. What is this about? There has to be something to the plans laid out for the brand by co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang. Are they trying to raise the half a billion to purchase social media giant Facebook, by shedding employees? Search Engine Journal say that Yang has suppressed any plans for what they call the “Yahoo Branded universe”, and the long-time highly popular search engine brand will focus their efforts on the revenue generating ‘in-search’ advertising platform.
Different spectators are saying different things. Comments on Loren Baker’s post speculate that they have “under-exposed properties” that are not used to boost the overall power of the entity. There is argument for them using the “brand-universe” angle when approaching their currently focused verticals, namely search, sports, entertainment and travel.
Aaron Wall has a bundle of ideas for each area of the company that could help it rise up and take some of it’s lost market share back (Yahoo world market share in search dropped approximately 10% from the previous year). He thinks they should go back to giving away search data, to help advertisers gauge their campaigns. Another idea is to release a Yahoo version of blogsearch that is more social, so that it allows for multi-directional communication. An interesting thought of his is to turn the whole search engine into a human powered search facility, putting their directory up front, rather than as an invisible sidebar. He also mentions integrating Deli.cio.us results and somehow giving back to the contributors whether in cash or in favour – he references similar methods that are used in parallel features such as Yahoo Answers and Del.icio.us.
These are some speculative meanderings, which begs the question: Do these bloggers and commenters think that the recent lay-offs have made room for any lateral thinkers to fill up? Their fervent bombardment of suggestions implies that they would like it to be very much so, or perhaps they spend too much time following the news threads. Tread lightly Aaron, this isn’t the first time you have gotten in trouble for letting out trade secrets, just make sure Jerry’s not looking over your shoulder 
