Search results matching tag 'Yahoo!'

Saving AOL with the help of P&G

255762 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:05:00 GMT

The analysts say the situation is dire, but Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, tells the New York Times how he is going to save the company with the help of Procter & Gamble.

Former Google boy Armstrong tells the paper that: "If you tried to recreate AOL’s assets, it would be incredibly expensive."

This is true and so is the fact that no one would. For Armstrong it is a case of working with what you've got and building on it. He has to, but let's face it AOL is a funny company. A real hotch potch. Here's a for instance. AOL still has 6.2m dial-up internet customers. Pretty amazing, right? So is the fact that 200,000 of them cancel every month.

Its main business is (internet access being an increasing side show) advertising and content. It makes a lot of content and Armstrong is pinning his hopes on that being AOL's salvation.

Others are less sure. Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital, tells the paper: "Expectations from myself and Wall Street for AOL are still dire."

On Friday Armstrong will lay out his five-point strategy to save AOL: "AOL has a choice to make," he says. "We either lose slowly or win quickly. We are choosing to win quickly."

Do behemoths win quick? Armstrong tells the New York Times he wants to compete directly with Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google to become the dominant network for display ads. With Yahoo! and Microsoft cosying up that could be tough.

Armstrong is also looking at content. Definitely less competition here. Microsoft is kind of interested, but Google really isn't (it only wants other people's content…boom boom).

Armstrong is looking at AOL's 70 blogs, including PoliticsDaily, Boombox (hip-hop music), WalletPop (personal finance) and Paw Nation (pets).

To that mix he is going to add a lot more video. Armstrong is hoping that all this content will appeal to consumer products companies with big marketing budgets like P&G.

"If you ask P&G what companies have the products that make you feel most comfortable, with the best content and the best targeting, AOL is already on the list today. Our aim is to move AOL to the top of the list."

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MySpace ventures into webmail

1706568 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:42:00 GMT

News Corporation's MySpace is believed to be rolling out its own webmail service tomorrow. According to paidContent.org, users will be given their own addresses “@myspace.com”.

Apparently “a bunch of ex-Hotmail guys"are running the project out of Seattle. It is unclear whether the social networking site, which has 130m global members, will limit the webmail service to US users only.

We all know MySpace is losing ground, but is free webmail going to bring people back? It's not like there isn't plenty on offer already.

Paidcontent.org also reports that Yahoo! is in late-stage talks to buy social e-mail startup Xoopit for about $20m.

Looks like the web giant is also planning on announcing the deal tomorrow.

RE: Yahoo expands its mobile ad offering

2495211 — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:48:26 GMT

Here at We Love Mobile, the big question is, why? Why would we want Yahoo! to be our mobile home-screen. Aren't internet portals for lazy people who never make it past their ISP's walled garden? Does anyone persevere or spend any time on web portals like iGoogle. And more importantly, do portals like this fit in with mobile usage? Overweight offerings like Yahoo portal don't seem to really fulfill any need apart from offering Yahoo! execs the prospect of mobile land-grabbing. But doing everything doesn't count for much unless you are doing everything really really well. Google manages this trick for quite a bit, but doesn't claim to the home for content discovery, for instance. Yahoo! doesn't look like it is offering anything new or better than what is already out there, its just lumped everything in one great big purple sandwich. We have written a longer article about Yahoo mobile portal, you can check it on: http://www.welovemobile.co.uk/blog/?p=468

Yahoo! plays its safe with CEO appointment

255762 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:05:00 GMT

Yahoo! has continued to do exactly what got it in this mess in the first place. It has played it boring and hired a CEO, in Carol Bartz, who is a safe pair of hands for a publicly quoted company, but has little or no Web 2.0 or advertising experience – apparently these are important to Yahoo!.

Please someone get me a rocket scientist. No seriously, as apparently while it isn't rocket science you DO actually need a rocket scientist to make these decisions (I'm guessing he can just walk around the building shouting "MAXIMUM THRUST" like a lot).

I'm clearly not the only one thinking this as investor reaction caused the stock to drop as low as $11.78 before climbing back to $12.1. Needless to remind everyone last year it was trading at around $22 before a year of losing ground.

Prior to Yahoo! Bartz spent 14 years at Autodesk (and was on the boards of Intel and Cisco) and clearly has lots of executive and technology experience running a publicly quoted company. What do you mean you are not familiar with the computer-aided design software firm? To be fair she did increase revenues from $300m to $1.5bn and the company's share price increased nearly ten-fold. Good luck with that at Yahoo!.

Her appointment looks like a total compromise as headhunter firm Heidrick & Struggles, which led the CEO search, has said that Yahoo! would also be looking for a strong No. 2 with more internet and product experience. Why not put someone like that in charge of the company in the first place? Just a thought.

There were a number of candidates out there who could have taken the Yahoo! job, but in the end the once grand search firm seems to have had trouble attracting people to the job – because it is really a tough sell.

One of those people in minor contention, but who really wanted the job was Yahoo! president Sue Decker who has resigned. She was very closely associated with Jerry Yang and look how that worked out. It was probably a smart choice not to give her the job.

Reports have suggested that the Yahoo! board got a lot more knock backs from outside execs than expected for the CEO job because of the challenges and sinking moral. Runners and riders are thought to have included former Yahoo! chief operating officer Dan Rosenweig, who currently runs media private equity firm Quadrangle; Meg Whitman, long-time Ebay CEO; Tim Armstrong, Google's North American head of sales; News Corp's COO Peter Chernin; and current Juniper Networks executive Kevin Johnson. Former AOL chief Jonathan Miller was also linked.

All that seems clear is that Yahoo! will not remain in its current form for much longer. Totally convinced of that. It has lost all initiative and is falling further behind as we type.

I know this because no one talks about it or uses it. The only time it is talked about is that time that Microsoft tried to buy it? Oh and there was that Google deal. Those were the days. That could have been a transformational deal, but now that Window has been firmly shut and it is not a door opening. It looks more like a whole. Hole.

Bartz will no doubt safely steer Yahoo! as a highly competent executive, but it is a firm that desperately needed to be more than safely steered.

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I'm gonig to add my Twitter conversation/ responses on this here as well.

Yahoo has played safe with Carol Bratz for CEO, she's the safe option and little advertising or web 2.0 experience. Stock drops. SNAFU.

[@sushobhan ] @GordonM Carol Bratz is perhaps the most dangerous option they could've chosen, given her supposed ignorance of all that Yahoo needs.

[@sushobhan ] @GordonM Will Carol Bratz do a Mark Hurd?

@sushobhan I think Hurd had more to play with - HP had a strong PC market position. If she can do numbers like he's done. woman is a genius.

Facebook says no to Twitter

255762 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:58:00 GMT

Facebook has walked out on talks to buy Twitter saying $500m was too much. Some will say that maybe it is for a service that makes no money - but I'm still convinced it has much potential.

It's a little amusing for Facebook – over valued at some ludicrous $15bn – to walk away over issues of price. It would have bought Twitter in stock and its stock is just not worth what it once was. It was the failure to agree how much its stock is worth now, in this new economic reality, that killed the deal. As the New York Times says the values of many net firms are more akin to a lottery than anything else with investors and buyers betting on the future.

The same, of course, happened to Facebook when two years ago when Yahoo! walked out on a deal to buy it over issues of price. Mark Zuckerberg must be counting his lucky stars that Yahoo! did that otherwise he would be lumped in with the whole train wreck that is Yahoo!.

At the time Yahoo! didn’t think Facebook was worth more than $1bn. This was of course before Facebook went stellar. Hindsight is a wonderful gift and so clearly we can see that was a mistake. The deal could have transformed Yahoo! and its fortunes. Too late for that one, that ship has clearly sailed.

I'm pretty sure the same is true of Facebook's failure to bag Twitter. Okay it isn't a transformational deal, but I do think it shows a failure of ambition on Facebook's part, which seems stuck in some kind of comfort zone. It is tweaking with things when maybe it should be...oh I don't know Twittering?

Twitter's management in talks first reported by AllThingsD blog clearly wanted more and believed that the micro blogging service was more than the 3.33% of Facebook stock that was on offer. Facebook has to realise it is no longer worth $15bn (based on Microsoft's $240m investment).

Is Facebook right to walk away from takeover talks with Twitter?

In recent weeks I have heard more and more cool uses of Twitter, particularly on the customer service front, for Twitter like 02 and Comcast using it really well. But these are more like personal experiments feeling the way forward than anything else. That said, I think that process is only going to accelerate…of course it might also come apart at the seams and next year we will be left going Twitter? Oh yeah I used to use that.

I'm sure it is more likely to be the former rather than the latter. It almost feels like in the case of Twitter something that is ready to be plugged in to something else. I don't know what. If I did I would be on it. It could have been Facebook, but as that door closes it opens for someone else. Any bets?

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Outlook bad for all, including lolcats

2371004 — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Techcrunch is reporting that online advertising revenue growth from the big four players, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL has nearly ground to a halt, the four combining for only a 0.6% growth in Q3.

For fear-mongering comparative reasons only, at the end of Q4 last year, growth was at a robust 12%, paving the way for modest 2.8% in Q1 2008, and 1.1% in Q2.

Revenues were worth a total $8.1bn in Q3, following the same flatlining approach as revenue growth.

Interestingly enough, in the same rollcall, Techcrunch reports that the feel-good company behind the website ICanHasCheezburger, with its silly user-created captioned cat photos, has recorded a surge in traffic growth and an amazing 43.5% jump in revenue for the month of August.

However since August, lolcats growth has sullied to a respectable 11.5% in September and 9.4% in October, following that same flatlining shape that continues to keep us in the media, tech, and well, any other industry, up at night in cold sweats.

Say it ain't so - digital jobs go

2371004 — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:55:00 GMT

It's nearly Friday, in what has been a dark, unsettling week for those working in the digital industry as hundreds of jobs have been lost.Things are going to get bad.

This pernickety credit crunch has loomed into an axe wielding guillotine man precariously holding the edge over our pale, brittle digital correspondent necks.

Most recently, property search website Rightmove has made 20% of its staff redundant, trimming more than 60 jobs on plummeting house prices and the simple rarity of a sale.

Earlier today, Amazon announced that shares had plunged 14%. Amazon is seen as a Bellwhether for the online retail industry and if it catches a cold so do others. This is borne out with talk in Brand Republic's forum's with comment about other online retailers cutting jobs.

The gloomy news from Amazon was preceded this month by major job cuts at other internet giants like Yahoo! and eBay, who are laying off thousands of staff.

Following 160 staff cuts at Associated Newspapers as it merged its sales and digital sales teams. News International and Global Radio, Channel 4 axed its third-party digital sales house, putting 10 jobs at risk.

Even the ruefully optimistic Silicon Valley is feeling the hurt.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Some good news however. Bigwig PR agency Weber Shandwick isn't going to let all the doom and gloom get it down, and because everyone loves a maverick, WS CEO Harris Diamond had some pretty maverick-y things to say, especially about WPP's recent call to freeze recruitment.

Condemning the decision, Diamond said: "I've always believed in using a rifle rather than a shotgun" adding "In this business there are always places you can grow. You still have the ability to make compelling propositions to clients. We don't want to send out a message saying we're not interested."

As for the rest of us? I can't help but feel an edge of uncertainty in the air, but I'm not ready to batter down the hatches with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and a years supply of Pot Noodle just yet.

A few casualties aside, I'm sure the digital world will weather the storm. To the dismay of my digital editors I can only offer the sunny sanguinity: whatever doesn't kill us can only make us stronger. Right?

An independent Yahoo! is good for business (says Google)

255762 — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:10:00 GMT

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is at it again telling anyone who will listen what a great thing it would be for the industry if Yahoo! stayed independent because "a combination with Microsoft "would be anti-competitive". Like he should know.

Of course, what he really means is that if it stays weak and a bit of a mess.

"The world is better off with an independent Yahoo. There's "more competition ... in search, and more competition in the other advertising markets where Yahoo! is a leader."

A leader? Which markets would they be? Bora Bora maybe? Last time anyone checked anything Google dominated the world of search and the rest is just scraps on the kitchen floor for the dog. I'm betting Schmidt's dog is called Yahoo!.

In the US, Google accounted for almost 70% of all US searches in May and for more than 87% in May. Those figures are hard to ignore.

"The moment we saw the offer from Microsoft, we saw it as anti-competitive," Schmidt said. "It's easy to understand. Look at Microsoft's history."

What he means is "wow the moment we saw this we thought: this could mean real competition finally. We have got to kill this deal guys". And they seem to have been successful as while Yahoo! continues to be circled by investor Carl Icahn the chances of a deal with Microsoft seem to be receding.

Schmidt, speaking at the annual Allen & Co gathering of media and tech chiefs, is obviously feeling pretty pleased with himself after Google essentially managed to thwart Microsoft by signing a heavily criticised search deal with Yahoo!.

What is Yahoo! for?

255762 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:53:00 GMT

As Yahoo! boss Jerry Yang hits out at his detractors, there's an interesting piece around today that asks the salient question: what is Yahoo!?

While Microsoft tries to resurrect its effort to buy some/all of Yahoo!, Yang was yesterday talking up his ability to save Yahoo! and slating the software giant.

"I think that I can bring stability back to Yahoo, and I want to get on with building company. I think that the destabilising by Microsoft has become more and more intentional. I am not happy about it."

He also hit out at investor Carl Icahn, who wants to replace the company's directors at the August 1 board meeting:

"To trust Mr. Icahn and his board is really a bad choice," Yang said.

Yang just does not sound or act like someone who is going to be there that long, which was kind of the point of John Gapper's piece in the FT today, which backs Icahn and Microsoft before tackling the seemingly tough question what is Yahoo!.

"From the start, Yahoo has been more of a Gestalt, or a shape, than a company. When pledging loyalty, executives talk of "bleeding purple", its signature colour. Microsoft makes software, Google does search, Facebook is a social network. Yahoo! is purple and has an exclamation mark.

"When asked at a Journal conference last month what Yahoo was, Mr Yang replied: 'We want you to start your day at Yahoo!'. You could equally say that of a shower."

It shouldn't be a tough question, but it is and, if Yang really doesn't know, then you have to ask what is the guy doing there?

Gapper thinks it might be a newspaper, personally that seems something of a round peg/square hold stretch. Yahoo! is a disorganised bunch of web pages and software tool that do not coherently hang together. It is neither one thing nor the other.

And as Gapper points out, Yang has never run a big company before (Tim Koogle and Terry Semel have been the two CEOs over the last 12 years), is not a technology pioneer (Yahoo! was always more of a media company in the early years taking advantage of the early web) and does not seem to possess the skills nor ideas to take the business coherently forward and maintain that wealth of traffic -- Yahoo! still pulls in 500m users.

"I agree with Mr Yang that Microsoft ought not to be allowed to grab hold of Yahoo!'s search assets, leaving the rest of the company even more inchoate. If Yahoo! is to be sold, let it be sold whole to any company that will take on the risk.

"But simply giving Mr Yang yet more time to work on Yahoo" does not strike me as an appealing outcome for shareholders. He has, after all, had 14 years on the job so far. That should have been time enough," Gapper says.

Jerry Yang smart dumb

255762 — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:27:00 GMT

I'm sure that Yahoo! chief executive Jerry Yang is a very smart man, but it seems that, like a lot of men, he is of the smart-dumb variety. That's the only way to explain why he would want to sign a deal with his biggest competitor Google, which has in a short few years crushed Yahoo!'s own search business.

Yang, like a bride on the run, white dress trailing in the dust, has escaped the altar a second time, leaving Microsoft wondering what is with this guy? Good question.

Yang is being pursued by the equivalent of shotgun-toting angry fathers in the form of investors such as Carl Icahn. Yang's luck can't possibly last -- the deal he is trying to marry in haste with Google is bound to raise anti-trust issues.

I mean come on, Google already is the all powerful search monster (a great one at that) so how can it not? Yang must really hate Microsoft. It might only be a North American deal, but worth noting that in the UK alone Google accounts for 87.3% of searches alone. Yahoo! just 4%.

Under the agreement that Yahoo! is signing, Google will supply some of the advertising on Yahoo!'s search engine and other properties.

It should give Yahoo! around $800m in revenues to bolster its dwindling business, but it appears an easy way out and not a brave leap into the future. Yang, it seems, needs to go as he would rather take the company down with him than do a deal with Microsoft or anyone else.

Granted it is a bit desperate when your only options are the devil or the moderately deep blue sea.

Yang, of course, says the deal is great for Yahoo! and in the short term it is fine, but to say it "strengthening our competitiveness" is probably overselling it.

The only real winner here is Google. It has found a very nice way to make money out of one of its rivals. Whoever gets that chance? This deal makes Google stronger than ever, it spreads its influence further and that (as much as I use Google Search/News/Mail) can not be good for the web overall and weakens Microsoft.

The funniest thing I have read about this story is a quote from Google chief executive Eric Schmidt;

"This deal in many ways reflects an emerging and new structure for the industry. Certainly we'd like to do more business with Yahoo over time."

He sounds like a man rubbing his hands together and sizing up what looks like a very tasty meal Unsurprisingly Schmidt wants to expand the deal outside of the US and Canada as he thinks it is going to be "very successful".