Taking Yahoo! forward

Posted December 5th, 2006 at 7:59 pm by Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO

 58 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

When I joined Yahoo! five years ago, I found a company with incredible assets (huge audience, strong brand, healthy balance sheet), great potential, and a team filled with determination and a fighting spirit. But the company faced challenging economic conditions that pummeled the Internet sector and was itself losing money. Yahoo!’s original strategy of “get big fast” (building audience and brand) needed to change. Yahoo! was ready to enter its second phase. We reshaped our sales organization, beefed up our bench, simplified our management operations, and, over the course of several years, executed several transformational initiatives in areas like broadband, search monetization and algorithmic search. Our changes paid off as we later posted quarter after quarter of record growth in audience and revenues.

Yahoo! is now entering what I call its third phase — one focused on customers. We’re seeing the competitive and advertising landscapes evolve yet again and today we announced a realignment that we believe will let Yahoo! capture the major growth opportunities ahead. Simply put, we’re aligning our business around two key customer groups — our audience and our advertisers and publishers — supported by innovative technology. We’re creating three operating groups — Audience, Advertiser & Publisher, and Technology — to increase our strategic focus and accountability, speed decision-making, emphasize scalable platforms and improve resource allocation. Here’s the press release.

By having our Audience Group 100% focused on creating great user experiences, we’ll also be able to create the greatest amount of value for advertisers, both on and off the Yahoo! network. What does that mean? We intend to expand our global advertising network, creating marketplaces on both Yahoo!’s network as well as across the entire Internet. We’ve already begun demonstrating our value as an ad network for search affiliates and through announced arrangements with eBay, the newspaper consortium and Vodafone. We’ll be able to connect customers with advertisers on valuable properties elsewhere on the web.

As far as our leadership team, I’ve asked our chief financial officer, Sue Decker, to head our new Advertiser & Publisher Group. She already recently expanded her role to take on our current Marketplaces business unit (which will become part of her new group), tapping into her deep expertise in media, publishing and advertising. An expert on far more than financials, Sue has been a terrific contributor to our business strategy. She’s one of the best executives around and the ideal person to fill this critical new role. We’re currently recruiting the leader for our Audience Group.

Zod Nazem, our CTO and a key executive team member, will lead our Technology Group. We intend to focus our engineering investments and move towards more integrated product development teams. We’ve also created a new Platform & Infrastructure sub-group, which will build high-impact, global platforms for everything from advertising to social media.

Missing from this lineup is Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig, who will leave Yahoo! in March… leaving behind a strong legacy. When we recruited Dan five years ago, we brought him on to help revitalize the company. Since then, he’s helped grow our global audience to one in every two Internet users, introduce social media to our users, create a leading mobile infrastructure, attract record numbers of advertisers, and position Yahoo! for its next phase of growth. He’s been one of the key architects of our new structure and he’s leaving Yahoo! with a deep bench of talent that he helped hire — the right people to set us on our course. We’re grateful for all of Dan’s sleepless nights, missed elementary school soccer games and endless Blackberry exchanges. We couldn’t have gotten here without him.

Now, I know what you’re thinking — this is all about peanut butter. Actually, we’ve been orchestrating this plan for a number of months as we envisioned the next phase of growth for the Internet. Following our third quarter results, I very openly discussed that we were going to become more focused and bring about change. But let me stress that we’re organizing the company for growth and are continuing to hire great talent.

Change is never easy. We need a revitalized structure to heighten accountability and streamline decision-making while allowing us to better focus on serving our key customers. This one gets us there. I believe Yahoo!’s opportunity is better than it ever has been. We have the largest and most engaged audience in the world. Thirty billion in advertising dollars will come online globally over the next five years. No one is better positioned than we are to take advantage of that. I believe we now have the right strategy, the right structure and the right people to provide the best experiences and results possible to our users, advertisers and publishers.

Terry Semel
Chairman and CEO

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58 Comments Add your own

Scott | December 5th, 2006 at 8:39 pm

Good luck Terry and all Yahooligans!. First things first, bring back the old TV pages.

Sumit Chachra | December 5th, 2006 at 9:43 pm

Great to see a CEO blogging about such a topic (with comments open!!). Best of luck!

Matt Schulte | December 5th, 2006 at 11:03 pm

No media-biz release would be complete without stressing “heightened accountability and streamlined decision-making”…but I think the real questions are …who are these “key customers”, and what does “creating great user experiences” really mean? It seems like Yahoo has rolled out many products in the last year that they consider provides “great user experiences” …but weren’t they really potentially great advertising vehicles, except not enough customers used them? Sometimes I wonder if Yahoo considers it’s advertisers to be it’s key customers…which, of course, makes perfect big biz sense, but it’s also putting the money cart before the people horse…(catchy. You can use that if you want.) I think something big, bold and dramatic on the order of AOL’s taking down the walls, or Google scooping YouTube, will be necessary to stop the Wall Street/blogger whispers, and if this bold move is something unequivocably about real “user experience” and not a press release about a new ad partner, then Yahoo will begin to get back the momentum it had a year ago.

anjan bacchu | December 5th, 2006 at 11:51 pm

hi terry,

nice post.

I hope that you will continue blogging like Mark(http://marksblog.emc.com/) and Jonathan Schwartz(http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/).

I am a paying customer — have 2 email POP accounts.

Good Luck!

BR,
~A

Dave McClure | December 5th, 2006 at 11:55 pm

thanks for blogging Terry… it’s great to see the leader of a company like Yahoo embracing the medium in which it operates. given all the re-org focus on customers, certainly makes sense to use the tools you’re building / selling to communicate with them too.

talking openly on a blog about the org changes you note above is a terrific way to set an example of greater transparency, and to explain where Yahoo is headed. hope it becomes a regular habit. (maybe you & Eric Schmidt can start a contest on who blogs more consistently & openly to customers & shareholders… right now you’re ahead 1 - 0 ;)

for those of us minor leaguers watching from the cheap seats, it’s inspiring to see a manager get out there and hit some fungoes & take BP along with the folks in the lineup.

good luck next quarter & keep on blogging,

Mukul Gupta | December 6th, 2006 at 12:26 am

I think this a great decision to re-organize the company around customer groups. Good luck !

Sylvain | December 6th, 2006 at 1:17 am

My question is on the change or evolution in France.
What will be the impacts of your decision to the seat on the subsidiary companies, or the head office, in France ?

tomo | December 6th, 2006 at 2:17 am

At least he has a sense of humor….his comment about peanut butter. It would be nice to know what the three business unit are responsible for. I’m guessing:

Audience = Everything marketing including prod dev, prod mgmt, pr, market dev, and so on

Publisher & Advertiser = Sales

Technology = Operations & R&D

A drawback with this type structure is yahoo would need to have engineering personnel employed by and reporting to each group. This will likely lead to the three groups having personnel who perform similar tasks and who could likely be optimized to the most efficient number of employees per business unit demand. I’m happy to see they aren’t applying theorectical conclusions such as that because theory and financial models don’t account for office politics, someone having a bad day or being out sick, schedules being full, systems being down, chains of approval being moronic, etc. Models and theories assume logical progression sans bureaucratic intervention. IMO, this new strategy is a sign of the intention to get back to an environment of empowerment and accountability. Hopefully for all our sakes Yahoo executes upon my assumed belief of their intention and brings back speed in decision making and agility in adapting by listening to customer suggestions and requirements as opposed to being compelled to telling customers apologetic afterthoughts. Get back to efficiency in every element of the business and empower people to make decisions. Reward and recognize those who make the tough decisions and those decisions that turn out to be beneficial. Personal accountability and competition amongst peers are free to implement as they are success based and have been shown to dramatically increase the marginal utility on the top 20% of presonnel who are generally responsible for 80% of revenue.

The devil is in the details and at this point it is too early to have an opinion but never to early to speculate. In the spirit of authenticity and keeping it real, seeing Yahoo go the way of Netscape and to a lesser degree AOL would be tragic.

Get real and stay real and avoid being yet another hiccup of objectivelesness :)

And Terry, stick around but please consider Jerry and/or Dave your successor/s. You can hire the financial expertise by writing a check you can’t hire credibility, trust, conviction or the innate sense of responsibility those guys exude.

Best of luck,

tomo

Pramit Singh | December 6th, 2006 at 3:41 am

It is good to hear that Yahho is reposnding quickly to calls for change. I hope you will give Project Panama your best.

MediaVidea has details on how yahoo can close the gap with Google.
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-yahoo-can-still-close-gap-with.html

Search Engines WEB | December 6th, 2006 at 5:09 am

Unfortunatly, Yahoo Organic Search is not being mentioned….so therefore, one could assume that Yahoo Has simply given up the search battle.

The focus is now on acquring and developing Web 2.0 Social sites and Personalized profiles to push more relevant advertising to likely prospects - and of course expanding into more tradional forms or advertising.

That is fine, but it is a great injustice to neglect Yahoo Organic search. There should be every tenacious effort made to continuously stive to keep developing it.

Search Engines WEB | December 6th, 2006 at 5:10 am

_________________________________________

Unfortunatly, Yahoo Organic Search has not been mentioned….so therefore, one could assume that Yahoo Has simply given up the search battle.

The focus is now on acquring and developing Web 2.0 Social sites and Personalized profiles to push more relevant advertising to likely prospects - and of course expanding into more tradional forms or advertising.

That is fine, but it is a great injustice to neglect Yahoo Organic search. There should be every tenacious effort made to continuously stive to keep developing it.

Brendan | December 6th, 2006 at 5:13 am

I think the smallest, and most effective thing you could do to improve the usability of Yahoo would be to allow users to stay logged in on a computer by checking a box. GMail allows it, and it’s my biggest irritation with Yahoo services, which is why I switched to GMail.

Eric Frenchman | December 6th, 2006 at 6:16 am

Terry,

As long as Wenda is your Chief Sales Officer, Yahoo will win in the long run.

Eric

Easton Ellsworth | December 6th, 2006 at 6:23 am

Tall order to fill, but your company has the potential to do it. Thanks for using a corporate blog to announce this refocus.

Ryan Griffin | December 6th, 2006 at 6:39 am

I agree with Matt…viewing the announcement through an agency lens, I wonder about construction of the (mandatory) bridge between the “Audience” group and the “Advertisers and Publishers” group.

In business terms, what will “great user experiences” deliver to Yahoo!, beyond more eyeballs — which the company obviously does not need? Without an innovative means of monetizing these experiences, one that is embraced by *people* (that is inclusive of consumers and advertisers, of course), there is no path that is truly forward…and hint, the solution will not be found in the disruptive tactics (read: banner ads) of our medium’s infancy.

Yahoo!’s general approach to the market and their “partners” aside, the above is the big issue from where I sit — and one that I would have liked to have seen formally addressed in a structural fashion.

That said, I applaud the destruction of the product groups/managers…whose lack of incentive to innovate has left advertisers in a consistent quandary for many years now.

Ken B. | December 6th, 2006 at 6:46 am

It is no wonder that Yahoo has lost its way and continues to lose views. You folks do not have a clue.

First you screw up the format of your message boards and tell your viewers to get used to it or go somewhere else. Then you hire “Customer Care” employees who do not have the comprehension skills of the average 4th grader. Then they dance around any trouble report and claim there is not now nor never has been a problem.

I recently reported that when I tried to go to the AT&T stock message board, I got error messages for most of two days. The first reply I get wants to know what board? How many AT&T stock message boards do you have? Then the second reply tells me that they require the URL to try and figure out what I am reporting!

Perhaps if you hired competent people, did not make changes for the sake of change and admitted when something goes wrong, you would be able to gain back part of your past following.

Now you have a nice day.
Ken B.

Steve Morsa | December 6th, 2006 at 7:12 am

Nice, bold moves from a great company, Terry and the Yahoo team.

If I may humbly suggest another:

The launch of a brand new ad platform where you’d enable your advertisers to quickly and easily select and bid on the actual demographic and psychographic traits and characteristics (keytraits) of their most desired customers; instead of just the words people enter into search boxes.

As explained in the white paper at MatchTo.com and detailed in it’s pending patent (#11/250,908), Match Engine Marketing (MEM)/paid match would, among other things, enable Yahoo to stop Google in its tracks (while taking 10%+ of their search share), further boost the use of your many other excellent products and services, and cut human-generated click fraud by 85%+; doing so w/in 24 months of MEM (i.e. Yahoo Match Marketing).

Like paid search did before it, paid match is itself going to turn the world of advertising upside down–again.

Yahoo should be at the helm when it does.

David King | December 6th, 2006 at 9:09 am

Terry — As an investor, your openness is extremely refreshing, thank you! But I have to consider selling my Yahoo position because, having been in marketing for >25 years, I really don’t see how a CFO is going to fix your problem. Yahoo’s capital is not scarce, but customers are! Capturing new customers and increasing their — and Yahoo’s existing customers’ — share of wallet (especially in ad sales) appears to be the gating factor in the turnaround. To date, I’m sure Sue Decker has been solid with the numbers, but where’s the marketing passion? the irreverence? the innovation that drew people to the Yahoo brand originally? Is Yahoo really going to dig itself out of the hole with a bean-counter at the helm? Or perhaps she’s a marketing whiz? Your investors are wondering.

John Furrier | December 6th, 2006 at 9:18 am

I like how you are breaking down the org. I’m a big fan of simplicity and decoupling key functions. The key to success is how cohesive will those functions be among themselves. I’m curious to see how the functional heads execute.

I have a comment on what you said about hiring key talent. I think the only way to gain speed in getting new talent is to acquire it fast. Also I’d suggest developing media differently to use a long tail concept focus on the torso not the head. Build your programming around torso content rather than competing with established content producers in the ‘head’.

Good luck with the new org

Dimitar Vesselinov | December 6th, 2006 at 9:28 am

1. I think Yahoo should be much more active in Eastern Europe, Turkey, Russia, Brazil and Latin America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC

2. I would love to see more focus on the SMB market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium_enterprise

3. Create a global mobile-based financial platform. I believe this is the next Eldorado.

B.D. "Bing" Krutchfield | December 6th, 2006 at 9:51 am

Please ditch the clunky new TV page. Sucks bigtime. Thanx.

Art Vandalay | December 6th, 2006 at 10:13 am

Share prices down 26% this year so far while internet advertising growing at 29% — imagine how bad this picture will be when growth in the sector slows. This company should be “shorting” Terry and betting on real digital leadership — Borat could do a better job!

Jamie | December 6th, 2006 at 10:33 am

Terry and team, I am impressed. Good luck!

Olivier D. alias ze kat | December 6th, 2006 at 11:50 am

Thank about all you made and you will make for Yahoo!
I said to anybody which would like listen me that Yahoo! is the most friendly (against users requests) since 2 years… I like that !
I submit to extend Yahoo! Auto “DiggBack” to every products and countries… We have so many ideas to offer to you.
And it’s time to enhance products on mobiles… Next battle frontline !

Best regards from France by Olivier D. and its users,
manager of Y!M Plus unofficial addon ;-)

Sean Morgan | December 6th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

Sir,

I have one thing to say in rebuttal to your statements:

The following is a direct quote from a Yahoo! customer service representative named Joy, on 12/06/2006 at 12:10p.

“Go ahead and cancel your service and go to another provider.”

Still think you are so great?

I do not.

Sean Morgan
Dismayed Long Time Customer
http://www.badwolfe.com

piltok | December 6th, 2006 at 1:07 pm

Its like a assembly line and each stage is important while creating a wonder. Each and every leader who worked at some stage needs to be thanked, Yahoo! is part of our life today coz it was part of your everyday. Dan, thank you.

Terry, your a great leader and you have only yourself to compete with and i cant wait to see what your future acheivements are, acting maybe?

Yahoo! i think there has been enough of communication now its time for action.
-Basics, Simple things hold solutions.
-Hire the right talent (education never fails), explore existing talent.
-Be the person to know the product.
-Read for, discuss ideas and be passionate about Yahoo!

I look forward to results, you have my Email.
I wish you success, thank you.

sourabh niyogi | December 6th, 2006 at 2:16 pm

1. Open YPN through a word-of-mouth referral, ala GMail.
2. Make YDN commercial.
3. Invent social advertising, user-generated stuff people want to click on that happens to be paid for.
4. Relate (3) to (1) and (2).

Praveen | December 6th, 2006 at 2:39 pm

This blog is a bold statement from a CEO of fortune company.

I have never seen a CEO blog before.

It reflects the confidence of the company in its skill, talent and vision.
Great move Terry!

D. Scott | December 6th, 2006 at 4:39 pm

I remember when Yahoo was a short, but not anymore. I think what Ted Turner had envisioned for AOL is what we now see evolving in Yahoo. Congratulations.

I think the “thin” peanut butter is necessary in order to retain and attract more traffic. Companies that begin to focus on cost-cutting are companies that have lost faith in their business model or their product´s potential.

You could though make your services more saleable with some image work like personalities/hosts for tv/radio. There will always be something special about tuning in to whatever is the buzz,it is less stale.

Also consider payment methods other than credit cards and paypal for all of your great services. Many people are still nervous about using credit cards online and many of your customers don´t have credit cards. Look at selling prepaid yahoo cards in convenience stores for example, like phone cards. Especially outside the United States.

I see some negative comments here but I think these folks fail to realize what started as a search engine with ad banners is becoming a global commuications giant.Not bad for only 10 years.

bg | December 6th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

Terry, could you make them put back the TV grid the way it was, and get the new Mail beta to load faster? Appreciate it.

Ben | December 7th, 2006 at 12:06 am

I’d officially like to throw my hat into the ring for your next COO. You could use some young blood. I’m 25 with a degree in Business Administration and work experience at MLB Advanced Media and CSTV. And you can start by paying me 1.60 million less than you were paying Dan (that $.05m would be a raise!)

In all seriousness, best of luck.

Dean | December 7th, 2006 at 8:55 am

I really hate Yahoo because of the lack of communication between them and publishers/advertisers. I hope that what Terry is saying holds water and that they bridge the gap soon.

Erik | December 7th, 2006 at 9:30 am

I, too, applaud Mr. Semel for his post and openness. However, it has been clear that he is not the right guy for the job from day one and the numbers indicate he may be the worst CEO in the history of the world. Under his watch, Yahoo allowed a competitor whose biggest and most important partner was Yahoo to grow from somewhere in the millions of market value to $150 billion. Sure it’s nice that Yahoo’s value has gone up by around $20 billion (but at a much slower pace than the overall growth rate of online advertising), but when you realize that they gave up $150 billion in value to Google, you can see that is a historic transfer of value from one company to another.

This latest announcement harkens back to Mr. Semel’s original strategy proclamation in 2001 where the centerpiece was moving revenues from 90% advertising to only 50% advertising and 50% subscription. I think this following excerpt from a Wired News story dated November 15, 2001 gives a great example of how Mr. Semel changed Yahoo’s culture from Silicon Valley wunderkind to tired old media overnight and demonstrates a “stark contrast” from Google’s Valley-style approach:

In stark contrast to Yahoo’s early days as a startup founded by two young graduate students, maturity is apparently also in. Greg Coleman, Yahoo’s executive vice president who is actively involved in building more marketing and advertising partnerships said, “You can’t do it with youth and enthusiasm.”

Coleman said that the company had recently hired 30 new ad sales people, who were for the most part 40- or 50- something and had years of experience and established contacts with the major ad agencies.

“It makes you sleep well at night,” he said.

David G. | December 7th, 2006 at 10:30 am

Terry, This change at the top may be good for the administrative end of the organization but by all means the technical end needs very much work. Being online everyday we see such a draw a your system the closer we get to Christmas. The slow down is so great. Many of my e-mail friends say the same if your on YAHOO there are always problems and now it seems like were near a system crash as Walmart’s site had on or around Black Friday. Media has stated that shopping on the internet is MAJOR but how can the system handle it if you don’t upgrade to handle it?

Mahesh R S | December 7th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

I found it extremely weird that Yahoo should go through what I had predicted some time back and blogged about on Oct 10, 2006 (way before the original Peanut Butter Manifesto).

I would appreciate if you read through my new and original post (at the bottom of the new post). Excuse me if I am harsh in my post, but, as someone whose web experience was guided by you (Yahoo), it hurts to see my friend and guide (you, Yahoo!) going down for no apparent reason other than bad management (I feel/believe).

I don’t know if your COO is to be blamed or if he was just a scapegoat. Whatever that be, I am hoping you would know and would take care of things.

Anyway, the sooner Yahoo recovers and the sooner it gets back to the top position, the earlier I will be happy. And trust me, I will happily rewrite (on my blog) about “The rebirth of Yahoo!” I am hoping you will give me that chance.

(My post about Yahoo’s state-of-affairs is at http://srmiocc.blogspot.com/2006/11/rewriting-yahoos-obituary.html)

David H. Deans | December 7th, 2006 at 1:25 pm

Mr. Semel, with all due respect to your announcement, IMHO you still need to broaden your company’s perspective of who your customers and partners include.

Those of us who have generously invested our ‘user generated content’ may not show up on Yahoo’s balance sheet, but I believe that we are a key untapped asset that you can utilize — as you evolve your company’s business model to the next level.

My point: don’t under-value the collaborative communities that are already within your grasp. We are here to help you, but you really must align us with credible marketing leadership.

I have written a brief commentary on this very topic at my ‘Digital Lifescapes’ blog — http://dhdeans.blogspot.com — by all means, have someone from your team contact me if you want to discuss my perspective.

Respectfully,

David H. Deans

John | December 7th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

The open forum here is commendable….
I have 5 ‘pillars’ for YHOO success over GOOG, MySpace and any competition…..simply coorespond to my address and we will share!
Yahoo Fanatic from day one….
Can you Yahoo???
GLY

Bharathi | December 8th, 2006 at 4:10 am

I read peanut butter memo. Within few days this re-org was done. Naturally I thought it was due to peanut butter!

I admire Yahoo for many years. I hold YHOO. But, I can’t happily say “Yahoo!” because you guys are losing ground. I hope that all your new initiatives work out well. BTW, new email beta rocks!

Carlos Reo-Dero | December 8th, 2006 at 8:42 am

Being in the driver’s seat in an organization like Yahoo! is, no doubt, demanding and requires vision and the ability to draw strategies that will maintain that the business stays on course. Lately, Yahoo! has been very inventive, and we can see that management had to remodel some strategies, old and not so old strategies, and use them to hit the targets. Audience, Advertisers and Technology are all being fed in Yahoo! at the moment, but, as you may agree Terry, some of this progress remains Beta, and we are still to see the real effects of the ‘re-org’ in time. I have to say though, from where I stand, everything looks promising, with one exception, Co-Branding Yahoo! itself.

I am a big fan of strategic alliances, but I have to admit, co-branding has always been risky business as far as I am concerned. As you would know, partnerships and alliances can be made to fade away or made discreet much easier than hiding a ‘Brand Name’, (if things go wrong–you’re guilty by association). Yahoo! appears to have merged, I emphasise the words ‘ONLY APPEARS’ to have merged, with some media organizations where both now share the same web space, and live on Yahoo! servers, but also merged their brand names and place that so prodominantly on the headers and advertising pages and so on.

How well will that work..?? Although I’d like to take everything you said beyond doubt, this particular point has to wait before it gets my assessment. I do hope that in one or two years time, we will be able to say: This was a great move.

NOTE: Media, all over the world, is also the subject of re-org. Organizations are being sold and bought, re-structured and are, forver, the focus of rules, regulations and legislation makers. Therefore, tagging along with a media organization can prove exhausing and can force partners to follow only the directions that suit the media organization itself.

Carlos Reo-Dero
AdsenseProject.com

Eric Artman | December 13th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

Mr. Semel,

You talk about positive change–but have you even bothered to read the comments to Sal Taylor Kidd’s 11/28 “Anecdotal” on changes to the TV pages? There are over 200 comments there, virtually all HUGELY negative. (And I suspect the balance are internal shills.) A popular product was ruined through over-engineering and “make-work” changes. Maybe there was some thought that the “old” TV listings weren’t enough of a profit center, but gradual introduction of revenue streams would have been a far better course than an entire re-do which your users have totally rejected by flocking to competitors who offer clean, straightforward listings without endless delay through needless separation of information into distinct web pages and forced “signon” requirements.

You may be seeing that “hits” are going up, but if so, it’s only because information that used to be on one page has been fractured into many pages–you’re losing users big time. If there’s ever been a worse example of a boss destroying a good product with a replacement just to justify a huge headcount, I’ve never seen or heard of it. This isn’t peanut butter, this is feces in a jar trying to sell itself on the shelf.

Eric Artman

liasi | December 15th, 2006 at 7:47 am

-It is your y! brand the public and your employees see. Evolve to have the public love it, bussiness want it and employees respect it!
-Dont lay all your eggs when its time for breakfast!
-Every cool site from every other industry is a case study!
-Coding challenges, basic problem!

Scott | December 24th, 2006 at 5:22 pm

Sal? Sal? Anything on TV tonight?

SATISH A DORA | December 29th, 2006 at 1:54 am

MARY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS

MAY WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007

Not In Past Or In Future Service Provider Like You

LONG LIVE YAHOO & STAFF LONG LIVE

SATISH A DORA | December 29th, 2006 at 1:55 am

MARY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS

MAY WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007

A To Z YAHOO THE BEST

cathy | January 1st, 2007 at 12:27 pm

Surfing is like choreographed dancing. Web links are like ugly steps by themself but when its choreographed well, the final act becomes a graceful dance between the web surfer and content provider.
Have you checked the ask or aol search? Everyone is trying something new! I love Yahoo!, it has heart.

-Nowdays everywhere around the globe, Quality has taken a backseat. Everyone now just wants to top the base quality rating, so if a company sets it at 40%, another company unlike in the past would not work for 90% but would want to just get maybe 42% quality rating.
-Before their where many legends now its the age of zillion stars. Its the age of ‘give it all, be it all, time up, move on’!
-Unfortunetly its the game engine concept with content and products, new games are made using existing engine.

365 days ahead, Y! happy 2007.

Chris | January 3rd, 2007 at 8:24 am

I am disappointed at the 40% fall in Yahoo’s share price last year and hope decision making improves. Most notable issues in 2006: MySpace/ YouTube were missed, Panama was delayed, and further ground has been ceded to Google. In the most dynamic sector in the world mistakes like this simply cannot be made; management must be more on the ball; restructures are no panacea or substitute for making courageous and bold moves.

hector | January 4th, 2007 at 10:15 pm

-No matter what you give or how good the environment is within the company. Teams will want conquests (for money n fame), direct this energy outwards.

-Society & Education system: think of products & resources for the present and future generation. Ex: calculator & spellcheck

-Travel problems & global offices: Maybe some team members can work the other locations timezone with less work hours. Ex: one team member from X country and another team member from Y country working on the same project work in each other timezone from their respective location with less/flexi hours.

hector | January 9th, 2007 at 2:43 am

Internet is a networked world, so what should Global User’s expect and do?

P.S.
Why do you ask for my mail id, is it to search for my post?

hector | January 19th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

When you have an old computer, you know online privacy is limited or nonexistent but i am sad coz i cant use many new y! products. :-(

Anyway getting online is still worth the trouble, coz i can sit here and let my mind travel. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/freshelectrons/360809345/) :-)

Yahoo! i have all the space to store data, offline/online. I have so many resources/technology but i just dont have the time. :-(

We will see the creation and evolution of Online Personal Web Bots.
Right away i can think of two, one at my site and another which explores.
My OPWB will automatically:
- check on sites, blogs, bookmarks etc.,
- Download or bookmark sites/files based on tags, words, file formats i approve or decide.
- OPWB will work while i am offline analyzing blog comments, news etc., Well it could even respond on my behalf ;-)
- It will redirect data among gadgets, services or tools based on priority, people or situation. Ex: computer Email convert to mobile sms or mobile call convert to computer video conference.
- My OPWB will help me decide if i should check on a particular information. Ex: If i should read a blog post at all or if i should be informed about a particular news.
It will help me read, understand, analyze and research information better online. It will help me write, express, create better content online.
There is so much more to share but i just remembered American Idol, i mean if i cant sing and i keep singing, it can be funny and i really dont want to be funny.

However i would love to see Yahoo come out things which i can keep at my desk or stick to my laptop and these things should react based on my activities online or offline at Y!.

This is deja vu, i had written about ’search landscape’ in my thinkpad, few days back. Anyway, you could add on to the World Explorer a search landscape feature using y! directory. A landscape where search results like sites or blogs are colour coded and categories, sub categories have shapes like cones, dome etc.,
Selected results are presented in the frame where you have photos.
-By default, the landscape is based on the most searched keyword.
-Users can create art on these landscape when at maximum zoom or can embed art on the colourfull landscape with the keyword used.

Yahoo!, i cant do much if i cant brainstorm with you all and i just cant keep being funny. Thank you for letting me post here, i wish Yahoo! the best.

Bips | February 12th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

Yahoo certainly has the width which Google is missing. The biggest problem which I see right now is to monetize a huge chunk of junk traffic which Yahoo faces. 33% of Yahoo’s traffic is from Mail, why cant we monetize it?
Moreover Google is also bridgning the gap with Yahoo in terms of traffic. Very soon Google will not be just a search engine but also a social and networking platform. Yahoo has the first mover advantage and it should reap it.
Monetize whatever you have without making customers hate you and Yahoo can be number one in couple of years. I do have some ideas of monetizing the mail and yahoo homepage and I hope to share it with the Yahoo team soon.

emma | March 21st, 2007 at 3:46 am

I really hate Yahoo because of the lack of communication between them and publishers/advertisers. I hope that what Terry is saying holds water and that they bridge the gap soon.

Белая Церковь | March 27th, 2007 at 11:00 am

However i would love to see Yahoo come out things which i can keep at my desk or stick to my laptop and these things should react based on my activities online or offline at Y!.

Dennis | April 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 am

Yahoo is the worst sales and customer service organization in the biz! I don’t know what changes you made in the last couple of years by yahoo has went down hill quickly. I am selling now!!! Your customer service is the absoulute worst. Your employees refuse to give any info out about there own supervisors let alone the executives. Whey was the last time any of your exec. talk to a customer? Based on what I have experienced I would say a couple of years.

Max | June 28th, 2007 at 9:36 am

I have just severed all premium accounts due to incompetence and account siphoning at Yahoo. I don’t have a lot of attaboys for you like all the ass kissers above; but I am so dissappointed in your involvement (ever) with Yahoo that I am finished with Yahoo as an end user and stock inverstor…forever.

hiutopor | September 17th, 2007 at 1:46 am

Hi all!

Very interesting information! Thanks!

G’night

Pete Abilla | December 12th, 2007 at 8:22 pm

Best of luck in making Yahoo! more nimble. I know many engineers and product folks read my blog, the content of which is primarily on Lean Manufacturing, Agile for Software, and Six Sigma. Best of luck — I can see Yahoo! becoming quicker and more responsive to the customer’s needs already.

dasven | May 27th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Get real and stay real and avoid being yet another hiccup of objectivelesness :)

peter | June 11th, 2008 at 11:31 am

let’s sue yahoo and its advertisers