It’s been a big week for us at Yahoo! News.

You might have heard — we interviewed the President. George W. Bush, in the flesh, at the White House.

And, the best part? We made history. Believe it or not, this was the first on-camera interview the President has done for an online-only entity in his entire tenure in office. As we say in the news biz — what a “get”!

The White House was kind enough to let us conduct the interview in the Roosevelt Room — the President has only done one other on-camera interview there. It’s feet from the Oval Office and is usually used as a conference room (think cabinet meetings).

The White House says “President Richard Nixon named the room in 1969 to honor Theodore Roosevelt for building the West Wing and Franklin Roosevelt for expanding it.” Teddy’s Medal of Honor and Nobel Peace Prize hang on walls a few feet away from the large picture of him at the end of the room. All fine reminders that this was an historic event.

The interview was conducted by Mike Allen, the chief political correspondent for Politico (our Election 2008 partners). Our first-class production team shot the interview. Our exec producer and vice president of original programming, Neeraj Khemlani, came with us to oversee the whole production. (He used to work at 60 Minutes. Take a look at the interview — you can tell he had a hand in it. It looked sharp!)

The idea of interviewing Mr. Bush started when our friends and partners at Politico joined forces with us to cover the 2008 campaign. Eventually, we were interviewing presidential candidates (see interviews here) with Mike Allen. Then we were writing stories on the primaries. And ultimately, we’re hosting their first-class content on our site. We wondered what big “get” we could do next — all signs pointed to the White House.

We took a good look at our audience when we decided just what we’d ask President Bush when we sat down with him. Of our 40 million users, we were pretty sure not all of them are watching Meet the Press every week. So we posed a broad range of questions, touching on everything from the war in Iraq (and why it spurred him to quit golf) to his daughter’s wedding to which Saturday Night Live comedian pulled off the best impression. (It goes without saying that as Yahoo!, we can get away with questions that are outside Tim Russert’s domain.) We even got a Dr. Evil impression out of him. We also asked questions submitted by users, like whether he felt personally misled by pre-war Iraq intelligence and what he could do about the rising price of gas.

No matter which aspect of this President people were interested in, we’re proud to have brought it to you from a special place in a special format.

Erin Green
Producer, Yahoo! News

At age 21, Jia-Jia was like any other college girl in Taiwan, loving fashion and fantasizing about becoming famous.

Then her dream came true — as it has for dozens of other young women, thanks to the emergence of a new Taiwanese job description: Ecommerce Model.

Jia-Jia entered and won the “EC Model Contest,” hosted by Yahoo! Taiwan Auctions. She is now not only a celebrity to the more than 300,000 people who participated in the voting process and is coveted by media for interviews and photo shoots, she regularly models women’s wear for online stores on our auctions platform.

This unique new profession was born essentially from the Yahoo! Taiwan Auctions platform, as sellers sought new ways to market their wares. We launched our first contest in 2005, and today there are 30 full-time professional online mannequins like Jia-Jia modeling for the e-stores on our platform. Many are college students fitting the shoots between classes. Some earn more than US$6,000 per month.

What’s fueling the demand? They dramatically impact sales. Items that are modeled by these young women are viewed 30 times more often and sales are 30% higher than merchandise that’s merely displayed via product images. As a result, more than 95% of our VIP sellers are now using these models. And that is, in turn, fueling the growth of online sales across Taiwan.

Within less than two years, women’s wear sales have increased from 550,000 items sold per month to 800,000 — a purchase every 5 seconds. That’s a lot of clothes, accessories, bags, shoes, and beauty products. And the market is expected to grow 36% this year, according to the Market Intelligence Center.

The growth of the industry, on the backdrop of an expanding virtual market economy, is a good indicator of the change in Taiwanese shopping behavior. Not only are people gradually embracing virtual shopping over traditional street-shopping, the competition among suppliers is now driving marketing innovation. The birth and growth of the online mannequin industry is clear evidence that consumers want a better shopping experience — demanding the same visual experience that they get while perusing shelves and racks.

This trend is setting off a positive growth spiral: As virtual shopping gets closer to replicating offline shopping, delivering goods as well as the experience, the number of regular online shoppers is bound to surge. And, after browsing the nicely put-together outfits displayed on the mannequins, how can you just buy the skirt… and not the top, the bag, the boots, and the necklace as well?

Charlene Hung
General Manager, Yahoo! Taiwan

The polls have closed, the results are in, and Yahoo! News has been named the big winner on Super Tuesday. A recent custom report by comScore Media Metrix showed that Yahoo! was the most-viewed news site for elections results on February 5, beating out the likes of CNN.com, MSNBC.com and AOL News. (And no, there were no hanging chads on this ballot!)

The results shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’ve been busy getting ready for the 2008 presidential elections to meet the demand of our users and over the past few months have introduced several new enhancements. In addition to the up-to-the-minute Political Dashboard introduced in December (check out our earlier post), Yahoo! News had several other features the week leading up to Super Tuesday:

• Check the Political Pulse: On a regular basis, Yahoo! News and the Associated Press are releasing “Political Pulse” polls, which track the mood of the same 2300+ Americans over the course of this election year, and offer a snapshot of the mood of the nation. The polls examine a series of identical questions each month (on issues such as the economy and the War), in order to track how attitudes on key issues may be changing. We’re also tracking some timely issues, and in the week before Super Tuesday our poll told us what the word “change” really means to most Americans.
• GOP Interviews: Yahoo! also traveled to the Reagan Museum to conduct a series of Republican candidate interviews, conducted by reporter Mike Allen. The interviews covered a range of questions, from the war in Iraq to “Mac or PC?”

For a look into the Yahoo! newsroom and how we have pulled together the “people’s choice” of election news sites, check out this video:

Enjoy!

John Briggs
Assistant Managing Editor, Yahoo! News

Did you know that in any given week, technology stocks represent at least seven of the ten most-searched quotes on Yahoo! Finance? We did, and that’s why today we launched Tech Ticker — a new video initiative from Yahoo! Finance focused entirely on technology investing. Some consider the tech sector the fantasy sports of the investing world, and clearly our users are hungry for more in this area.

Reporting from both the Silicon Valley and the NASDAQ MarketSite broadcast studio in New York, we plan to provide the most in-depth technology investing coverage on the web. Expect Tech Ticker to be both quirky and opinionated. Our renowned editorial team couldn’t be stronger:

• Sarah Lacy, Correspondent, Silicon Valley: A 10-year Valley veteran, you may read her biweekly BusinessWeek.com column titled “Valley Girl.” She literally wrote the book on the business and culture of the Silicon Valley.
• Aaron Task, Correspondent, New York: He covered Wall Street for a decade at TheStreet.com, is a frequent guest on major business news programs and his daily podcast “The Real Story” was an award winner on iTunes.
• Henry Blodget, Contributor, New York: You know the history. Now meet Henry Blodget 2.0, author of the award-winning blog, Internet Outsider and now CEO of Silicon Alley Insider. Outspoken and battle-tested, Henry will never be at a loss for an opinion.
• Andy Kessler, Contributor, Silicon Valley: A former Morgan Stanley analyst, Andy turned $100 million into $1 billion as co-founder of a technology hedge fund. He began his career designing chips at Bell Labs and is now a best-selling author.

And me — I’m Diane Galligan, executive producer of Tech Ticker. I’m especially excited to join the Internet’s #1 finance website after nearly a decade of producing financial news with CNBC and CNN.

Expect 4-8 video segments a day, including breaking market analysis, CEO interviews, and even documentary style editorials. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like FinanceVision, it’s not. We’re offering short video-on-demand clips that are focused on a single sector of the market, rather than live streaming coverage of the entire stock market. FinanceVision was actually ahead of its time. We hope to learn from their experience, and take advantage of the many ways the Web and Web video have since evolved.

The videos can be found on the Tech Ticker site, or in the headline feeds of the tech stocks we cover. And what about our coverage of Yahoo!? The answer is simple. We have not only the freedom, but the mandate, to call it as we see it.

You can go to http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker see for yourself. Let us know what you think is working, what’s not and what you want to see. In the meantime, check out the video below for an inside look at what Tech Ticker’s all about with Sarah Lacy.

Hope to hear from you — and enjoy!

Diane Galligan and the Tech Ticker editorial team

Whoa. What happened to Yodel Anecdotal?

New year, new look. We’ve slapped on a new paint job and spiffed up the joint. In addition to a slick new template, you’ll notice we now have a wider post body and a cleaned up sidebar. We also added tagging (the tag cloud lives under the “Archives” tab) and you can now receive posts via email by subscribing just under the search box. Whaddaya think?

We’ve done plenty of QA, but let us know if you discover anything wonky. Just drop us a line.

Props to the guys from cnp_studio (Nick, Sean, Mike & Pete) and Voce Communications (Josh & Mike) for hooking us up with this new haircut. We’ve memorialized the old look here in case you ever feel nostalgic.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

In 2005, as Yahoo! News’ first correspondent, former television news veteran Kevin Sites set out to cover every major war zone in the world for Yahoo!. Iraq, Cambodia, Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar, Uganda, Colombia… His mission was to tell the stories that weren’t being told, reporting what he witnessed for a year-long project called “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.”

Kevin was at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale campus today to discuss the book he’s written about his experience, “In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars.” Kevin was here today to share his stories, and I was asked to share a little about my experience “In the Hot Zone.”

You see, during his journey around the world, I was responsible for booking nearly all of his travel over the course of the year-long project. As you may imagine, Kevin is not your typical Yahoo! business traveler, and as a result our relationship has grown into a valuable friendship. And when you have a unique relationship with a “client” like him, it can make for some interesting stories.

For example, over the holidays in 2005 while in the middle of his project, Kevin ran out of cash. A major annoyance for anyone out on the road, but a potentially life-threatening problem for a solo war reporter who happens to be in Iran without money to pay his “fixer” (a foreign reporter’s lifeline who acts as a guide and translator). His American-based editorial team asked if they could pay by credit card or check, and quickly learned that not only was that not an option, but it was impossible for them to wire Kevin money while he was in Iran. Having been born in Iran, I happened to know of some folks who were about to go back home to Iran at this exact time. Because we had already established a trusting relationship with one another, I volunteered to help. The team gave me the cash Kevin needed, and I in turn gave it to my friend, who then took it to Iran and hand-delivered it to Kevin’s translator.

It’s not every day that I help my clients by facilitating the hand-delivery of cash across international borders, but it was definitely worth it. This story didn’t make it into the book, but there are plenty of important stories about Kevin’s experiences, and the people he met that did.

During today’s talk, Kevin took a moment to thank me for supporting the Hot Zone project, which I found both meaningful and unnecessary. Kevin is the most amazing client I have ever worked with, and I am proud to have been a part of the Hot Zone project.

I should also mention that at today’s discussion, Kevin was accepting donations the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), an organization that advocates on behalf of victims of armed conflict. He’s donated a portion of his royalties to this organization, and we raised more than $1000 today! Click here to learn more.

Farah Ravon
Lead Travel Agent
BCD Travel (Yahoo!’s on-site travel agency)

About 14,000 people around the world are heading out for the holidays tonight sporting fuzzy black fleece jackets, courtesy of our generous founders. As they have for the past 11 years, Jerry Yang and David Filo have generously bestowed holiday gifts on all good little Yahoos.

Past gifts have included free coffee for all (a tradition I cash in on every morning), a purple sleeping bag (presumably to get more work out of us), a purple gym bag (to offset all that work), an MP3 player (I think it fit 20 songs, but it was so newfangled back in 2001), a Yahoo!opoly game (a clever adaptation of the Milton Bradley favorite, complete with awesomely relevant metal game pieces), more jackets (they’re clearly a crowd-pleaser), and a $100 charity gift certificate (a favorite for many).

Over the last week, Jerry and David (and their many elves) personally helped employees zip up into their new duds. We threw together this little video of the handout process to get everyone into the holiday spirit. And notice the intrigue surrounding the “bonus” gift that came along with the jackets.

We’ll be home watching our video yule log next week, as I’m sure will you, so let me take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for continuing to read, comment, and repeat. Here’s to a yodelful 2008!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

If you thought surfing live TV with a seatbelt securely fastened about your waist was cool, try popping off an instant message, SMS or email at 30,000 feet! Yahoo! is partnering with JetBlue, RIM, and LiveTV (the JetBlue subsidiary that makes that seatback entertainment possible) to take our global email and IM leadership (and our promise to keep friends and family connected) to new heights – literally.

You might have heard the news by now, but as we speak, JetBlue Flight 641 is flying from NYC’s Kennedy Airport en route to San Francisco, equipped with an onboard wireless network that lets passengers use Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger in flight for free. Known as BetaBlue, the Airbus A320 is the first domestic plane to offer such a service. And it’s a six-month test we hope will expand.

For the last couple of months the Yahoo! Mail and Messenger teams have been working hard to develop custom, lightweight versions that perform particularly well with the bandwidth considerations of a high-altitude network. If you have a WiFi-enabled laptop, you can log on and find all of the basic email and messenger functionality. You can also check your Address Book, send text messages, and connect with your Yahoo! contacts as well as those using Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger. You can even have your Messenger status link to a map that lets friends on the ground track exactly where your flight is at that moment!

The other big news, especially for Crackberry addicts like me, is that, on BetaBlue, you’ll be able to check Yahoo! Mail and Messenger on your WiFi-enabled BlackBerry (the 8820 and Curve 8320) — though you still need to turn off the cellular transmitter.

How does it work? The service uses an FCC-licensed air-to-ground spectrum owned by LiveTV. It provides coverage in the continental U.S. above 10,000 feet and connects with 100 air-to-ground communications towers.

Last week I had the chance to take BetaBlue for a spin to preview our project with JetBlue founder Dave Neeleman, LiveTV CEO Nate Quigley, folks from RIM, and a handful of media. We headed off from JFK, got up to cruising altitude, and fired off some messages. As this is still a beta service, we are excited to work with our partners to make this an ideal consumer experience and look forward to hearing what BetaBlue customers have to say.

Unfortunately you can’t request to book passage on BetaBlue — it’s luck of the draw. But if you arrive at your gate and see our logo emblazoned on your plane, you’ll know you’re in for an entertaining ride.

Brad Garlinghouse
SVP, Yahoo! Communications & Communities

I just posted this on our Yahoo! Store blog, but wanted to follow up here as well.

We’ve heard you and we’ve been hearing from our merchant partners since Monday, and I want to let you know what happened earlier this week and what we’re doing about it.

On Monday and for a very short time yesterday, unusual service interruptions affected transactions in Yahoo! Merchant Solutions/Yahoo! Stores. After an investigation, we learned that the specific servers affected were the Shopping Cart database servers that handle cart contents for each shopper. New servers were added to the Shopping Cart database during our pre-holiday planning to manage the projected increase in transaction volume. When the holiday traffic surged, the hardware and software settings caused these servers to experience delays when customers added items to the Shopping Cart to complete checkout. When delays exceeded time limits, customers saw error messages stating that the servers had timed out (were not responding).

On Thursday, the service interruption occurred between 10:13 a.m. and 10:25 a.m. PT. During this time, merchants’ sites could not be accessed by shoppers. After investigating the issue, we found that this interruption occurred due to a network configuration issue resulting from new server capacity that was added for the holiday shopping season.

Immediately upon identification of both of these issues, our team worked hard to improve the situation as quickly as possible, and systems are now performing as expected.

These service interruptions were unrelated to our October feature release.

We fixed the problems as quickly as possible, and we are continuing to make improvements to our systems, including the addition of new hardware and system maintenance conducted on November 28. We will continue to post information about ongoing activities at our system status page.

We have apologized to our merchant partners for the impact that this service interruption had on their business and their customers at this busy time of year. As a token of our commitment to them, we have communicated with them our intent to waive all sales transaction fees for the month of November.

The success of our merchants’ business is extremely important to us, and we are committed to work as hard as we can, over and above the efforts already underway, to avoid such issues in the future.

Rich Riley
SVP, Online Channel Division

By now you have probably heard about the problems that many of our small business merchant customers experienced yesterday. Unfortunately, the system outage occurred at one of the worst possible times, and despite our concerted efforts to fix the problem as it emerged on Monday, we know that we let our merchant partners and their customers down. The good news is that our systems are now operating normally, and our merchants are able to accept orders from their customers.

Here’s what happened:

• On Monday at 6:00AM PT, the systems that power our merchant stores experienced outages, and shoppers of those stores were met with either error messages or they were unable to complete the checkout process.
• These issues lasted until about 1:00PM PT when, despite slow performance, transactions began going through at a much higher rate.
• By 6:00 PM PT things were back to normal and the performance of our systems was at 100%.

We deeply regret the inconvenience this caused to both our merchants and their shoppers. Our customers’ expectations were not met, nor were our own. And we are moving mountains inside Yahoo! to find out why and how this happened, and to take steps to try to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

As for the future, rest assured that we are taking the necessary steps to prepare for the peak holiday selling season. We have technical and customer relations staff mobilized and ready to support our partners.

At Yahoo! Small Business, we know that our success and our customers’ success are interdependent, and yesterday’s issue reminds us that we need to continue to work even harder in the future.

Rich Riley
SVP, Online Channel Division, Yahoo!