Posts tagged yahoo

MySpace was where you went in the past, WordPress and Movable Type were where people went if they had the patience and writing output to maintain a traditional blog, Facebook was where you went to define yourself by schools and checkboxes, and Tumblr was where you went to make your own identity and express your creativity.
Marco Arment (one of Tumblr’s early developers) in a nice little ode to David Karp and Tumblr, on Tumblr’s history and why he’s hopeful about Yahoo’s acquisition. If you’re still wary about the whole deal, it’s a nice read.
We Promise Not to Screw Quick, someone teach the Yahoo social team how to use the Tumblr Twitter box. STAT. Image: Automated tweet from Yahoo’s Tumblr to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Twitter account.

We Promise Not to Screw

Quick, someone teach the Yahoo social team how to use the Tumblr Twitter box. STAT.

Image: Automated tweet from Yahoo’s Tumblr to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Twitter account.

We promise not to screw it up.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, announcing the company’s agreement to acquire Tumblr. On Tumblr, of course. Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!

FJP: We’re wary, but let’s hope so.

Is Yahoo Trying to Acquire Tumblr? All Things D reports that Yahoo is trying to get its cool on with a potential Tumblr acquisition: Earlier this week, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo needed to be “cool again.” …According to sources close to the situation, that could mean a strategic alliance and investment in or outright buy of perhaps the coolest Internet company of late: Tumblr. Adweek follows up saying a deal could be done by this weekend, adding: Such an acquisition could be just what CEO [Marissa] Mayer has been looking for to turn around Yahoo’s momentum; Tumblr has the potential to excite the engineering/Silicon Valley community (even though it’s based in New York) while recapturing the imagination of advertisers, who have grown to view Yahoo as big but stale. While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd—not currently a Yahoo sweet spot. From Tumblr’s point of view, the deal also would seem to make a lot of sense. The company has been looking to make a big exit to justify its huge valuation. Over at GigaOm, Om Malik suggests Facebook might try to swoop in on a deal.: We have heard that Yahoo is worried that Facebook could swoop in at the last minute and beat it to the buzzer. If the Instagram acquisition was any indication, then we shouldn’t doubt [Mark] Zuckerberg’s salesmanship. [Tumblr’s David] Karp is said to have a close relationship with Facebook and was recently spotted at the Facebook Home launch. Facebook could use the much needed younger 18-to-24 year old demographic, something it (successfully) tried to acquire with Instagram. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment. Word of warning via 37signals: What happens after Yahoo acquires you: Whether it’s Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, or Upcoming, the post-purchase story is a similar one. Both sides talk about all the wonderful things they will do together. Then reality sets in. They get bogged down trying to overcome integration obstacles, endless meetings, and stifling bureaucracy. The products slow down or stop moving forward entirely. Once they hit the two-year mark and are free to leave, the founders take off. The sites are left to flounder or ride into the sunset. And customers are left holding the bag. Sweet.

Is Yahoo Trying to Acquire Tumblr?

All Things D reports that Yahoo is trying to get its cool on with a potential Tumblr acquisition:

Earlier this week, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo needed to be “cool again.” …According to sources close to the situation, that could mean a strategic alliance and investment in or outright buy of perhaps the coolest Internet company of late: Tumblr.

Adweek follows up saying a deal could be done by this weekend, adding:

Such an acquisition could be just what CEO [Marissa] Mayer has been looking for to turn around Yahoo’s momentum; Tumblr has the potential to excite the engineering/Silicon Valley community (even though it’s based in New York) while recapturing the imagination of advertisers, who have grown to view Yahoo as big but stale.

While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd—not currently a Yahoo sweet spot.

From Tumblr’s point of view, the deal also would seem to make a lot of sense. The company has been looking to make a big exit to justify its huge valuation.

Over at GigaOm, Om Malik suggests Facebook might try to swoop in on a deal.:

We have heard that Yahoo is worried that Facebook could swoop in at the last minute and beat it to the buzzer. If the Instagram acquisition was any indication, then we shouldn’t doubt [Mark] Zuckerberg’s salesmanship. [Tumblr’s David] Karp is said to have a close relationship with Facebook and was recently spotted at the Facebook Home launch. Facebook could use the much needed younger 18-to-24 year old demographic, something it (successfully) tried to acquire with Instagram. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.

Word of warning via 37signals: What happens after Yahoo acquires you:

Whether it’s Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, or Upcoming, the post-purchase story is a similar one. Both sides talk about all the wonderful things they will do together. Then reality sets in. They get bogged down trying to overcome integration obstacles, endless meetings, and stifling bureaucracy. The products slow down or stop moving forward entirely. Once they hit the two-year mark and are free to leave, the founders take off. The sites are left to flounder or ride into the sunset. And customers are left holding the bag.

Sweet.

Yahoo needs a copy editor.

Yahoo needs a copy editor.

Personalizing News for 700 Million People a Day Yahoo’s created a visualization about reading habits of the more than 700 million people that visit its sites each day. Via ReadWriteWeb: Every day, Yahoo displays about 13 million different news story combination on its homepage. Those stories are personalized based on demographic data and reading behavior, and the company keeps track of what kind of stories do well with which groups of people… …To illustrate how this works, Yahoo has created an interactive data visualization that shows visitor traffic data in nearly real time. Using it, one can drill down into specific age groups, genders and story types to see what people’s aggregate reading habits look like. To create the personalization Yahoo uses internally developed technologies called the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (CORE). Via Yahoo: Looking at past user behavior, algorithms are combined with human editorial expertise to allow us to carry out deep personalization to our more than 700 million users, giving them “must read” stories that are interesting and relevant. This C.O.R.E. data visualization reveals some of the factors that influence the display of articles in the Yahoo! Today module. The interactive visualization was created with JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. Image: Screenshot of Yahoo home page views by demographic and content category, via Visualize Yahoo.

Personalizing News for 700 Million People a Day

Yahoo’s created a visualization about reading habits of the more than 700 million people that visit its sites each day.

Via ReadWriteWeb:

Every day, Yahoo displays about 13 million different news story combination on its homepage. Those stories are personalized based on demographic data and reading behavior, and the company keeps track of what kind of stories do well with which groups of people…

…To illustrate how this works, Yahoo has created an interactive data visualization that shows visitor traffic data in nearly real time. Using it, one can drill down into specific age groups, genders and story types to see what people’s aggregate reading habits look like.

To create the personalization Yahoo uses internally developed technologies called the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (CORE).

Via Yahoo:

Looking at past user behavior, algorithms are combined with human editorial expertise to allow us to carry out deep personalization to our more than 700 million users, giving them “must read” stories that are interesting and relevant. This C.O.R.E. data visualization reveals some of the factors that influence the display of articles in the Yahoo! Today module.

The interactive visualization was created with JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3.

Image: Screenshot of Yahoo home page views by demographic and content category, via Visualize Yahoo.

Yahoo, ABC Team Up For Online News

Via Slate:

Yahoo announced Monday that it has signed a deal with ABC News to feature the network’s original content on its Yahoo News website. Under the agreement, ABC News journalists such as Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, and Barbara Walters will produce video directly for the web, to be used on the Yahoo News site as well as ABC sites…

…While the two organizations will maintain editorial control of their own respective Web sites, they will co-produce coverage of major news and integrate their bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, Reuters reports. Their combined traffic will exceed that of their closest rival, CNN.com, by 25 million visitors.

If you’re still transforming, you’re still in business.

Ross Levinsohn, EVP, Yahoo at the paidContent Advertising Conference 2011, in response to the question of Staci Kramer, “How many times can Yahoo transform?”

For the whole article and live blogging, check out Paid Content

(via scribemedia)

People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all. Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.

Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, to the Wall Street Journal, Content Deluge Swamps Yahoo

The Wall Street Journal outlines how Yahoo and AOL are struggling with their ad-supported business models. 

In a nutshell: in the not so distant past having great scale almost guaranteed profits, but with the proliferation and commoditization of most content that’s not the case anymore.

As the article’s authors write: 

It’s a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online.

In other words, services that make content discoverable either via search (Google) or social (Facebook) are thriving.

In 1998 Yahoo was charging CPM rates of $25, according to the Journal, that’s now down to $6.50. 

Semantic Web Gets a Boost

Via Technology Review:

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have teamed up to encourage Web page operators to make the meaning of their pages understandable to search engines.

The move may finally encourage widespread use of technology that makes online information as comprehensible to computers as it is to humans. If the effort works, the result will be not only better search results, but also a wave of other intelligent apps and services able to understand online information almost as well as we do.

The three big Web companies launched the initiative, known as Schema.org, last week. It defines an interconnected vocabulary of terms that can be added to the HTML markup of a Web page to communicate the meaning of concepts on the page. A location referred to in text could be defined as a courthouse, which Schema.org understands as being a specific type of government building. People and events can also be defined, as can attributes like distance, mass, or duration. This data will allow search engines to better understand how useful a page may be for a given search query—for example, by making it clear that a page is about the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, not five-sided regular shapes.

The article goes on to note that Schema.org standards support microformats microdata* rather than RDFa which is supported and promoted by the international Web standards body W3C.

Still, if it can gain traction, it’s a big step forward for machine understanding of all this content we’re throwing at the Web which, in turn, means a whole new class of applications using such data might be in our near future.

*Hat tip to Aaron Bradley (@aaranged) on Twitter for pointing out that it’s microdata, not microformats, that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are supporting.

Yahoo! researcher Yury Lifshits studied the Facebook “like” counts of the world’s top 45 news sources over a three month time period in order to see how they’re performing in terms of social engagement with their users.

Via Ediscope:

There are around 10 likes per 1000 pageviews (across several websites with public PV numbers). Decay of engagement is extremely sharp, with less than 20% likes happening after the first 24 hours…

..Stories about Facebook, Apple, Verizon, Groupon, future and infographics are universally popular across technology blogs. Articles about Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, cloud computing, TV and search see much less engagement.

An interesting — and in our view positive —note comes at the beginning of the screencast. It’s not the frequency of publication that garners “likes”. Instead, it’s the quality of the piece.

Unfortunately, as noted, news stories appear to be highly disposable, basically drifting off into the digital ether after the first 24 hours:

 Yahoo! News has the sharpest decay of user interest. Engadget articles have the longest lifespan. But even in this case, new content is only visible for 3 or 4 days.

Here are some tips Yury gives for engaging your audience:

  • Put significant effort in your top stories
  • Improve promotion of your best content
  • Improve your median story
  • Use both intuition and algorithms for demand analysis
  • Invest in social media optimization

Visit Ediscope for details on each of the above.

Run Time: 4:52.

Google’s Algorithm Update Zaps Content Farm Cash Cows

According to analysis conducted by German Web monitoring company Sistrix, the impacts of Google’s Farmer search algorithm update has been a dust bowl for crummy content cash cows. Though affecting just 12 percent of websites in the U.S., according to Google, the changes have been immediate and blistering.

Among the top 25 spam sites, a traffic decline in the high 70-percent range is not uncommon. Ten sites on the list saw their traffic decline by 90 percent or more once Google closed the tap.

One of the hardest hit sites was Associated Content, which Yahoo bought in May 2010 for $100 million. Traffic to the site is down 93 percent based on data from the Sistrix database, containing 1 Million tracked keywords.

One name that is not on the Sistrix list is Demand Media, a company who many view as the archetypal content farm.

Via: Quora

sistrix.com

Yahoo introduces Livestand Via Fast Company: In the wake of AOL purchasing the Huffington Post and News Corp. unveiling The Daily, Yahoo is looking to regain some footing in the digital news marketplace. Today, the company introduced Livestand, a personalized digital newsstand for tablets and mobile phones. According to Yahoo, the e-newsstand will “offer new content to consumers based on their interests.” It will be cross-platform, meaning publishers and advertisers can push content across a variety of devices, from the iPad to Android-based tablets. With this new product, Yahoo joins Apple, Google, and a growing number of tech giants who see potential profit in creating a centralized hub for digital news, similar to what iTunes did for digital music or the Kindle store for ebooks. But Yahoo may also be taking aim at a different, fast-growing competitor in this field: Flipboard. The “personalized, social magazine” platform for the iPad pulls content from around the web based on your interests and social graph—and Yahoo’s Livestand riffs on that same idea. The platform will offer content based on “interests, time of day, and location,” as well as “social interactions.” Yahoo promises the service will cut through the “noise of the web” to deliver personalized content—heck, the word “personalized” crops up roughly a half-dozen times throughout the press release.

Yahoo introduces Livestand

Via Fast Company:

In the wake of AOL purchasing the Huffington Post and News Corp. unveiling The Daily, Yahoo is looking to regain some footing in the digital news marketplace. Today, the company introduced Livestand, a personalized digital newsstand for tablets and mobile phones.

According to Yahoo, the e-newsstand will “offer new content to consumers based on their interests.” It will be cross-platform, meaning publishers and advertisers can push content across a variety of devices, from the iPad to Android-based tablets.

With this new product, Yahoo joins Apple, Google, and a growing number of tech giants who see potential profit in creating a centralized hub for digital news, similar to what iTunes did for digital music or the Kindle store for ebooks.

But Yahoo may also be taking aim at a different, fast-growing competitor in this field: Flipboard. The “personalized, social magazine” platform for the iPad pulls content from around the web based on your interests and social graph—and Yahoo’s Livestand riffs on that same idea.

The platform will offer content based on “interests, time of day, and location,” as well as “social interactions.” Yahoo promises the service will cut through the “noise of the web” to deliver personalized content—heck, the word “personalized” crops up roughly a half-dozen times throughout the press release.

The legacy of Yahoo! will almost certainly see it serve as the benchmark by which all tech meltdowns are judged (if it isn’t already). The steady erosion of the company’s product leadership, market value and consumer’s confidence has been on ongoing narrative in Silicon Valley and a cautionary tale told to aspiring entrepreneurs before bedtime. As lovers of data visualization, we feel the story isn’t told until there’s an infographic  to encapsulate all the sordid history in one place. The image above is a non-scientific, qualitative analysis of Yahoo!’s troubles, but it paints a pretty grim portrait of a stumbling giant, and provides a handy timeline from the company’s beginnings in 1994 until the present. There are lot more bad times than good, but it certainly can’t go on forever. Can it?

The legacy of Yahoo! will almost certainly see it serve as the benchmark by which all tech meltdowns are judged (if it isn’t already). The steady erosion of the company’s product leadership, market value and consumer’s confidence has been on ongoing narrative in Silicon Valley and a cautionary tale told to aspiring entrepreneurs before bedtime.

As lovers of data visualization, we feel the story isn’t told until there’s an infographic  to encapsulate all the sordid history in one place. The image above is a non-scientific, qualitative analysis of Yahoo!’s troubles, but it paints a pretty grim portrait of a stumbling giant, and provides a handy timeline from the company’s beginnings in 1994 until the present.

There are lot more bad times than good, but it certainly can’t go on forever. Can it?

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