Search results for: “Yahoo”

Turnaround plan at Yahoo! + more

Yahoo CEO Set to Refresh Turnaround Plan – WSJ – the turnaround plan sounds like desperate cost cutting. Yahoo! leadership have burned through a lot of runway and not made the best use of the company’s media assets. Mayer’s turnaround plan looked very much like Ross Levinsohn’s turnaround plan. The Levinsohn turnaround plan was in turn similar to pilot projects done when Terry Semel was CEO of Yahoo!

Qatar to buy stake in HK department store operator | RTHK – interesting move getting them to buy a chunk of Sogo, probably because Macau is likely to pick up much of the growth in luxury sales

LVMH: It May be Time for a Smartwatch – WSJ – not so sure that this is a good move, unless it is a fashion watch rather than a luxury item it could damage brands rather like the quartz lines did to luxury watches

ISPs told to block fake luxury goods sales – FT.com – sounds like an inefficient game of whack-a-mole; they should go after the payments providers instead. That’s where the weak spot is

App enables Chinese women to take selfies with sanitary pads – Mumbrella Asia – uses the packs to activate an AR app allowing photos with the company mascot, but still WTF

MediaTek, Acer working on smart surveillance solutions | WantChinaTimes – story about internet of things but the headline is telling…

Sony’s plans to pull out of Chinese market an ‘open secret’ | WantChinaTimes – the big issue is that China is likely to be a good market for Sony’s high end consumer electronics products

Uber fired a driver for tweeting mean stuff about them – douced

Behold the awesome power of the spreadsheet, destroyer of worlds | Quartz – rather reminds me of the introduction to ‘Accidental Empires’ by Bob Cringely

Old Technopanic in New iBottles | Cato @ Liberty – or why the government arguments for weak crypto are as much use as a chocolate teapot

October 21, 2014
Why did Yahoo Directory closing become a big deal?

Yahoo Directory is a bit like the shark. It has been around pretty much as long as the modern commercial web. Yahoo! was among the first online media companies. Whilst peers like Lycos and Excite disappeared Yahoo! managed to survive. The name Yahoo! is actually an acronym: Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. Yahoo! started as a list of interesting links to sites, these then needed to be categorised as it grew and the first iteration of Yahoo! was as a directory.

Yahoo! then expanded its service offering with a portal, email, shopping, auctions, celebrity chats and specialist kids content. Directories were the forerunner of search as they provided editor-driven categories. In 1998, Netscape went into competition with Yahoo! with its own directory, which now exists as DMOZ – an open directory hosted by Aol and run by volunteer editors. DMOZ has catalogued 4,167,366 sites in over a million categories over 16 years. It became obvious that human editors couldn’t scale.

Even when consumers went away to the search box of Alta Vista HotBot and Google, the Yahoo! Directory served a secondary purpose. As a repository of ‘screened and categorised’ websites algorithmic search engines took entry in a number of directories into account as part of their ranking for sites. Directories became important to search agencies.

When I worked at Yahoo! during the start of the web 2.0 period, tagging and its role in social search was considered to be reflective of Yahoo!’s past in directories and offered a future that was not solely dependent on the dictatorship of an algorithm. Social search promised a blended approach.

Over the past decade Yahoo! Search and Google both gradually depreciated the importance of a directory entry for search ranking as other signalling factors took over including social mentions.

A lot of digital marketers have lived with Yahoo! Directory for a long time. The shutdown of Yahoo!’s original service comes at a turning point for the company. It looks as if Yahoo! is about to be torn apart as Wall Street tries to get it to liquidate its holdings in Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba; return the cash to them and pick over the rest of the assets like a dead carcass on the Serengeti.

More information

Progress Report: Continued Product Focus | Yahoo! Corporate Tumblr account
The Yahoo Directory — Once The Internet’s Most Important Search Engine — Is To Close | SearchEngineLand
Yahoo killing off Yahoo after 20 years of hierarchical organisation | Ars Technica
Yahoo Directory, once the center of a web empire, will shut down at year’s end | The Verge

More Yahoo! related content here.

October 1, 2014
Yahoo corporate culture
I bumped into some former colleagues over the past couple of weeks and the experience reminded me of a lot of the items in this post. We shared a common bond based on our exposure to the Yahoo corporate culture. Given the circling activist investors surround the current iteration of Yahoo! this maybe a capsule of a soon-to-disappear culture. Many of the things below are artefacts, totems of the Yahoo corporate culture.
- You know that Yahoo! was the brand and a Yahoo was a person who worked for Yahoo!
- You were told that you bleed purple. There were values that were ingrained into you
- You understood the struggle of constantly moving budgets and spending a quarter’s marketing budget in three weeks
- You have an address book full of friends and aquantances working at great companies in digital media. The business was a rotating door for talent, in six months you had a great Rolodex full of contacts.
  
  Your have an old brand Yahoo! laptop bag that just won’t die. Not too sure what they made those Timbuk2 bags from but mine is eight years old, well travelled and still looks new.
- Friends introduce you to former colleagues you were less familiar with by including their IM identity as well as their name.
  
  You still have a star kicking around in a box somewhere from when you packed up your desk one last time.
  
  Your colleagues gave you a list of tchotchkes to get from the shop in building D if you went to the headquarters campus in Sunnyvale.
You’re still using at least one of Jerry and David’s Christmas presents around the house.
September 28, 2014
Yahoo stock + more things

Yahoo Stock Crashes As Alibaba IPOs – Business Insider – Yahoo stock represents an ideal target to do an LBO and asset strip to pay down the debt. The challenge for shareholders of Yahoo stock is how to minimise

Ashley Madison Steps Up Search For Asian PR Support | Holmes Report – they are banned in South Korea and Singapore. Thailand would likely be added to the list if Ashley Madison launched there

Logistics: The flow of things | The Economist – explains why e-railers are building their own logistics networks (paywall)

Dude, where are my socks? | the Anthill – great story about a small TaoBao reseller

Bits Blog: Net Neutrality Comments to F.C.C. Overwhelmingly One-Sided, Study Says | New York Times – paywall

Apple – Privacy – interesting that Apple didn’t do this sooner

Peter Thiel Says Computers Haven’t Made Our Lives Significantly Better | MIT Technology Review – Peter Thiel often comes across as a bit of a dick but is right on the money with regards the lack of hard innovation and excess of soft innovation

Single Chinese company owns 60% of world market for tantalum | WantChinaTimes – which is really important for electronics manufacture

Move over Hong Kong, here comes…Chengdu? | SCMP – huge economic growth in Chengdu which is viewed as an important city due to its proximity to the western edges of China which are the current high growth areas

Smartphone stress in Coolpad cuts, China Mobile ‘naked’ strategy | SCMP – bottom end of market suffering with Coolpad laying off 1,000 employees

Why news extortion is so hard to uncover | China Media Project – not just a Chinese problem, look at the uncomfortable aspects of media power with NewsCorp / News Int’l

Clamshells Gets Smart | CSS Insight – could we see a return of clamshell devices?

Facebook Is Hiding Important Information – Business Insider – nothing new pointing out yet again that mobile app adverts count for a significant amount of their revenue sales

September 20, 2014
Yahoo China + more news

Yahoo China

Yahoo China begins shutdown – Globaltimes.cn – will Yahoo China properties like flickr start to get blocked then I wonder since there wouldn’t be anyone in Yahoo China to harmonise the content?

Yahoo China stops providing news and community services, hinting at shutdown of its operations – The Next Web – Yahoo China also has local versions of its media content like TechCrunch and similar titles that were rolled up in the Aol deal.

Business

Power Of Purpose – seems obvious. Companies that have a clear mission tend to do better from a reputational standpoint

Branding

Landor Associates – Branding in the new era of ecosystems

Gadgets

I, Cringely I was, uh, wrong: Chromecast does what Google claims – I, Cringely

How to

AboutTheData.com – really interesting public project by Axicom Corporation in the US to help consumers understand the data held about them. It should be a boon to planning directors as well looking for inspiration

Facebook Begins Penalizing “Low Quality” Content on Pages

Innovation

The World’s Most Innovative Companies 2013 | INSEAD Knowledge

High Costs and Errors of German Transition to Renewable Energy – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Entrepreneurs or the state: Innovation comes from public investment. – Slate Magazine – interesting essay on the role that government plays in catalysing innovation (more than you’d think)

Busting Innovation Myths | INSEAD Knowledge

Luxury

For Rich Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Loses Luxury Luster – Scene Asia – WSJ

Marketing

Experience Marketing is the New Integrated Marketing Model | Chief Marketer

Global Multichannel Marketing – Accenture – (PDF)

Multichannel Marketing – Direct Marketing News – useful supplement to take a read of

Media

National Geographic Found – great source of inspiration

Ten Facts About MailOnline, the Site That Ate the News | Media – Advertising Age – The site reaches 19% of all U.S. women ages 25 to 34 online.

Yahoo unveils new logo as symbol of company’s progress | VentureBeat – sweet Jesus, no it feels so wrong

Ministry of Sound sues Spotify for copyright infringement | theguardian.com – interesting case

Sony betting big on 4K, launches Video Unlimited 4K download service — Tech News and Analysis

Wretch to withdraw from the social media competition｜WantChinaTimes.com – Yahoo! consolidating services

Cameron Porn – too much time on their hands

Retailing

Seamless Retail – Accenture – (PDF)

The Future Shopper – Kantar Retail – (PDF)

More than 1 in 8 UK shops face closure, says study – FT.com – “The (UK) retail sector is bigger than health, education, defence –and yet it doesn’t have a minister”

Discounters lead the way in grocery market growth – RTÉ News– Tesco got a real kicking in terms of market share

Security

Google encrypts data amid backlash against NSA spying – The Washington Post

Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Online | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

NSA Laughs at PCs, Prefers Hacking Routers and Switches | Threat Level | Wired.com

Boffins follow TOR breadcrumbs to identify users • The Register

Software

Kakao launches KakaoGroup, a private group communication app that pairs with its messaging service – The Next Web

One Microsoft On, Ballmer Out, ValueAct In. Get Ready for More at MSFT – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD

Thailand

Thailand’s Chang Allows Followers To Order Home Deliveries on WeChat – this is the first time I have seen a brand use WeChat in a non-Chinese language

Wireless

At the Heart Of Verizon-Vodafone, Differing Outlooks for the U.S. Market – WSJ – Vodafone’s move is a bet that the US market has peaked or is close to peaking

Microsoft Raced to $7.2 Billion Deal With Soul-Searching Nokia – Bloomberg – the financing aspect that Microsoft is giving the rest of Nokia is interesting. If Nokia are that pressed how will they be able to compete on future network technologies like 5G?

Microsoft Board Shows Little Taste for Bold Choice in CEO – WSJ.com – interesting questions about the wisdom of having Bill Gates as chairman (paywall)

BBC News – Microsoft to buy Nokia mobile phone unit – does this preclude the truncated Nokia from buying a business like Jolla?

Verizon Reaches Agreement to Acquire Vodafone’s 45 Percent Interest in Verizon Wireless for $130 Billion – I think that it’s a bad deal for Vodafone in that so much of it is actually in Verizon paper rather than in cash. It’s cheaper for Verizon than one realises

September 7, 2013

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