A really quotable article on the Marissa Mayer Yahoo CEO appointment:
Yahoo needed to be a product company again, and media alone isn’t a good enough product. Rather, Yahoo needs to build the tools and services that bind its 700 million users into its world, services such as Mail, Yahoo Finance and Sports. The debate of Yahoo as a tech company vs. a media company has been settled: It must be both.
via Yahoo Has Seen Its Future; In One Word, It’s Products | Digital – Advertising Age.
Here’s more:
Bill Wise: “The only reason [Yahoo] can afford all the good content is the scale of the homepage and email.”
And to me the most important quote in the article (because this is a point that not many people outside of those who roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in the online media business understand:
As far as advertisers are concerned, Yahoo is still important — but for its reach, not the brand. “Yahoo is not the bright and shining object anymore,” Mr. Wieser said.
This is a lot different than “Yahoo does not perform…” and it’s one of the reasons why I’m beginning to think that non performance-based online media products have a shorter life than we all think.
