Rumours circulating around Silicone Vally indicate that Yahoo is about to dump up to 20% of its workforce to try and make the company more profitable. We all know that since Terry Senel left the company last summer there has been talk of big changes but it seems this time the information has came from credible sources inside Yahoo Inc.
I like a lot of other people tend to stay away from Yahoo not because the products are bad but just because they seem all over the place.
Yahoo Mail
Yahoo mail used to be my weapon of choice when it came to web based email but over time the interface has become to cluttered and slow. The extensive use of Ajax to replicate a virtual desktop means that unless your on a fast system with a fast connection then your in for a long wait.
If you compare Yahoo mail to Gmail then you can see why Gmail is doing so well. It has powerful features in a simple interface which means its fast to load and can be used anywhere on even the most basic computer / connection setup.
Yahoo Search
The core search element of Yahoo is wrapped up by a lot of useless options which very few people need access to. There are so many ways to create personal homepages that all “portal” stuff should be binned.
Publisher Solutions
This is the big one and where Yahoo are seriously falling behind. If you take a product like YPN and compare it to AdSense then you can once again see why Google are doing so well.
The first problem Yahoo have is they have a stupid US only policy which means millions of high traffic international publishers are banned from the network. The company has spent well over a year fine tuning it so its not like they cant roll the product out easily.
I do not understand why the CEO of Yahoo can not “get” that to make more money they need to serve more Ads and build trust with publishers around the planet. If you look at where Google make money you will see that most of the revenue is from Ad delivery.
Yahoo need to stop concentration on large scale corporate advertising and target the small business user who will embrace the products and incorporate Yahoo into the small business infrastructure.
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January 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
It’s possible to use Yahoo through an intermediary here in the UK - I will be including the company in my next blog post (due Thursday).
- Martin Reed
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I would be very careful of some companies in the uk who claim to offer YPN style feeds. If you are going to post about justgomedia I would do some research as a good friend of mine has shown me evidence of non payment which has lead to him contacting yahoo. I have also tested the feeds and found the system has terrible reporting
January 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Hi Lee - Thanks for your reply. I have only been using Just Go Media for a few months; they sent me an invoice, I replied and elected to be paid via PayPal. They sent the payment through within a couple of hours.
- Martin Reed