The New Yahoo! - What do Y!ou think?

On 5^th October 2009, 4 major daily newspapers of the country – TheT imes of India, HT, Mint and DNA greeted us with a full page bright yellow jacket advertisement saying, ‘The Internet is under new management. Yours.’ Prime time slots on all major as well as niche television channels like Discovery, NatGeo played the Yahoo! Anthem – a minute long advertisement focused on the international spirit and interactivity of Yahoo!

Earlier this month, horizontal portal giant Yahoo! launched a global branding campaign ‘It’s Y!ou’ focusing on the user now being in charge of his internet experience through Yahoo! Personalization of homepage and other products are the ways in which Yahoo! wishes to offer superior web experience to its users. Costing them a little over $100 million, the campaign is seen as a long term transformation for Yahoo! who wishes to be at the centre of all internet-based activities for the users.

This brings out several interesting issues for discussion:

1. Conventional media – still alive and kickin’– It is interesting to see an Internet company leveraging conventional media – Print, television, radio to drive people to its website.

2. ‘Product innovation precedes the branding campaign’, so claims Yahoo! Yes, there have been several up gradations and add-ons, and the collaboration with Microsoft for the search engine Bing has been a huge step. The Homepage too has undergone a makeover, looking much sleeker, cleaner and appealing. The biggest feature that the Homepage now offers is the personalisation of content that one wishes to see on his/her homepage. There are also similar features in the other core products like mail, messenger and search (through choice of filters). But is personalization of content such a breakthrough innovation that it justifies a budget of $100 million? More so, can an entire branding strategy be based on this development in the product? In the past, iGoogle has offered similar options without so much as a ruffle.

3. Horizontal vs. Vertical portals – where are we heading?

In an age where digital immigrants are fast turning into digital natives, we all wish to become ‘specialists in information’ rather than being simply ‘well-informed’. Similarly, we tend to rely more on vertical portals for the depth and variety of content that they offer. For an avid internet user, a horizontal portal is increasingly being seen as a platform for the internet noobs to start off from. So the moot point is as the consumer preferences change as one becomes more adept with the internet, does a horizontal portal still offer us a reason to stick around? And more importantly can Yahoo! do that?

4. ‘Centre of peoples’ online lives’ is the positioning Yahoo! intends to achieve. But in current times where every digital native has 4 or more social networking ids (Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) not to mention multiple mail accounts and other personal favourite websites can one website become the centre of users’ online lives? Interestingly, even Google seems to be in the race for this coveted position. It would be exciting to watch if Yahoo! can match up to the expectations it has set for itself.

In recent times, Yahoo! has undergone a plethora of changes both in its management as well as product portfolio. Streamlining of products, identifying and communicating the role of Yahoo! in cyberspace are a few tasks carried out by the feisty CEO Carol Bartz after coming on board. Agreed, that the company has had its share of tumultuous phases and even more may come, but one would be foolish to discount Yahoo! as it gears up for the challenge of becoming the centre of people’s online lives. Not to mention, Yahoo! sites are after all, the third most visited websites on the planet!*

*Source: June 2009, comScore