Its Yahoo’s Fight!
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As Yahoo’s Board of Directors prepares to announce its decision in the next few hours, Faisal Chohan from BrightSpyre adds his perspective on the debate by analysing Yahoo’s products.
This is a guest post by Faisal Chohan.
It’s Yahoo’s fight!
Yahoo has lost its way and
direction for quite some time now and it provided an opportunity for Microsoft
to bid for the next internet giant Yahoo. But the important things for yahoo to
remember at this point is that Yahoo can be a better competitor to Google and
more chances of being an equal player with Google, but Microsoft deal will not
help it.
How Microsoft acquisition will
help the two companies; is not clear yet. As a lot will be written what shape
the competing products of both companies will take and other internet
properties of Yahoo will take shape. However experience tells that Yahoo’s
products will suffer the most in this deal and the downward trend of these
products will be further steep. This will put further pressure on the top
executives of both the companies and the future of internet products will go to
smaller companies competing with Google. In addition majority of the Yahoo
users will not accept this acquisition open heartedly.
What the Yahoo products will
shape after Microsoft acquisition is a different topic that we will discuss in
detail.
Interestingly the letter written
to Yang from Steve it self shows what the future of the Internet will be.
He writes as
“Together we can unleash new
levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in
search, and new advertising platform capabilities,”
Innovation and better user
experiences are the two words where Microsoft has to learn from Yahoo.
I am a firm believer that yahoo
is the next Internet giant with improvement it its monetization strategy,
tactics and adherence to its belief
that Jery Yang shared recently.
Yahoo’s share price of today 28.81$ is not a true picture of what the company
worth is or how much it can earn in future. Continuous drop in Yahoo shares is
not reason for its products underperforming, but shows problem in thinking of
the top management in Yahoo. When the yahoo’s shares are dropping constantly we
see a comment
like this from Flickr’s co-founder and general manager Stewart Butterfield “.
“So people are definitely happy
at Yahoo. There’s never been any worries about Flickr’s revenue and the
long-term potential is excellent.”
This should change and should be
consistent with the company’s current situation. Rather for Flickr it should be
perform well and stand up and show a way to others “how to fight”. So I expect
this attitude from few internet properties of Yahoo like Hot Jobs, Flickr and
help in the company’s turn around.
Yahoo has the largest user base
on the Internet. However there are many products of Yahoo that are not properly
monetized. Yahoo can be number 2 in search but can be number 1 in other
internet properties. Yahoo advertising can sustain them and Photos (Flickr) and
Jobs are the unique internet properties the other internet giants were unable
to built. With these properties providing Yahoo the required edge over Google
they can look for the missing points in their mail, shopping, groups, travel,
hosting and can come up with a strong comeback in these properties revenues.
Lets take an example of Flickr. Photos is one of the Yahoo’s property
well ahead of the competition and Digital photos and photo sharing has the
potential to generate more revenue than the online video (You Tube). Flickr is
a classic web 2.0 portal with classic design and ease of use for users. That’s
why it has one of the most loyal users base. It also empower yahoo image
search. But its revenue potential is much more than it current revenues.
So Yahoo users ask for Yahoo and
Yahoo not for Microsoft Yahoo. They need Yahoo not Mahoo.
Here are some thoughts from the
flickr users. http://www.flickr.com/groups
These are just independent
thoughts from writer.
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5:19 am
I will miss brand Yahoo! if they accept a bid. May be Live would be a new Live!
3:23 pm
here is the news from newyorktimes.
The news highlights the same points as highlighted in my post.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/technology/09yahoo.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin
1:03 pm
It is really a yahoo fight and today’s world has changed the internet world into competition world on the basis of features and services free to common public.