Subscribe by EmailYahoo! plans to market like it’s 1999
June 25, 2009 by Chip | 11 commentsBy Sterling “Chip” Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Gather around, children, and I’ll tell you a tale of a bygone era when Yahoo! was relevant. Way back in the late 1990s and even into the early 2000s, Yahoo! was the web portal and search engine of choice for many netizens. But that was before the ascendance of the Great Google.
Since then, Yahoo! has struggled to keep users coming back. I don’t know about you, but I don’t even think about Yahoo! when I consider where to do something online, whether it’s search, email, maps, forums, or anything else. The only Yahoo! service I use at all is Yahoo! Groups, and that’s only because the RSS Advisory Board’s public group is hosted there (not my decision).
Now Yahoo! is looking for ways to get their yodel back with a massive marketing effort, led by a new Chief Marketing Officer, Elisa Steele, and aided by some well-known outside consultants.
Hmm.. I think I could save them some big consulting bucks with one piece of free advice: make better products. As CEO Carol Bartz said in a recent interview, “The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it.” Note how “do a good job” comes before “talk about it.” Marketing is a very important part of success, but if you don’t have the products to back it up, it’s just a bunch of hot air.
What do you think about Yahoo!’s products? Do they have a potential niche in which they could excel? Or are they doomed to a series of unsuccessful attempts to catch up with Google, while being alternatively courted and slapped around by Microsoft?
Here’s Yahoo!’s own account of their history. Note how it lacks any significant events after 1995, or any mention of their competitors. They claim: “Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand and reaches the largest audience worldwide.” I’d like to see the numbers to back that up, but then again the page is Copyrighted 2005.
- Bing Rapidly Overtakes Yahoo Search (For Now)
- Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion
- Yahoo launches automatic notetaking tool
- Google enters the TV market
are they doomed to a series of unsuccessful attempts to catch up with Google, while being alternatively courted and slapped around by Microsoft?
exactly that.
The only use of Yahoo! right now is to make us laugh with Yahoo! answers
:D
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Thanks, Aleks.
I tried to use yahoo games a couple of weeks ago, but couldn’t make it work because it has some automatic popups and just disabling my adblocker popup blocker wasn’t enough (and they weren’t from a link that I could explicitly open).
A website shouldn’t have to tell you “change your popup settings” to work. It should just work.
Agreed. Web sites should be as forgiving as possible to browser capabilities and user preferences.
I don’t find even Yahoo groups to be a good reason to maintain an account. There’s just no group I want to participate in that badly.
If I weren’t a member of the RSS Advisory Board, you wouldn’t find me over there either.
Thanks for the useful info but in my personal thought will all respects i think no one can beat The Great Google also the Bing search from Microsoft it is just too commercialize more than powerful engine
Ya… who?