10e20 Blog

For Yahoo! Answer’s first birthday, the best contributors get a gift. For certain level distinctions, those who contribute the top answers are entitled to either a sticker, a car magnet, a water bottle, a hat, a coffee mug, or a fleece jacket.

We all know that social networking is a popular medium and this was likely the reason for Yahoo’s obvious victory over Google. And this “gift” incentive isn’t too bad either.

Hello, Yahoo reorganization, goodbye Lloyd Braun! Due to a strategic conflict within the company, Braun has been ousted by the company.

When he was originally hired, partially due to his successes at Disney’s ABC Entertainment Television Group and tremendous popular series, “Lost,” the company was speculated to become a lead television player.

However, his hiring preceded the competition presented by MySpace and YouTube within the last year, and the sales of full-length television shows over Apple iTunes. In an earlier interview, Braun said that he was not able to agree with senior management in terms of thinking about content versus technology.

And so they canned him.

Does this mean that Yahoo, who was victorious last week when Google Answers shut down, is surrendering this war to Google and shifting its focus on more promising endeavors?

Yahoo has announced their top searches for 2006 a few weeks short of the year’s end. The year in review shows that some things change, while some things stay the same.

On the note of staying the same, Britney Spears has been #1 on the top overall search for five out of six years. (Her divorce probably has something to do with it and it probably isn’t “all talent“.)

What else is on the top 10 of all searches in 2006? A lot of celebrities and celebrity activities: WWE, Shakira, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, American Idol, Beyonce Knowles, Chris Brown, Pamela Anderson, and Lindsay Lohan.

In the newsworthy category: Steve Irwin death, Anna Nicole’s son dies, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, U.S elections, Fidel Castro stroke, North Korea nuke, JonBenet confession, Saddam Hussein trial, and Danish cartoon.

In a move to become a nimbler, more Google-like company, Yahoo Inc. today announced the departure of Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo’s chief operating officer and also the resignation of Lloyd Braun, the former ABC executive who ran Yahoo’s media group in Santa Monica, Calif. According to the Wall Street Journal, the executive shuffling awards a key expanded role to its Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker who assumes oversight of revenue-generating activities, including its online advertising sales teams.

The changes follow concerns within the company’s ranks about its strategy, including a memo distributed internally by senior vice president (and their very own Jerry Maguire) Brad Garlinghouse dubbed The Peanut Butter Manifesto. Garlinghouse stated that Yahoo lacked a “focused, cohesive vision” and that Yahoo’s be everything to everyone strategy was like “spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world”.

Community is what Yahoo appears to be best at. When Google surrendered its Answers product and announced its closure, Yahoo really scored in the community aspect.

Maybe Google can be the leader in search. But Yahoo deserves to be good at something.

Not long ago, Yahoo was under attack by such media giants as the New York Times for its lack of innovation and expedience with regards to a possible YouTube acquisition. The NY Times said that Yahoo “has suffered some embarrassing setbacks” and it was suggested that Yahoo sport some “bold moves to signal to [the world] its commitment to innovation.”

A week later, Yahoo employee Brad Garlinghouse responded in the famous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” saying

I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

“Over 800″ Google Answers participants (though not 1,000) probably explains Google’s decision to shut the service down. Google Answers was simply never as popular as Yahoo! Answers, which has more than 50 times the market share.

Why did Google fail? I took a look at the two services and came away with my own opinions.

• Google says it themselves: 800 is a small number. And they claim that this was the community that existed on Google Answers “over the last 4+ years.”
• Google charged you to ask a question. Ironic, isn’t it, coming from the world’s largest and wealthiest search engine.
• It was so web 1.0. Yahoo’s success is largely in its community aspect and its friendly and welcoming interface. Google Answers just didn’t have that element. Most people answered for the money, not for the community. And the Courier font that I see on my browser is totally unflattering.

First Google, then Yahoo. This is a seemingly big trend in the industry lately. Two weeks ago, Google decided that it would begin expanding its ad base to newspapers, and now Yahoo seems to be doing the same thing — only bigger (and this time, I think better).

Earlier this month, Google launched an advertising initiative that would enable advertisers to bid for newspaper ads. The trial was rolled out this month to 50 major daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Advertiser names were not released but only a small percentage of Google’s advertiser base was part of the initial run.

Yahoo is taking this to the next level. Instead of 50 newspapers, Yahoo expanded this number to 176. Their advertisers (Cox Enterprises, Hearst, and the MediaNews Group, among others) produce publications in 38 states. Yahoo also intends to begin advertising jobs, expanding their HotJobs community to these publications. Since such a large percentage of people are always considering a career change, I think this is a very practical and strategic move on Yahoo’s part.

Yahoo! is continuing to increase its reach on the social media — now most famous in the del.icio.us and Flickr spheres — by purchasing Bix.com.  Rumor has it that they are also in early acquisition talks with MyBlogLog.

Bix.com is a social contest site for mostly singing and dancing content, providing a rating system for hundreds of online videos. The site boasts approximately 500 million visitors per month. Yahoo! still plans to keep Bix independent from its services, similar to its two major social media services, but also developing upon some feature integration.

MyBlogLog is a neat little blog networking utility that enables bloggers to see who has visited their blogs. You can learn more about your blog fan base and see about their involvement in other social networking spheres, including their profiles on such services as MySpace, Friendster, and Flickr.