Dec 11, 2006

[The Web] The New Yahoo?

Yahoo! logoThis week, the news broke that online content provider Yahoo! was reorganizing their structure, a change that included a number of fairly major changes in their executive ranks.

Among the major changes included CFO Susan Decker now poised to be next in line for the position of CEO Terry Semel and the departure of COO Daniel Rosensweig from the company. The change, which many consider to be long overdue, has been done primarily to revitalize the company's focus in light of declining revenue due to other, perhaps more dynamic, online competitors such as Google and even social networking site MySpace and video sharing site YouTube, to name a few.

On my side, I've always found Yahoo! to be a bit too diverse for its own good. There are just so many things going on over there that none of them really stand out on their own. Their best products, among them photo hosting site Flickr and social bookmarking service del.icio.us, have all been external acquisitions but the company really hasn't made any serious innovations.

Their homepage is overwhelming with the number of services being offered that one can't blame people for going elsewhere for more focused products. I've always felt that Yahoo! has become the proverbial Jack-of-all-trades while mastering none of them, something that can be deadly in these highly competitive times.

The reorganization has Yahoo! divided into three primary divisions: Audiences, which includes most of their consumer content, Advertises and Publishers, which of course covers their advertising revenue unit, and lastly Technology, which just may be what the company needs to push greater innovation amongst its products.

This is definitely going to help Yahoo! remain viable in 2007 although I doubt this is the only change they'll be making in order to reclaim the top spot in the online community, if ever they are able to attain even this.

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