The social media race
When mad.co.uk asked me to write an article about Yahoo last week, I planned to focus on an area I feel Yahoo is weak in - social media - and how the company still had the potential to innovate in this area. Friday's announcement by Yahoo eclipsed this idea – they announced they are intending to do exactly the above. But what difference will it really make to the embattled company? Duncan Parry, director of strategy at Steak Media explains furthur.
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Missed Opportunities
Yahoo bought photo sharing site Flickr back in 2005 - and went on to purchase sites including Del.icio.us and several other startups. Today, sharing photos is one of the most popular uses of Facebook. By buying Flickr and other sites, Yahoo seemed to “get” Web 2.0 long before Google or Microsoft.
Then…things seemed to stop at Yahoo. They integrated Flickr with Yahoo account logins, but beyond that, Flick never moved close to centre stage, and continued to be “another” site they owned. The potential of this site as part of a wider social media offering encompassing Del.icio.us, Yahoo 360, Geocities, Yahoo Mail and IM, Yahoo Answers and other properties seems to have been missed (or lost in the layers of management installed by former CEO Terry Semel). Somebody at Yahoo “got it”, but didn’t quiet know what to do with “it” when they had bought it.
Too Little, Too Late?
Fast forward to 2008. Facebook and MySpace rule the social media space. Yahoo are being publicly stalked by Microsoft, hungry to beef-up against Google. Rumors of a merger with AOL, or MySpace, or outsourcing search to Google abound, all as a counter to Microsoft. Amongst all this, Yahoo announces it will rewire itself from the inside out to be more than just another social media site.
Fine, expect…isn’t this too little, too late? Now Yahoo has announced the sort of initiative I was going to argue for when first planning this article, I’m not convinced. I’d prefer Flickr for photo sharing, sure. Facebook’s upload tool is slow and timeouts. But…why would I switch to a Yahoo platform? Even if I can access all the Yahoo services under one smooth login (the current system seems to want my password every two clicks), there’s no compelling reason for me to switch from Facebook or any other site. I want my Facebook friends list and photos on one website. Yahoo doesn’t have anything I want or can’t get elsewhere.
That’s the fundamental issue for me with Yahoo as a whole – why would I switch to any of their services on a social media platform? By the time this platform is ready, the industry will have moved on – Yahoo are talking about changes being evident in 2009.
Will this platform stop Microsoft? No. Will it fix the fundamental issues at Yahoo – the feeling that shareholders are not getting value, that chances have been squandered, that Panama was a white elephant and that the search race has been lost to Google? No.
Sorry Yahoo – I like the idea, but it is too late. I want to see a strong, innovative contender emerge to challenge Google in search and to innovate in mobile, display and other areas as yet unknown before Google dominates them, too. Social media is part of this – but there are more fundamental issues to address, and quickly. If it takes a Microsoft takeover to make this happen, then so be it.
