Is Yahoo a Sleeping Giant or a Fading Star?

Why write about Yahoo?  Have they done anything relevant in the last 5 years?  Is there a coherent vision for what Yahoo does?  Before completely writing them off consider a few things:

• According to alexa.com Yahoo is still the 4th most visited website in the U.S. and the world.
• According to compete.com Yahoo had over 150 million unique visitors in November.
• In October Yahoo accounted for more U.S. search traffic to bing than bing.com did.

Even without a clear message or a clear direction as a company, Yahoo is still a powerful brand.  There are millions of websites that people can spend their time one, yet they still choose to visit yahoo.com.  This should make Yahoo a very valuable company, yet it has only 1/2 the market cap of eBay and 1/10 that of Google.  It is possible that the lack of overall direction has hurt Yahoo’s ability to generate profit.  For instance, I believe Google understands that their revenue generator is advertisement.  So whatever Google service you use, it is ultimately driving you back to Google ads at some level.  Yahoo lacks this focus and it hurts them.

Part of their issue is they don’t seem to be able to decide if they are a media company or a technology company.  Looking at their history of acquisitions (list on wikipedia), it is apparent that there was little rhyme or reason to their purchases.  Everything from rivals.com (which is a sports news website) to delicio.us and a lot in between.

What does all of this mean?  I think this is an undervalued company that given the right leadership could bounce back in a major way.  I don’t think that they will ever be the innovation factory that Google has become, but here are a few scenarios in which I could see Yahoo flourishing:

1.  Find a CEO that will focus on becoming the next generation of news media.  It’s no secret that the current paradigm of news media is outdated, but does anyone expect any of the established players to really try and disrupt the market anymore than it has already been disrupted?  In a time where newspapers are laying off reporters in droves, there should be ample opportunity to attract the right talent needed.  Yahoo Sports already has a reputation for being some of the best investigative reporters in the business.  Use that as a model to provide similar levels of coverage on other topics and I think they would have a captive audience.  Beyond just producing content, I think a focus on news media would allow Yahoo to use the fact that it still has a lot of ties in the valley and presumably a fair amount of engineering talent to look for innovative ways to both acquire content and to present it to the users.

A few possibilities on finding this CEO could be to look through the wreckage of blogs that AOL bought and then dismantled.  Another option could be to look towards someone that has recently been involved in a major media website redesign.  The two that jump out to me are espn.com and cnn.com.  For their flaws, both sites have had relatively successful major redesigns within the last couple years and that experience could be quite useful in redirecting Yahoo’s efforts towards focusing as a media company.

2.  There have been rumblings about Microsoft putting in a bid to buy Yahoo.  This actually makes a lot of sense to me.  Yahoo is already providing the user front end to about half of the bing search requests and there is 8 or 9 more years on the 10 years agreement for Yahoo to use bing as it’s search engine.  I’m going to work on the assumption that Microsoft would move down the path to make Yahoo a media company as discussed earlier.  Microsoft has the cash to pump into this to hire the talent to make it work.  They’d potentially also have the money to push for local media, which is a huge untapped market.  Microsoft could then look for ways to leverage the Yahoo media into their ever-growing mix of media that it provides to their Xbox Live users.

3.  The other possible acquisition seems to be the Chinese company Alibaba.  From anything I can find on this, it would turn into a fire sale with Alibaba taking any Asian assets and selling the rest.  So if that led to dumping some assets and allowing Yahoo to focus on option 1 or 2, it could be a good thing.

I have no idea if any of this will actually happen, but I’m kind of rooting for Yahoo.  I don’t have much reason to other than some sentimental attachment to one of the original dot com powerhouses.  What I am sure of is if they don’t make some changes soon there is a good chance that their star will continue to fade into obscurity.

Control, Transparency, and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Morgan Spurlock gives a pretty interesting TED talk on some of his experiences trying to get companies to fund his new movie, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” 100% with product placement.  But the kicker is the movie is about product placement and they don’t have any say how the movie will end up portraying them.

http://www.ted.com/talks/morgan_spurlock_the_greatest_ted_talk_ever_sold.html

Aside from the points Morgan brings up at the end about companies allowing their employees to take more risks, I think there are a couple of interesting observations that can be made from the interactions he shows.

First, companies are still deathly afraid to give up the control of their brand image.  On the surface this makes sense, it’s scary to think you don’t or can’t influence the way your company is portrayed to your customers.  This is Marketing 101 for these people.  However, the reality of the situation is that nobody has real control of their own brand now.  Between 24 hour news networks and the social power of the internet, one slip up and your brand image is now in control of the masses.  This isn’t going to change any time soon so I think the best way for companies to combat this is simply to provide a quality product and listen to their customers.  If this is done the marketing takes care of itself.

Part of the reason this is so important is because the Internet has lowered the cost of reaching customers as well as reducing the switching costs for these customers to try a new product.  It’s also made it easy for people to comment on the quality of these products.  These reviews make many consumers more comfortable with purchasing products that have less familir brand names.  With the mulititude of quality products that are generally on the market today and how easy it is for people to find them, I think the brand name is going to become less influential in purchasing decisions.  Look at how Visio was able to capture a big portion for the flat panel TV market against companies like Sony and Panasonic that have been in business for a long time.

So that’s the scary part of it, there is a flip side.  The beauty of the new world is if you provide this quality product and listen to your customers, they will do a lot of your marketing for you.  This is true in a large number of industries, anything from cars to cloths to professional services.  This marketing can end up in the form of positive product reviews or if you are very good you’ll have a rabid community of fans (see Apple).  Once you are able to build this community, not only will they recommend your products but they will also defend you when things don’t go so well(assuming this is an anomaly).

I know this may sound a little simplistic, but it’s the reality of the new world we live in and the companies that embrace this will be the ones that thrive in the future.

The other point he brings up, which is mostly related to the previous but worth mentioning anyway is transparency.  Part of the film will be to show how the whole process of procut placement works.  Let the viewers see how certain products end up in the television and movies that they watch.  This again comes illustrates the hunger for control, but people are going to have to realize that in the near future (if we aren’t already there), there will be very minimal secrets.  Everyone has a camera on their phone if not a camcorder.  Documents and conversations will be fair game.  Look at wikileaks and what information it was able to provide in a short period of time.  If you think that sort of thing is going away, you are crazy.

The downside is obviously company secrets being leaked can hurt a company’s value.  The potential positive side-effect would be that others can innovate off of previously private information.  I won’t get into the debate on if this is overall a good thing or bad thing because strong arguments could be made for each side.  Again, this is simply going to be a reality that people will have to deal with so you may as well embrace it and figure out the best way to build value in this type of environment before it is too late.

Groupon should have taken the money and ran

Have I been taking crazy pills?  I know this is old news, but it’s been bothering me for a long time.  Google offers Groupon 6 billion dollars and they turn it down?!?

Here is why Groupon should have taken the money and ran.  Even though they currently have roughly $1billion in yearly revenue and $200million or so in yearly profit, it’s not realistic to think this is sustainable.  Why isn’t it sustainable?  First off, the business model is very easily replicated.  Anyone that has local contacts can copy the concept in that local market.   Why is that important? Many people that aren’t as technologically savvy aren’t going to trust a site they don’t know (ala groupon), so who might they trust for local deals?  Maybe local newspapers?  or local radio stations?  Both of which are pushing their own brands of hyper-local deals.

The reason the competition is so important is that companies can still make a lot of money off of this concept while undercutting groupon’s rates.  Whenever you buy a groupon, half of that money goes directly to groupon….HALF!  So you buy a $100 massage for $50, the massage parlor only gets $25.  How hard would it be for the local newspaper to come in and say give us the same deal and we’ll let you keep $40.  And it’s not like the newspaper would need a lot more sales staff to make these phone calls.  You take the sales staff that can’t make sales for physical papers anymore and put them on finding local deals as well as the physical ad sales.  Overall, I just think this is a business model that is easily replicated and it’s entirely built on having local contacts.  There isn’t really a lot of economies of scale as long as you already have contacts in the local community (for example a newspaper or radio station).

So the next obvious question(to me anyway) is if this is such an easily replicated business model, why would Google offer $6 billion for it.  I think it was simply for the local sales contacts.  I don’t think they were overly interested in the actual local deals, even if it would have provided an extra short-term profit.   Long term it gets them personal contacts into local markets.  This is important for a couple reasons.  First, so much of Google’s profits come from advertisements that the next logical step is to try to get into local advertisements.  On top of that, I think the next big growth area is going to be localized, personalized messages.  So if I’m close to a pizza joint I can get a message on my phone telling me about some special or new place that has opened.  All of this is why I think Google was interested in overpaying(in my opinion) for Groupon, much like they did for YouTube.

Only time will tell if Groupon loses market-share like I’m predicting, but you can already see the new competition that is erupting.  Just in Omaha, there is now also livingsocial, the Omaha World Herald, and I’m sure others available as well.  It’s only a matter until profits start to erode and companies have to get more lean.  Once that happens, I think Groupon will start to regret their decision to not sell to Google.  Maybe they should think about having their IPO now, before profits start to erode and people notice that their business model may not be a very solid long-term investment.

Peter Thiel on a higher education bubble … continued

The more I think about this potential higher education bubble it makes me think more about the potential ramifications for my future career if this is correct. Maybe it should worry me, but it really doesn’t.

At risk of sounding cliche, I think this could be a giant opportunity for higher education to take a good look at itself and see if there are things that can be improved. I can’t say what those improvements are, but it’s exciting to think I could be a part of the reshaping of an industry.  The fact that many individuals think college graduates are ill-prepared for certain careers in itself is a reason to evaluate the current methods.

On the other hand, I don’t want to come across as saying education needs to be completely career driven.  There are certain jobs that people can go to trade schools for that will teach students a specific trade.  However, when I’m hiring someone for a technical position I’m not necessarily looking for someone that already knows a particular technology.  I want to find someone that can problem solve.  You give me a smart person that can problem solve and understands technical theory and I can teach them the technology.  Also I think there is something to be said about taking a diverse set of classes.  You may not think a history class helps much if you are going to be a programmer, but just the fact that you are forced to think about something in a different way than you are used to will give additional perspective when trying to solve a problem.

So overall, I think different people learn better in different ways.  For some people a structured higher education is the only way they’ll be able to learn a skill and some people can be quite successful without it.  You should always keep that in mind while you are evaluating talent, and I think it’s valuable to have people on your team from both backgrounds as they are likely to look at problems from different perspectives, which can greatly help in developing creative and effective solutions.

Peter Thiel on a higher education bubble

Techcrunch begins this article about Peter Thiel (Paypal founder and Silicon Valley hedge fund manager) by saying it was going to make a lot of people angry.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/

Being a person that is about to commit the rest of my working life to higher education, this obviously piqued my interest and alerted my defenses to what was coming.  I’ve heard a lot of arguments from successful entrepreneurs against education and I think a lot of them have merit, but they always seem to take it one step too far.  I think the merit is that it is true that not everyone needs to be educated to be successful, they take it too far a lot of times in intimating that the education is mostly worthless.  I think these people have been successful without a formal education are generally very motivated to educate themselves and have a lot of talent.  What some of them fail to realize is not everyone has that drive and frankly not everyone has the talent to be successful without furthering their formal education.

So as I read this article, I was somewhat surprised that I agree with almost everything that Thiel said on the subject (or at least what the article presented).  Education doesn’t have to be elite (although you could argue that the connections you make at an elite school are as important, if not more so than the actual education).  It doesn’t guarantee an increase in salary and job prospects, although I think it would be difficult to argue against the likelihood of finding a better job based on your education. , To be honest, I was pretty picky about the schools that I would attend to pursue my PhD and after I scored well on my GMAT even more so.  And finally I agree with his argument that you can absolutely be successful without going to school.  I actually applaud him for trying something different and since one of the topics I’m interested in studying is innovation and entrepreneurship I’ll be greatly interested to see how his experiment works out.  And I hope that as I move forward towards my degree that I’ll be able to keep this mindset that trying new things in education are good and they shouldn’t be fought.

So to Techcrunch, I’ll be interested to see if you really get the negative feedback you are expecting or if this is an idea that is more freely accepted than it would have been a few years back.

File Sharing Is to Blame for the Decline in Big Music

I’m always amused when I hear arguments about file sharing and piracy as the root of all evil.  This recent Mashable post points out an argument that Sony is using in a court case vs LimeWire.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/08/napster-never-existed/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

At first glance I was annoyed and began to wonder how many potential jurists would buy this garbage.  Basically it would be like black and white tv makers suing color tv for their declining sales.  It’s just a silly argument with an even more preposterous supposition about what would have happened in the future without fire sharing.  And this isn’t even taking into consideration that their chart doesn’t seem to consider online sales and other revenue generators.

But after I thought about it a while longer, it became apparent to me that file sharing really is one of the reasons for the decline in big music, but not in the direct way that big music would like you to believe.  File sharing was one of the factors that potentially accelerated the long-tail effect in the music industry.  And for those that aren’t aware, the long-tail effect is simply that the internet has made it possible to be profitable selling to a much more niche audience.  This has caused the big players in some industries to lose market share to the smaller players.  So it can be argued (and I’d like to see if anyone actually has statistics on this) that the overall music industry hasn’t declined, but the share that is held by the big players certainly has.

I would suspect if you looked at numbers for the big beer companies,as well as the brick-and-morter book and electronics stores over the same time period you would see a similar loss curve.

There are a lot of questions around this new environment that can be asked and potentially have already been answered.  If this is the market and the direction that certain businesses are heading, how do you stay profitable?  Can companies learn from the mistakes of the past?  Who is the big winner in these situations?  One market to watch for some of these answers will be books.   With the new viability of digital ebook readers it will be interesting to see how niche book writers try to find an audience and how this will affect both physical book sales as well as percentage of overall book sales that stay with the big book publishers.

What are some other examples of this long-tail effect?  In what other markets will this effect soon be felt?

Page taking back over at Google

As anyone who has looked at more than 2 of my posts ever can tell.  I love Google and love even more to write about it(I still honestly think Wave didn’t get a fair shake).  So the news of Larry Page taking back over as CEO has me interested on at least a couple levels.

First, as a future Academic, one of the areas I’m interested in researching is innovation.  It seems like Larry(if any of the 18 million articles written on the subject are remotely accurate) wants to return Google to the company that insanely innovates and has the talent to do so.  From a purely Academic perspective, I’d love to build a data set around before and after he’s back as CEO (and potentially when he was CEO before) to see if there are any indicators that the company is more innovative when he’s CEO than someone else.

From more of a pragmatic perspective I’ll be curious to see how Larry may be able to turn any of these innovative ideas into successful business ventures.  I always fall back to Xerox Parc where they had many of the most innovative ideas in the history of the home computer, but weren’t the ones that actually monetize the ideas.  So I’m wondering if Google will (or maybe already has to some extent) fall into that trap.  Or if they’ve found a way to monetize the products, even if others are also making money off their ideas.  It’s really a fascinating situation.

The other thing I’ll be interested to see out of this whole situation is how Google tries even more to get into the social media game.  Their ventures in Wave and Buzz have been fairly unsuccessful and it’s yet to be determined with the +1 endeavor.  I have some other ideas of how Google could become relevant in this game (although I’ll keep them to myself for the time being), but I really wonder if Google really even needs to be in this game.  I know they want to be, and Page seems to be extremely motivated to get here, even if I’m not 100% convinced that they need to be directly involved in social media to stay relevant.  I guess time will tell.

Regardless on what Google’s social media direction turns out to be.  I think Page may make this an extremely interesting few months and potentially a few years.  Especially in a time that is so crucial to the future viability to Google as a company.

On pursuing my PhD

It’s been a year since I’ve blogged at all and I think it’s time I get back into it.  There are several reasons I think this is important, first and foremost I kind of enjoy it.  Putting ideas in writing allows me to think through an issue in a way that I don’t have to when it’s just rattling around in my head.  Second, I’m going to need to hone my writing skills for my new profession and third, hopefully I can help perpetuate a conversation that will explore the role of technology in business strategy.

So to ease back into blogging I’ve decided to start with a discussion(one that is difficult for me because I’m not good  at writing about myself) that it seems I have every time I tell someone that I’ll soon be leaving my job to go back to school and pursue my PhD.  I’m still trying to figure out exactly what makes some people uncomfortable with this idea, although I’m sure a big part of it is leaving a stable job where I earn a decent salary for  4-5 years of school.  And while I can understand this sentiment, at least for me it’s a little bit short-sighted.

I consider pursuing a PhD to really be the start of my career.  I don’t mind my current work situation, but I don’t think it would ever seem like a career to me.  I’m just not a transportation person; it’s technology and how to apply it that really gets me excited.  Without getting too sappy about the situation, getting my PhD allows me to look at interesting problems and come up with novel solutions.  Then I get to take that knowledge and pass it on to others in the hope that they can apply it in some worthwhile situation.  So the decision ultimately came down to being able to do something that will continue to interest and challenge me for the next 30-40 years.

Now if you’ll allow me to get sappy for a minute.  I believe education as well as the pursuit and dissemination for knowledge are both extremely important.  Anything I can do to add to the body of knowledge and/or find a new way to disseminate that knowledge is the most important thing I can do professionally.

One thing that concerns me a little with the move is that I’m a fairly pragmatic person and Academia is all about theory.  I think theory is useful and needs to be explored, but for me the theory is most interesting when it can be applied.  So I’m going to do my best to make sure what I research can be applied and that’s where I’m hoping that all of my friends and colleagues that work in the real world will keep me honest.  This is what I’m hoping to use the blog for.  I’m going to discuss mostly technical related strategy topics and hope to get a conversation started.  My thought is that this may influence my research and potentially give others ideas that they can explore as well.

Anyway, enough about me and let’s get the conversation started.

Do Beta Releases Hurt Google?

With the recent high-profile releases of Google Wave and Buzz, I’ve started to read and hear some grumblings from people about not seeing the usefulness of Wave or the lack of polish on Buzz.  So this brought to light a few questions for me.  Do non-tech geeks care about all/any of the beta-level products that Google releases, or is it just us nerds that get excited?  What distinguishes the people who have been complaining about these releases, with the others who see value in the releases?  Is Google hurting it’s public image with these releases?  And ultimately, what long term effect might this have on Google’s bottom line?  While I don’t have answers to a lot of these questions, I have a few thoughts and would love to hear what others think on the subject.

Who really cares about the Beta Apps?
We do!  All of us that love technology.  We all want to get our hands on the newest thing that Google releases.  That being said, I’m not sure if the average internet user shares our enthusiasm.  They have needs to meet and they use the internet as a tool to complete those tasks.  That doesn’t mean they can’t or don’t have fun on the internet, it just means that the internet or technology itself isn’t what is fun for them.  So my gut reaction would say that everyday users of the internet could care less about what beta apps Google releases, that is until the rest of us show them how to use and enjoy them.  I’m obviously oversimplifying the situation, but without data to back up my point I think this is a fairly accurate representation.

Who complains vs. sympathizes?
This one I really don’t have an idea of how to broadly characterize each group because I’ve seen people from all sides of the technology world on all sides of this discussion.  One thing is apparent to me about this.  People who look at the products as they are right now are fairly negative on them (and in many cases for good reason, which I’ll get to).  On the other hand people who tend to look towards how the products could be used in the future have a more positive reaction to what they are seeing.

My personal thoughts on the products are this.  I think Wave has the potential to substantially enhance our communication experience on the web.  Many of the elements that are already in the product (see as you type, the intense threading, etc) can be, and probably already are being, built into new applications right now.  But the real power of this platform will come when some of the integration pieces start to come together.  If I can go to one location and check my email, update my blog, respond to some blog comments, update my twitter, I think you get the picture, it would be very powerful and a very compelling reason for me to use the product.  However, as it stands right now, I can’t even interact with my regular Google email account from Wave.  This makes it a hard sell for most people to dedicate any real time in the product, but that will change.  We just have to wait for the “killer app” for the platform.

Buzz, on the other hand, I’m not quite sure about yet.  Looking at the product right now, it really feels like this was something that was made with Wave in mind.  Whether they thought they’d just start it there but didn’t because of the lack of usage, or simply built it with an eventual integration in mind, I’m not sure.  If I were to look at the product as it stands right now in Gmail my question would be, what value does this provide me over just using twitter?  What is there to really make me use the product?  I can only get my twitter feed from the other Buzz users that connected to their Twitter accounts and I only get those updates 12 hours later.  So by the time I see the percentage of my Twitter feed, it’s out of date.  I get to see things that other people share from Google Reader or Youtube, but I could already get a high percentage of that from people sharing the same things via Twitter or the Google Reader interface.  So not a lot of value there either.  So again, I can see this being useful longer-term, with some major integrations with the other products (probably using Wave as the hub) but as of right now there isn’t a compelling reason to use the product.

Is this Hurting Public Perception and Potentially Google’s Bottom Line
My short answer for both is probably not, but I think Google needs to be a little careful in how it handles similar apps moving forward.  Why do most people use Google products right now?  Because those of us that love technology push those products and services on to everyone else.  That’s what we’re useful to them for.  We try out a lot of products and make recommendations on which ones work and why they should use one over another.  Even if you don’t consciously make these recommendations to people, they see what you are using and ask questions.  Then your answers and actions drive what they use.  So Google needs to be careful to either keep us in the loop or maybe do a little more handholding with potential naysayers when releasing something a little more experimental.  If they don’t, people could start slowly migrating to the next hot startup.

Will Facebook’s Twitter-envy eventually cost it?

For a long time now it has been obvious the Facebook has been extremely jealous of the growth rate that twitter was seeing.  I’m starting to wonder if Facebook’s focus on Twitter and lack of focus on what it needs to try to do has allowed Google to quietly lay all the groundwork to be a major player in the Social game.

Let’s look some of Google’s products and how they may leverage each of them to make a serious play at Facebook’s market.

Friend Connect – I believe this is their first real step towards moving into the social world.  Allowing people to easily tie google accounts into their site should allow people to meet and communicate with others with similar interests.  This may very well become the best social grouping mechanism that exists today.  Facebook’s attempts at groups on their site is weak and I think Google’s attempt may very well pan out to create meaningful relationships.  Isn’t this really what social media is about?  Gaining value from the community as well as the content providers.

Orkut – Many people aren’t aware that Google already owns a relatively popular social network.  If Google can get a nice chunk of users in Friend Connect, the next obvious step would be for them to allow you to import your groups into a social network for some of the richer features this would allow.  Now maybe Google doesn’t market Orkut in the US as it is currently much more popular abroad(Brazil in particular).  But the infrastructure would be in place that with a re-brand, they may be able to steal some market from Facebook.

Google.com – This is a pure numbers play.  Not many sites have this many eyeballs that they can focus onto whatever product they’d like.  So if they want to push Orkut or Wave as a social solution it would be pretty easy for them to do so.

Wave – This is what I think could be the difference-maker in this whole process.  As Google builds it’s Friend Connect and potential Orkut user base, they could easily incorporate some of the richer features of Wave for facilitating conversations between users.  With some well built plug ins, users could handle all of their communications to and from all the other Google products in one place and in a way that allows for real-time communication and collaboration.  I’m actually really excited to see how this product grows and I think it will have a huge impact in the Social Web(or whatever buzz word you want to insert here) moving forward.

So, how does Facebook’s focus on Twitter have anything to do with this?  If Facebook would have realized that it is a much richer network(feature-wise) than Twitter and that it needs to be so.  They could have focused on how to improve communication between users and more importantly among users that have similar interests.  This would have helped differentiate them from micro-blogging instead of confusing them with one and would have helped fill a need that I see in the Social Media landscape.