Just like Alice in the Wonderland, Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s new CEO, is running after a rabbit hole, this in the guise of ‘contextual marketing.’ With the all the talk about ‘re-imaginings,’ it was hard not to place Marissa up with the likes of Alice. The new CEO, with a working portfolio charting Google high on the list, caused havoc in the world of ICT as she rapidly restructured Yahoo. The result of this restructuring was showcased at this year’s CES 2014. Marissa, in her keynote address at the CES, shared the efforts of all that her team was busy doing the past year.
Innovation is built on the pillars of design, simplicity and function. For Yahoo it is about this and much more. Content and media, as pointed out by Marissa, are the vitals that keep this enterprise beating.
Yahoo has not had much to step upto in terms of making a hard-hitting keynote address at the CES. The one in 2006 was unmemorable, 2008 with Jerry Yang, again not dignified enough. The next in 2010, Carol Bartz, the then CEO, cancelled her address. But the one that took place this year was unmatched by every measure.
Marissa Mayer at CES 2014 this January was a great treat. Not only did she make all the right points, but also asserted her vision for Yahoo that roped in many new faces: Katie Couric, David Pogue, David Korp, Nick D’Aloiso and SNL’s Weekend Update team. The thought of making smartphones smarter than they already are, by becoming more attuned to its users’ every habits, is making a big splash for Yahoo in all its ventures, as shared by Marissa in her keynote.
The following were the significant points made:
1. Aviate’s partnership with Yahoo is helping it make its Android phones more intuitive, intelligently gathering together data to organize apps in ‘spaces.’ “Aviate is still currently in private beta,” shared Mayer, “but we’re opening it up to the first 25,000 people who use code “YAHOO” to celebrate the news.” This is the magic that will result in the phone becoming smarter than the user!
2. Nick D’Alisio, product Manager at Yahoo, also the maker of Summly purchased in 2013 by the same for $30 million, showcased Yahoo’s News Digest. Marissa, in her keynote, maintained how Yahoo wanted to try solving the problem of ‘tl:dr – too long, didn’t read.’ What this means is that when content is too long, readers are put off. Thus, Yahoo News Digest. Thematically, the app is beautiful, informative and easy to read. It provides a synopsis of the news in the morning and the evening, just like the Television in the good ol times. With powerful, algorithmic summaries to boot, the app is snazzy in design but reaches a market with already bigger fishes. Will it fry or be fired is the question.
3. Advertising is where the money is for the websites. However, the effectiveness of advertising becomes hard to assess as the mediums scale up said Marissa. The new way posed by Yahoo is a better way, in their view, to show ads summarized below.
- Tumblr Sponsored Posts now powered by Yahoo Advertising
- Yahoo Audience Ads — a better way to buy ads targeted to specific audiences
- Yahoo Ad Manager and Ad Manager Plus — a new buying platform that gives advertisers direct, hands-on access to Yahoo’s advertising products
- Yahoo Ad Exchange — a new global ad marketplace that provides premium publishers with more visibility and control over advertising on their sites.
4. The theme of making apps intuitive and a fitting piece to work with, within the household, too, is making its round in the field of ICT. This can be found in the appearance of Yahoo Smart TV. What to watch on the telly could not be simpler. Yahoo Smart Guide and Yahoo Smart Info both make use of the same intelligent computing to understand the consumer and make suggestions or selections based on it. The former, makes suggestions about shows, and the latter makes suggestions about news feeds, downloads, ads etc. all relevant to the user’s tastes.
5. Two new magazine-style websites were launched upon this occasion: Yahoo Food and Yahoo Tech. Keeping in line with the inherent strengths of Yahoo, that being content, it came out with the old way of sharing stories, the old-fashioned magazine style website.
It says on its blog: “When you click a tile, it smoothly expands in place so that you can read the article; you never have to deal with browser tabs, multiple windows, or the Back button. When you reach the end of that article, you can collapse it again, or just click another tile to read some more good stuff.”
It was interesting to note from Yahoo’s presentation how in moving forwards, we are actually moving backwards. Something new and fresh, like technology is still making use of the old ways: old fashioned style of reporting and old-fashioned format of news. However, how well Yahoo fares on the stock market with its newly acquired purchases, as well as the new products it has launched in its first quarter of 2014 is yet to be seen. Will Alice have created the Wonderland of this world, or will the world have triumphed?
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