(09-11) 18:29 PDT -- Yahoo executives pitched their plan to revamp the company's sites Thursday, emphasizing the addition of third-party content in an effort to become more of a destination for Web users.
The presentation at Yahoo's Sunnyvale headquarters came as management regroups from a failed takeover bid by Microsoft that has kept the company unsettled and its share prices struggling.
"Obviously, it's been a long six months and there has been a lot going on," said Ash Patel, who heads Yahoo's audience product division. "I'd like to show you what we've been working on during that time."
Executives said the company would emphasize outside content in the redesigns of a number of its sites. In addition, they said a previously announced initiative that allows outside developers to create applications for Yahoo properties should result in some of the applications being placed on Yahoo pages by the end of the year.
Patel demonstrated how one such application, linked with the Netflix movie rental service, would allow Yahoo visitors to access and tweak their Netflix queues within Yahoo Search, the Yahoo home page or Yahoo Mail.
"There's a lot more that we will be opening up," he said. "This is just to give you a taste of how an application can be woven into these experiences." He said a new Yahoo home page would incorporate the applications.
Mark Risher, Yahoo's head of Open Mail, demonstrated another application that would allow users to browse Craigslist and respond to ads from within Yahoo Mail.
"Instead of going off to another site ... let's bring that all into one," he said.
Several Yahoo sites are also being redesigned to emphasize outside content.
A new Yahoo Music page, for instance, will integrate the Pandora radio service and allow users to buy albums on Amazon or iTunes, instead of being filled with only Yahoo's own content, said Scott Moore, who leads the company's media group.
Similarly, a new Yahoo News site will integrate local news from the company's newspaper partners.
"It's not about a direct financial benefit to Yahoo, it's about a better consumer experience," Moore said.
But Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo U.S., said the strategy also would make it simpler for advertisers to target consumers.
On that note, Schneider addressed the company's proposed advertising partnership with Google, saying it would lead to a "better consumer experience." The company has said it plans to go ahead with the deal in October, despite concerns from the U.S. Department of Justice, which appears to be preparing to challenge the alliance of the Web's top two search engines.
For instance, she said, if a user searches for "red roses in Birmingham, Alabama" in Yahoo Search, no ads show up in the right-hand column. Under the partnership, though, Google ads would appear there.
The presentation was billed as a way for Yahoo, which has seen its stock price fall close to a five-year low in the wake of Microsoft's withdrawal of its bid, to explain its strategy.
"We've heard from a lot of you that we do a decent job letting you know about products," said Jill Nash, Yahoo's chief communications officer. But, she said, "we've heard from some of you that we could do a much better job providing context about how this fits in to our overall strategy and focus."
On Thursday, Yahoo's stock jumped 4.8 percent or 85 cents to close at $18.55 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment