According to the New York Times Author, Brian Stelter, Yahoo! knows that there is a massive online audience that is looking for high quality content.  When the content is created /matched for the audience and not re-purposed from another channel Yahoo! will get great response, uunprecedented amounts of marketing data, and an affluent audience that can move “the needle.”  As many of us have learned over the years timing is everything.   Matching content with this affluent online demographic may just work this time.   A couple of suggestions, if you build it they won’t just come.  Market this product online and offline to get it off the ground.  Also, try leveraging the social networks for a multiplier of audience using Open ID.

Just want to share two great insights on the future of social networks I read today:

“(…) the future of social networks, where social networks will be like air. It makes no sense that your social connections be locked up in a social network — when I receive a message within Facebook, there’s no way to forward to it my work colleagues, friends, and family who are not on Facebook. And that significantly reduces the effectiveness and value of Facebook to me. (…)”
Charlene Li – Forrester Research

“Social is not a destination — it’s a dimension and it will infuse all aspects of a consumer’s experience on the Web.”
Ari Balogh – Yahoo! CTO

Last year Jerry Yang took over as ‘Captain’ Yahoo but their ship is stalled.  Where are those new ’sails’ to capture the new winds that are clearly blowing Google and Facebook’s way?  Yahoo needs to change the game.  Where’s the competive strategy?  Where the “Eye of the Tiger” attitude? 

Businessweek had the best analysis on Yahoo’s situation around the recent layoff and future prospects for success.  Display advertising is feeling the pre-recession jitters but not search (or ecommerc) advertising.  Yahoo keeps losing ground in search to Google.  According to Nielsen Online’s numbers, usually the most conservative measure of the market, Google’s share of searches in December was 56.3% to Yahoo’s 17.7%, and Google got 70% more searches per searcher than Yahoo.

Yahoo needs new products and fast.  Jerry Yang says they are focused on investments on new initiatives.  As Yang’s vow to keep spending on some initiatives indicates, Yahoo’s hope remains coming up with new services that catch people’s imagination as Google, MySpace (NWS), Facebook, and other sites have.

I’ve been predicting a Yahoo comeback and openness for sometime.  Look for Yahoo to join opensocial and compete in the web 2.0 infrastructure. 

New CTO?  What does it Mean:

Silver Lining in new CTO hire:  One promising sign from their new hire, Ari Balogh, is that he’s an infrastructure guy.   He knows how to deal with scale and product rollouts that are managed service based.  What does this mean?  Yahoo could develop (fast) a significant position against both Google and Microsoft Live if Ari Balogh and team can integrate services and leverage user data for new products – a kind of “Mega Mashup” product strategy.  The portal model is dying and advertisers are voting.   

Also look for possible Data as a Service product set.    Yahoo has so many possibilities but they need to pick a few and go with it.   Yahoo has all the ‘raw materials’ and the audience to roll out ‘instant’ killer products. 

For Yahoo to succeed it’s all about competitive strategy.  Can’t wait to see how they execute their plan.