First off, I’m very excited for Yahoo! and even more so for the Yahoos, especially the ones I know from back in the days when I was still working there. Taking in the news about the new CEO has to be the sweetest thing, coming from headquarters, since before the Microsoft takeover bid.

They so deserve it – just as much as Yahoo! as a whole deserves to get a “second chance”. And strangely enough this landmark hire, by the board, that got so much blame and was “forced” to change, seems to have achieved just that. Over night Yahoo! is an exciting place to work again – I’m not saying, that an audience of 700 million people a month is not exciting as is.

Marissa Mayer CEO Yahoo! Inc

But now, even the future seems bright. Looking back, you could almost say, it seems like destiny now, that we had to go through the Scott Thompson SNAFU, to realize that bullying is not what Yahoo! stands for – even if it could have made them more successful profitable eventually. Regarding Ross Levinsohn, I couldn’t help but feel that, while he seems to be excellent at what he does – selling. A world class salesman was not what Yahoo! would need right now.

This goes both ways – internally, as there is quite a need to break up old silos, and get almost silly things, like a consistent navigation across all products sorted. Even more important is the outside effect of this hire. Marissa seems to be extremely well connected, in the Valley as well as in Washington. She is perceived as someone who has a very keen understanding of user-needs and online product design, which is where you should put your money if you want to get this company turned around.

Ludwig Erhard former German Chancellor

“50% of business is psychology”, is a famous quote of former German chancellor Ludwig Erhard.

And I think it is very much a truth for Yahoo!. Yahoo! has never been as “bad” as people were made to believe.

There is one big IF standing in the way to make this a fairytale wedding so. And that is the “well that’s just how it is done” disease. It’s deeply ingrained into the inner workings of not just Yahoo! or Microsoft, but many companies in the new ecomomy. This still relatively new industry, has produced companies, that have grown to a size that allow for this kind of mindset to develop and infect the whole organization. In a fast changing world, like the online industry, this is a very dangerous development.

Google is fighting this as hard as they can, so Marissa is well aware of the issue. Because even whilst you are a running a big company, you have to be nimble and almost act start-up like just as well, to keep up with the pace of the world around you. And I’m not saying that nobody at Yahoo! saw that before, the infamous Brickhouse, a start-up like environment set up by Yahoo! back in 2006 is testament for that.

I’m hopeful that Mrs. Mayer will see this through as this is the make or break of this chapter at Yahoo! – but given that this is her Big chance we can be certain she will be at her best.

I’m really excited to see what the future will bring for Yahoo!  Hope they can yodel much louder and more cheerful in the future.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Can Marissa Mayer cure the disease that is killing Yahoo!?

The London Times has an article this morning that is somewhat confirming what has been rumored for some time now. A possible deal of Microsoft and Yahoo! around the search assets only.

Software giant Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion (£13 billion).

The proposal forms the centrepiece of a complex transaction that would see Microsoft support a new management team to take control of Yahoo. But there is no intention of Microsoft tabling another takeover bid for the web giant, after its aborted $47.5 billion offer this summer.

It is thought that Jonathan Miller, ex-chairman and chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media, have been lined up to lead the new management team. Senior directors at Microsoft and Yahoo are understood to have agreed the broad terms of a deal, but there is no guarantee that it will succeed.

But then does Kara know more yet again…?

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Microsoft in on a $20 billion Yahoo search deal?

Christian just pinged me this URL keywordfinder.org. It’s a tool that will retrieve the 20 top search terms related to the term you enter. This tool is based on the recently launched enhancements to Yahoo! BOSS. Uwe has done something similar as part of his premium tool LinkCheck (German site).

Here is a sample SERP

Nice and handy tool to get a quick idea of what terms are popular in Yahoo!’s web search.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Keywordfinder – new free tool to find the 20 most successful keywords related to your topic

Today is my last day at Yahoo! It has been quite a ride and I loved it a lot.

Thanks

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

my last day

Some of the search guys host a hack event here in London on the 10th of November introducing developers to Yahoo! BOSS. So if you like free beer and snacks, spending time with smart people and learning what’s new in the Yahoo! developer world come and say hello.

BOSS – Build (your) Own Search Service is Yahoo’s new API which allows you to build a search engine based on our systems. It is one of the first steps to make Yahoo! much more open for you to enhance and customize our offers for yourself.

During the BOSS hack event you will be able to meet the team, learn all about the API and have a first go at building your own search engine in a matter of minutes.

We’ll be there for questions and even provide you with free beer and snacks.

Monday November 10, 2008 at 6:30pm
Wallacespace
2 Dryden Street, Covent Garden

More detail at upcoming

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Yahoo! BOSS Hack Evening in London

There is going to be a Yahoo! SearchMonkey Developer Event, Wednesday, June 25, 2008 here in London.

If you’re a web developer, come party with Yahoo! at the SearchMonkey Developer Event. There will be a tech talk by the engineers who built the platform. We’ll be doing live demos, sharing schwag, and serving substantial amounts of free food and beer!

Sounds good? If you should come please do say hello. Here are the details Should you not know what SearchMonkey >> have a look here

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Monkey Business in London – come to the Yahoo! Party

After weeks of silence today Blake Jorgensen addresses all Yahoos with video message.

This story was filed from our April Fools’ Day edition. so

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Breaking: Blake Jorgensen -Video Message to all Yahoos

I’ve just got a mail that Fire Eagle has launched.

What is Fire Eagle?

Fire Eagle is a site that stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…

This is another brick house product like the recently launched self video broadcasting platform Yahoo! Live. Before you ask I’ve already used up all the firend invites I’ve got but you might want to ask Tom if he can get you one.

Great service – lets hope it takes off.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

The eagle has landed! Fire Eagle’s Beta

We did a survey amongst Yahoo! users almost a year ago. One of the findings was that more than 70% of all the participants would not understand the concept of local search, hence more than 70% of all the users on our site – even if they had a question we could perfectly answer – would not click on the local search tab and therefore the great content and service we offer would stay hidden for a significant number of our customers.

That is a classic situation of a customer who needs advice. But not advice somewhere out of sight and context.

And this is not only true for local search but for video, image, shopping – well ultimately every so called vertical search today.

And after years of denial – and due to technical challenges that needed to be overcome – 2007 was the year when universal / blended search really started off to change the landscape of the search world. For users, marketers and the search engines themselves.

There are multiple areas of impact for each of the groups. For the user ideally this should ease their access to the most relevant content for any given query – and will unveil content previously hidden for them.

For the marketers this means they will need to increase their focus to the vertical engines and play in multiple leagues in order to get or stay successful.

For the search engines themselves it means that being good in just one area of search will not be good enough anymore. In order to provide a comprehensive and most relevant search experience you have to succeed in the battle of vertical search and as an added challenge you will need to get that done with a one size fits all – single input box search.

Now lets take a look at one more specific area – the visual impact on the search engine result pages.

You will all remember the golden triangle – an expression based on an eye tracking based study that came up with this heat map.

Now that was true till blended search started to change the game.
The examples below show how significant the change of peoples focus on theses new search engine result pages is.

Yahoo! classic SRP

 Google classic SRP

Google with Local one box

Google with video result

Yahoo! with video result

Its more than obvious that the classic SRP shows a way more evenly spread number of visual hot spots. As soon another source is blended into the SRP the focus clearly shifts towards the “eye candy”.

Today this does mostly impact the head traffic of searches but over time when the algorithms to match other sources and formats of content to a given query improve – the tail traffic will see more and more vertical content as well.

And as long as blended search does not overcome its teething troubles mobile search will suffer too much as to be an mass marketable service – not to mention the lack of proper devices.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Why 2008 will be all about blended search and not mobile

I’ve used MyYahoo for more than two years now on a daily basis to monitor and read 80+ RSS feeds.

New layout without favicons in the back

And even if it wasn’t the one online RSS reader with the biggest set of functions and options I liked it because of its simplicity and because using websites and services over time is turning into being a habit and these are not so easily to be changed.

But today is the day where I’ve decided it is about time to change. Why? For once the NEW MyYahoo has been rolled out and it didn’t address any of the issues I have had with the old version. Actually my feeling is that it only got more shiny and singing and dancing – a “look what we can do” sort of service and not a more useful customizable service – but then MyYahoo is not only a RSS reader and what I use it for might just be abuse – however I used it as a RSS reader and it just doesn’t satisfy me anymore.

There are mainly three reasons.

1. The latency – Somehow the feeds do not update in real time, and even worse it takes hours for certain feeds to get updated. So when I go to some sites listed in my feeds, I’ll see that there is already new posts available since hours without this being displayed in MyYahoo.
2. Easy orientation – The new MyYahoo does not have the favicons next to the feeds anymore. Thats bad guys! Without them I have no way scroll down the page quickly and find the feed I’m looking for right away. Why would you make me read the site title to identify the site?
3. Categorization of feeds – I do read loads of work related stuff but there is quite a few feeds I have in my reader that do relate to other areas. Another example is the frequency of reading – I want to have a folder with less important stuff that I will only visit when I’m bored at the airport…

Now I want to stay with an online reader. Many friends use offline tools, but I use too many different machines and devices to settle for an offline application. I’ve figured I’ll give Bloglines another try and the Google reader, cause from what I’ve seen so far they will provide me with what I expect from an online RSS reader.

By the way if someone should feel the same way there is a way to export your RSS feed subscriptions from MyYahoo! as OPML. Just paste this URL into your browser.

http://api2.my.yahoo.com/2.0/content/getsubs

And you are good to go.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

MyYahoo! you’ve lost me for good