Yahoo! Goes To Print

PreacherTom writes "In response to the 'peanut-butter' memo and a major drop in stock prices since January, Yahoo! is taking things in a new direction: local. Yesterday, they announced a partnership with 176 newspapers in an attempt to expand into local advertising. As part of the deal, newspapers will give their classified advertisers the option of also posting employment ads on Yahoo's HotJobs network. The newspapers stand to benefit by exposing customers to Yahoo's audience of 130 million unique monthly visitors while Yahoo gains a relationship with local advertisers. Revenue will then be shared."

Re:

[Sqwubbsy]

I think this 'new' trend actually started a few weeks ago with Google [businessweek.com].
Curious that while revenues are falling for print media they've oversatured the online market to the point they're propping up a medium that is antiquated and only speaks with one voice.

In response?

[Anonymous Coward]

"In response to the 'peanut-butter' memo and a major drop in stock prices since January, Yahoo! is taking things in a new direction: local. Yesterday, they announced a partnership with 176 newspapers in an attempt to expand into local advertising"

Shouldn't that read "in spite of the 'peanut-butter' memo"? Clearly spreading things even thinner with a move into the print medium isn't going to help focus down on what they are doing.

postscript - my capatcha is "spastic" - don't know about the US, but here in the UK that is a word that is seen as pretty derogatory.

Re:

[PreacherTom]

Disagree. It is still a focus upon online advertising as opposed to other forms of revenue generation. In fact, it gives them a unique competitive advantage over Google, which is really what they are going for anyway.

Re:

[PreacherTom]

Similar, but this is an expansion of that idea.

Re:

[owlnation]

I wholeheartedly agree. Yahoo pointed me in the direction of it's new 360 service recently, which looks like a desperate attempt to corner some of the MySpace market.

I think adding new services isn't going to help them. They need to focus more on existing ones like mail, search and flickr, and likely also it'd be a good idea to drop some of their services, such as Groups.

360 looks like it will go the way of Yahoo Groups - once a useful community tool as eGroups, now as worthless a spamfest as Usenet.

Re:

[maxume]

My guess is that their response to the memo will pretty much be to either fire or severely demote the guy:

http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/techstockupd ate/10323250.html [thestreet.com]

Following Careerbuilder

[Randolpho]

CareerBuilder.com has had a similar relationship with the local newspaper here (and a bunch of others, I gather) for some time. Looks like Yahoo is finally catching on.

Re:

[Josh Lindenmuth]

Exactly. Once again, Yahoo is playing follow the leader. Given the number of newspapers they are partnering with, it sounds like it will certainly help increase Hotjobs lagging user base (or at least the quantity of their postings). But this certainly is not going to impact Yahoo's prospects by any stretch of the imagination, particularly since CareerBuilder has already been doing this with the big conglomerates such as Gannett and Knight Ridder [careerbuilder.com] for at least 6 years.

The #1 portal honor is still Yahoo'

Yahoo! + Print = Internet Yellow Pages

[__aaclcg7560]

I remember when the Internet was small enough that all the website listings was printed in the Internet Yellow Pages book. I know newspapers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but printing out a 100 million website listings and dropping a slab or two in front of the customer doorway is not going to help anyone except the newsprint recyclers.

Coming Soon...

[eno2001]

...Wikipedia in bound volume format. 26 volumes updated daily at the newsstand for only 50 cents a day! Fine print: To keep the costs down please recycle the volumes daily by bringing them to the local Wikipedia print shop. Remember if everyone plays it's almost free!!!!

Re:

[mithras the prophet]

Funny you should mention that -- I had a dream last night in which I was looking at a bookshelf, trying to find the printed edition of Wikipedia. I think I was in the jungle somewhere, or at any rate there was no Internet and no electricity. But I really wanted Wikipedia and not a regular encyclopedia, for reasons that made sense in the dream but I can't remember now...

Re:

[eno2001]

Ever seen "Being John Malkovich"? Well... that's kinda creepy for me. Get out of my head! Shoo! Shoo!!! :>

Does that mean that.....

[8127972]

.... Newspapers will come with a warning about peanuts?

Yahoo! in print?

[smittyoneeach]

Yahoo! in print?
How 'bout a stint
Along the roads
As drivers squint?
Burma Shave

Flickr and del.icio.us?

[MarkWatson]

Sorry that this is off topic, but does anyone know the fate of Flickr and del.icio.us? Because Flickr has paying customers, I assume that Flickr is safe, but I have come to rely on del.icio.us while Yahoo's competing my web seems poor in comparison.

Compare this to Amazon's Mechanical Turk

[PHAEDRU5]

I'm afraid Yahoo will still be behind the curve, even with this initiative.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome) program is basically a jobs board, allowing matchups of skills and tasks for payment. And it's operational now.

I think that Yahoo's missed the idea that the internet makes the world flat. What's the sense of dealing with local want ads when the entire world is available to service job needs?

Re:

[digidave]

I work for a company publishing newspapers, yellow pages directories and a local business search web site.

The thing you are missing is that local is where it's at in the near to mid-term future.

A "flat" Internet world only helps large multinational corporations, but most businesses are local. Most people going online looking to buy stuff are looking to buy it locally. You don't go online in Atlanta looking for restaurants in Portland. A plumber in Dallas isn't going to make a house call to Albany. The local

Re:

[PHAEDRU5]

Thanks for the update. I admit: As a programmer I was seeing this from the perspective of easily-outsourced work.

That said, I remember reading something about a plan by McDonalds to outsource drive-through ordering to remote call centers. So, your order goes to a remote call center where someone verifies and types in the order that's then sent back to the preparer at the restaurant where you're driving through.

Mechanical Turk? More like mechanical joke.

[jotaeleemeese]

I tried it and was completely unimpressed.

If they cared at all about it they would be contacting people that registered to let them know the site is now operationsl (which at least in my case, they haven't)

Now, I'll have peanut butter all over my newspaper

[Uninvited Guest]

Why couldn't it at least be nutella?

CraigsList

[Programmer_Errant]

This could be an issue. Although the fair housing lawsuit against CraigsList was dismissed, Yahoo's technique where the newspaper staff screen all the classified ads could affect any future developments in this area. CraigsList claims it's impossible to have enough staff to screen its ads.

Brad Garlinghouse's new memo

[operagost]

"I hate peanut butter. We all should. Therefore, I am ordering all lunches be made with Nutella [nutellausa.com]. Yum!"

Re:

[nlaac]

Shortly after reading the memo, at least 25 Yahoo! employees stealthily snuck the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they had brought for lunch into the break room trashcan so as to avoid being picked in the upcoming layoffs....

Good Fit

[PineHall]

I think of Yahoo primarily as a media company, so having all these newspapers make use of Yahoo's web space and advertising know-how makes a lot of sense. Yahoo is pursuing and focusing on its strength. It is consistent with the "The Peanut Butter Manifesto". It is a good fit for the newspapers and Yahoo.

yahoo going down

[argoff]

Well, a while back when they willingly and openly started turning people into the Chinese government for free speech violations. I knew it was time to tell yahoo to go to hell. I am not a bit sorry for them. This agreement shows that they still don't get it. The future is not information content, it is information services. The information age is doing to services what the industrial revolution did for production. Is this parternership a service agreement? no! it is a content agreement. It shows tha

It was only me...

[vhogemann]

...or anybody else looked at the title and wondered about a printed version of "Yahoo! News" bundled on local newspapers? Or better, subscript to the sections you like the most, and receive a personalized newspaper at home, every day!

But no... it's just some stupid ad business. :-\

inaccurate

[mapkinase]

and a major drop in stock prices since January:

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=YHOO [google.com]

check for yourself that "a major drop in stock prices since January" occurred on July 19, when stock dropped from ~32 to ~25.

Really?

[jotaeleemeese]

January 9: 43.22

November 24: 28.03

Value lost: 35%

and if you try to define a drop as a sudden loss of value, then In Jan 17 there was one of 7.

Re:

[mapkinase]

There were many events duing that period of time and the submitter attributed (as far as I understood) all that loss to one event.

I did not get "then In Jan 17 there was one of 7."

They are trying to get local news & resources

[VGfort]

Thats the real reason they are doing this. Think about it, when it comes to local news, local advertising and local classifieds, the local newspapers beat them hands down. This partnership helps strengthen them in the local markets. I'm just wondering if they are going to backstab the newspapers and get the "keys" to the local market when the deal is over.