I was one of the first ever users of Yahoo!, and I have always loved the ethos behind Yahoo! I liked the zany college nut ideas of Yang and Filo (like, let's make everything FREE to users, and just charge for advertising!!, let's call our employees Yahoos and encourage them to play Foosball while they work, etc.) I have had very close associations with Yahoo! for some time, and I have an incredible soft spot for the company.
I was not keen on Terry Semel, but I saw that when he came on board it was necessary to stop giving away quite so much for free, and the company needed to actually make some money.
However, I believe he went too far with that because he didnt understand the internet mentality - he let customer service, support and help deteriorate to the extent that many Yahoo! applications used by loyal Yahoo! users were left dead in the water and that pissed off a lot of them, and so they migrated to alternatives (Note to Semel: your internet customer is one click away from your competitor - this is a pretty basic rule on the internet, Terry dear!!)
Much as I love Jerry Yang as a person (did you know he cried openly when he had to fire people because of a downturn in the company's fortunes?), even I could see that he was making mistakes running the company.. he was far too emotionally involved in "his" company - it was his baby, and he could not see beyond that. Of course, Microsoft COULD.. Jerry's big problem was considering his own feelings, and those of his loyal friends and employees (mostly interchangeable - Jerry considers just about all his employees to be his friends) to be more important than the feelings of his shareholders.
All the way through the company's history, a big problem has been poor PR also.. Often Yahoo! would have a product way before Google even thought of it, but they would not promote it so noone knew about it - but Google would come along, copy the exact same product and promote it relentlessly and get all the users! (e.g. Google Desktop vs Yahoo! Desktop, GMail vs Yahoo! Mail, Google Maps vs Yahoo! Maps, Google Groups vs Yahoo! Groups, Google Toolbar v Yahoo! Toolbar, Google Gadgets vs Yahoo! Widgets (Konfabulator) etc. etc.)
So I was pleasantly surprised to see Carol Bartz take over. She is a no-nonsense woman with a great business head on her shoulders. I am probably the only person in the blogosphere that thinks that the proposed marriage between Yahoo! and Microsoft on Search is a GOOD idea for Yahoo! and that she is going to make a big difference to the company.. time will tell (those who know me know that I wrote an article saying that Amazon.com would stand the test of time when everyone else was calling them the "E-Wonder" just after the dot com bubble burst in 2001 (see http://portal.exceptiona.com - "E-Wonder").
I have been trying for a while to get an audience with Carol Bartz to talk about some really simple ideas I have for improving Yahoo! services a great deal. I believe the changes I would suggest would make a huge difference to the company and to its future and would take very little money to implement.
As she appears to be too busy to read my emails, I thought I would post here and maybe someone who knows her can pass this on to her and make her read it! ;-) Given that the stock is trading at around $14 right now, she probably needs any advice she can get.
So I have written down some of my ideas here..
My ideas are very simple.. (Jerry would dislike this post a great deal - he never uses capital letters!)
1) Increase Public Relations exponentially - plug every little good thing that Yahoo! does - make sure everyone hears about it!!! People should really understand that, yes, Google does have more search hits than Yahoo! but Yahoo! still has way more VIEWS than Google.. and that is what advertisers REALLY want. Also, Yahoo! Sponsored Search is typically A LOT cheaper than Google Adwords but NOONE KNOWS THAT!!!! Why???? And, why isnt there a Yahoo! Adsense? That seems like a glaring admission to me - tons of other websites could be displaying Yahoo! Ads continuously, increasing the reach for advertisers no end.. If you dont know how to do it, Yahoo!, I do.. see my product eBars - http://www.ebarster.com - I will come work for Yahoo! and start up Adsense for Yahoo!
How many women know about Yahoo! Shine? Or all the other host of properties (hundreds of) run and owned by Yahoo! ? See this page for a full list - its overwhelming just looking at it!
http://everything.yahoo.com/
2) The "All New Yahoo! Mail" has a GLARING feature that makes it totally unusable to anyone who really wants to use it and this NEEDS TO BE FIXED NOW!
I am guessing (though I don't know the figures and facts) that VERY FEW people are using the new Yahoo! Mail, and most are using Classic Yahoo! Mail primarily because of this one issue.
I know for certain that many of Yahoo!'s own employees are! The problem is: If you want to delete messages in your inbox, you have TWO choices. One is to delete every message individually (which, with the number of emails most of us get each day, is virtually impossible to do), and the other is to delete ALL emails in your inbox (whoever would want to do that??). In Classic Mail, you can delete only the emails in the current view pane, and that is how it should be in "All New Yahoo! Mail".
Now, even with the extremely complicated code base of Yahoo! Mail this would take a few days of coding and a few days of testing. I know that, I am an eBusiness technical manager. This is not complicated work. But it would mean that many many more people would stay with Yahoo! Mail instead of going over to Gmail. And let's face it, Yahoo! Mail is one of the big properties that keeps Yahoo! users using Yahoo! because of its integration with other properties and tools like the toolbar, messenger and even Yahoo! News etc.
3) Do a big promotion to save the dying Yahoo! Hotjobs. I recommend a "gimmick" like a competition that is a kind of combination of "American Idol" and "The Apprentice". Find a great job offered by a huge company like Coca Cola or IBM or similar, and put the details on the home page of Hotjobs. Allow people to post their responses to the job offer on the site, which must include a video and a copy of their resume. Allow the Yahoo! community to rate the job applicants and make comments / give feedbacks to the applications (a la Simon Cowell or Donald Trump preferably!!) and guarantee that whoever the community votes should get the job IS the person who gets the job. I think this would do a lot of things for Yahoo! :
- Increase the number of Yahoo! users significantly, especially among the younger demographic
- Increate the number of Hotjobs users significantly, especially among the younger demographic
- Get the right person for the job posted
- Get great feedback for job applicants
- Give Hotjobs free PR
- Make Yahoo seem more "trendy"
Also, this promotion would be very timely - it comes at a time when many people are desperate for a job, jobs are high priority in people's minds.. and would make people feel better about the whole process of finding a job..
This process could be repeated every few weeks with a new job..
4) Concentrate efforts on the Yahoo! branded IE and Yahoo! branded Firefox. It seems to me that every time one of these is downloaded, Yahoo! gets the chance to set the homepage and the search page of the user who downloads it, plus have all the toolbar options available to that user until such time as they uninstall it. This is an opportunity too HUGE to miss.. Put every effort into this functionality, it could mean the difference between huge increases in numbers of views, or just gently declining numbers of views. Promote these branded browsers EVERYWHERE on Yahoo! After all, Yahoo! has lots of pages to advertise on, and lots of people viewing those pages too!
5) Improve customer service. People stop using a product if they cannot work out how to use it. Dont make it so difficult to talk to a customer service employee - have LIVE CHAT on every page of Yahoo! No exceptions. You know, learning from customer feedback is the best way to improve products on the internet - but Yahoo! hides links to customer service as though it never really wants to hear from a real user!
6) Provide more flexible charting on Yahoo! Finance - do you know that many Yahoo! employees use MSN Finance purely because they can get charts for one month at a time, whereas Yahoo! Finance only allows charts by day, 5 days, 3mths, 6 mths, 1 yr, 2 yrs or 5 yrs.
These are my primary suggestions, though I have a lot lot more!
By the way I like the changes to the new Yahoo! home page, Yahoo! Profile and Yahoo! Applications, Carol.. I hope to see more in the future!
