Yahoo Steers New Road Forward

Three years into the future, Yahoo Inc of Sunnyvale, California plans to be helming a company with the largest digital media content, search engine,  and communications business in the world. The three year roadmap of Yahoo under Carol Bartz was delivered by Chief Product Officer Blake Irving. The division between the projected goals of media and the concrete focus on products perhaps tells the tale.

Yahoo wants to be innovative, but has yet to master Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo News is trite and often misspelled, but Yahoo aims to keep people at its sites longer. Yahoo.com is stuffed with ads and Java code on loading, but it is strangely losing email customers to other vendors.Yahoo has middle ground presence in the domains business and its hosting offerings are not competitive among first tier web hosts, yet is splashes web hosting offers to bargoon domain sale buyers.

A fitting prescription to Yahoo’s vaulting ambitions might be Physician: heal thyself. The chief strengths that made Yahoo.com a leader, (remember sites by Homestead!) were its early adopter user base, frist to market search engine vibe, and broad free-Web appeal. Yahoo now suffers from Google-itis, the wish to be Google without harnessing its resources of business model. Yahoo is not aging well.

Yahoo intends to recapture search engine utility. Reality check to end users: When was the last time you searched Yahoo first? The SEO space is dominated by market leaders. Some might argue Google is already there, but Google has not entered the content space, and with the purchase of Associated Content, Yahoo has. The usual noise regarding Twitter and Facebook integration was heard.

Yes Google is global, a T-Rex of Internet monoliths. Yahoo was sort of the friendly Triceratops with the bristly head who was a herbivore but left a big footprint, as well. But Yahoo has suffered declining ad revenue and inroads of spam and email problems, and Gmail remains successful. Leaning on an Apple user base may also be a waste if the Windows 7 Phone takes off, because foremost on the “product runway” at Yahoo is Android apps.

But Yahoo doesn’t make or produce the consumer electronics it hypes. There are several other channels for consumer to go for that. With 17% market share, Yahoo’s web search engine is hardly the main attraction, now although it once was. The journalism of its home page leaves much to be desired, (part CNN and part OMG). Yahoo features are blogospheric in strength, with sports the best in a readability drilldown.

The only faintly new thing Yahoo is doing is fashioning a geo-specific Starbucks login page, (Which will still be heaps better than what Starbucks brews up).  Heading up Yahoo news this last weekend was how to save money at a Starbucks, an interesting marketing approach to a partner’s goods. But if Associated Content can groom its new model for Yahoo News, then supply-side content writers can enter the Yahoo journalism fray.

One spark at the end of a long tedious tunnel is Yahoo’s refreshed domain offer at $1.99 per dot-com name. Touted as a Small Business offering, the web hosting attached does approach the Godaddy similar pricing available at present. For hobby site makers and bloggers and one domain owners who never plan to go the third party development application route, this is a steal. But Godaddy’s Hosting Connection still rules those waves.

For domainers looking at the recent dot-com and renewal price markup, with a Yahoo $1.99 name their Paypal will say Yahoo! Although the renewal is $35, many Yahoo email users may prefer a short lightbulb-to-login web hosting and domaining click path. Full DNS control at Yahoo.com domains makes exporting to the hosting of your choice more smooth than before.

From the Crystal Ball: If Yahoo ever got their hands around the 99 cents domain coupon like Godaddy’s recent campaign, they would be looking at 5,000 new domain owners an hour looking for fresh content.Those are new email account holders, new Android holders looking to manage their websites or blog while in line for a latte. Starbucks is a partner, correct?

Developing those sites tutorials could be the pages that Yahoo wants ts readers to hang around at. And a limited time domain-establishing SEO content  package, with link wheeling advice and promotion tips, as well as material piped from Associated Content partners (on a select basis, of course) could bring Yahoo into the white-hot Internet domain development scene.

Domain Market Update

The recent six figure domain sales have given rise to the hopes of many a aftermarket domainer in these troubled economic times. Whereas some domainers may see a shrinking buyer’s market, other experts disagree. Noted domain bloggers have been consistently commenting on the healthy resale market and auction robustness catching the domainer headlines of late.

The legitimate monetary revenues derived from domaining have not shrunk so much as sharply diversified into more competitive markets. Domain development and domain resale via auction sales seem as healthy as they were in pre-recession late 2008. Furthermore, shifts in the domain marketplace, such as the closing of Bido and the auction privileges extended by certain registrars to some auction sites, symbolize not the expiration but the maturation of the domain market.

Domain sales across all TLD’s can still be savored, but the bonanza market of the initial land grab is past over with. Career domainers with specialized long game interests and savvy marketing skills can promote their chosen domain sale with an optimum chance of ultimate domain profit from resale. Choosing development options, hosting accounts, parking page and template versiosn as well as direct domain marketing to possible buyers brings the steady domain money home.