Yahoo! Weekly News October 21, 2005

YAHOO! CORPORATE

Yahoo!'s Semel Talks New, New Media
(Extracted from Cnet News.Com, October 6, 2005) At the Web 2.0 Conference 2005, sponsored by Yahoo!, Google, MSN Search and others, Terry Semel said Yahoo! is blazing a trail as a new, new media company, rooted in technology and committed to distributing traditional media and new types of user-generated content that invite interactivity. "In the 20th century, media was about content and distribution," he said in a formal "conversation" session. "I see us as a 21st century technology company that drives great media," he said. Yahoo wants to "help design the future of what content may be on the Internet."

Yahoo! Who Knew?
(Extracted from The Hollywood Reporter, September 30, 2005) In 10 years, Yahoo! has gone from a dorm room to dominance. Now everyone wants to join the party. Yahoo!'s secret to success has been adaptation and opportunism. Founded in 1994 by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo and incorporated in 1995, the portal originally was no more than a collection of Internet placeholders -- but as the Internet grew in popularity, so did demand for the ability to ferret out what the masses want to see and read online. During its first six years, Yahoo! grew from nothing to $1 billion in revenue. Since 2001, the portal has increased its value nearly tenfold to a market capitalization of $47.1 billion.

Yahoo! Acquires Upcoming.org
(Extracted from Associated Press Newswires, October 5, 2005) Yahoo! has acquired Upcoming.org, an online event planning site that's expected to infuse the Internet powerhouse with more content about local communities. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company confirmed the deal late Tuesday without disclosing financial terms of the acquisition. Los Angeles-based Upcoming acts as a social calendar that depends on its users to post free listings about a wide range of upcoming events, from local rock concerts to picnics in the park. Because Upcoming revolves around social networking, Upcoming eventually might be blended into "Yahoo 360," a social networking and blogging section the company is testing. The listings about concerts also shape up as a logical fit with Yahoo's music offerings.

YAHOO! MEDIA GROUP

Is Yahoo! Public Enemy No. 1 for Big Media?
(Extracted from Online Journalism Review, October 5, 2005) Yahoo! has always worked closely with media companies. But as Yahoo! News rolls out original content, has Big Media's ally become a challenger? Scott Moore, vice president of content operations at Yahoo!, stressed that the Net giant's aims were peaceful. "We have I think 70 different news publishers who have relationships with us," Moore told me. "I don't think any of them will be threatened by this. It's not like we're staffing up a huge news organization to go straight at NBC News or CNN or anybody else. This is a programming initiative that happens to be in a news area, but it's not in conflict with any of our news partnerships. In fact, this might be an opportunity to work with those news partners when something happens”.

YAHOO! HOTJOBS

Yahoo!'s HotJobs.com is... Up, Not Down?
(Extracted from BusinessWeek Online, October 4, 2005) A few days ago, I talked with Daniel Finnigan, general manager of Yahoo's HotJobs.com career site. I have to admit that I begun our conversation by asking Finnigan what was wrong with HotJobs.com, which has been steadily falling farther behind competitors CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com in traffic over the past year. And Finnigan told me that sales growth, not traffic, is a metric I should have looked at, instead. This quarter, Finnigan says the site should post its highest year-over-year revenue growth in history. The online jobs marketplace has changed drastically over the past year. Employers no longer flock to job sites that attract the most applicants or the most traffic. They look for sites that can deliver them qualified applicants cost-effectively, instead. HotJobs.com may be ahead of online jobs market leaders CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com in adapting to this new reality.

YAHOO! SEARCH

Yahoo!-Backed Alliance to Open Web Library
(Extracted from Associated Press, October 2, 2005) Internet powerhouse Yahoo! is setting out to build a vast online library of copyrighted books that pleases publishers — something rival Google Inc. hasn't been able to achieve. The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo! is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors, said David Mandelbrot, Yahoo!'s vice president of search content. "My feeling is we are doing something new here," Mandelbrot said. "We are building a collaborative effort that will make a great deal of copyrighted material available in a way that's acceptable to the creators. That is novel."

YAHOO! SPORTS

Yahoo! Blitzes Fantasy Foes
(Extracted from The Street.com, October 1, 2005) If you're stuck with Chad Pennington on your roster, you may have had it with fantasy football. But for Yahoo! and its rivals, the game is just getting started. The Yahoo! Fantasy Sports Web site attracted 5.6 million unique visitors in August, according to comScore Media Metrix. That was about double the 2.9 million registered by Disney's ESPN.Com, the next largest service, comScore said. Beyond Yahoo!'s quest for ad dollars, fantasy football offers a chance to introduce people to more features, said David Katz, head of Sports and Entertainment for Yahoo! Media Group, which includes fantasy games. "You are talking about some of the most engaged users that you can find on the Internet," he says in an interview. "This is the kind of thing that sponsors don't need a lot of cajoling into. From a sales standpoint, it has been a terrific experience."