Yahoo! Weekly News Dec. 29, 2006

YAHOO! CORPORATE

The Year in Review
(Extracted from Associated Press, December 28, 2006) Yahoo! continued work on "Project Panama" this year, a much-anticipated and long-delayed set of improvements to its search and online advertising technology. Yahoo!'s upgrade is expected to help close the ad-revenue gap with Google. The year was not without some bright spots for the company: Yahoo! expanded its mobile advertising efforts in the U.S. and made a deal with eBay Inc. to exclusively provide the online auctioneer's display advertising. It beefed up its free Web-based e-mail and online real estate offerings. The company also tried to match Google's experimental foray into newspaper advertising with one of its own. In November, Yahoo! teamed with more than 150 newspapers to provide online classifieds and other advertising services. In December, Yahoo! responded to the year's woes with an organizational overhaul. The company said it will consolidate operations into three groups focused on its audience, advertising network and behind-the-scenes technology, and made some top management changes.

Welcoming Startups into Yahoo!'s Fold
(Extracted from San Francisco Chronicle, December 24, 2006) Over the past 18 months, Yahoo! has acquired an impressive lineup of startup companies that embody the spirit of what is known as Web 2.0. Yahoo! hopes to use these acquisitions to capitalize on the philosophical linchpins of the 2.0 movement -- community and sharing -- to re-establish its dominance. The buying binge has netted Flickr, a popular photo-sharing site; Del.icio.us, a place to store and share bookmarks of favorite Web sites; Jumpcut, a site for editing and sharing digital video; Upcoming.org, a site for planning activities; and Bix, which lets anyone create a contest online. Fine-tuning the integration process is key to Yahoo!'s success. Yahoo! has been ahead of Google in many aspects of social media, including sharing photos and making its technology available to other companies. And most of Google's traffic comes from its popular search engine, while its other offerings haven't found large audiences.

Yahoo! Delves into Microeconomics
(Extracted from IDG News Service, December 28, 2006) Yahoo! Inc. is researching areas such as microeconomics to help it better understand the behavior of users, or of advertisers in areas such as keyword auctions. Microeconomics is an area that Yahoo! views as fundamental to its business, and Yahoo! Research has created a department focused on research in this area. As a billion people use Yahoo! services, each with their own divergent motivations, Yahoo! needs to understand microeconomics well in order to tailor its services and price them for maximum value to all the participants, including users, advertisers, and the company. Yahoo! Research has also set up a team of ethnographers, cognitive psychologists and sociologists to research new media experiences that will promote the formation of online communities. The Sunnyvale, California, company is also planning to set up a research lab in India, and is already scouting for staff for the lab. The lab will start to hire researchers in computer science, but may also hire staff trained in the humanities such as economists, sociologists, and ethnographers, depending on their availability.

YAHOO! SEARCH

Consumers Submit To Yahoo! Local
(Extracted from WebProNews, December 27, 2006) Yahoo! turns to its continued growth in social media to help fill its business listings in Yahoo! Local with more relevant and timely information about local companies. Social media paid off big for Yahoo! in 2006 as its Answers product caught on in a big way with Yahoo! users. The company wants to ride that lightning again in a potentially more lucrative way. Business listings on Yahoo! Local picked up an injection of social media features with the latest update announced for it. Consumer Submit allows anyone to add and edit business listings appearing in the index. Yahoo! includes a map of the business location, and options for searching for more details about it, including a link to Yahoo! Answers. We see the potential of such information being useful, if used properly, for Yahoo! in its efforts to capitalize on the growing local search market.