This Week's Headlines

Yahoo! to Shorten Logs of User Activity to 3 Months
(Extracted from The Associated Press, December 17, 2008) Yahoo! Inc. said Wednesday that it will shorten the amount of time that it retains data about its users' online behavior - including Internet search records - to three months from 13 months and expand the range of data that it "anonymizes" after that period. The company's new privacy policy comes amid mounting concerns among regulators and lawmakers from Washington to Europe about how much data big Internet companies are collecting on their users and how that information is being used. Yahoo!'s announcement also ratchets up the pressure on rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to follow its lead. Under Yahoo!'s new policy, the company will strip out portions of users' IP addresses, alter small tracking files known as "cookies" and delete other potential personally identifiable information after 90 days in most cases. In cases involving fraud and data security, the company will anonymize the data after six months. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! also said it will expand the scope of data that it anonymizes to encompass not only search engine logs, but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. That information is used to personalize online content and advertising. Anne Toth, vice president of policy and head of privacy for Yahoo!, said the company is adopting the new policy to build trust with users and differentiate it from its competitors. Yahoo! also hopes to take the issue of data retention "off the table" by showing that Internet companies can regulate themselves, Toth said. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, praised Yahoo! for setting a new standard on privacy protection and said Google, Microsoft and other companies will now be compared against that standard.

Yahoo! Puts Meat on Open Strategy Bones
(Extracted from CNET News.com, December 15, 2008) Yahoo! on Monday flipped the on switch for a massive project to increase activity--and advertising--on its Internet sites through social connections and online applications. The company has been working mostly behind the scenes to build what it calls the Yahoo! Open Strategy, but now the strategy's changes will become evident to U.S. users of some of Yahoo!'s main properties such as Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, and Yahoo!'s music and TV sites. In addition, the company will begin previewing a new Yahoo! Toolbar later this week. "We wanted to establish a social dimension," Ash Patel, executive vice president of Yahoo!'s audience products division, said of the Yahoo! Open Strategy goals. And to attract programmers who can build applications on Yahoo! properties, "We wanted to engage with the developer community and to open up the power of Yahoo!'s products and platforms." Yahoo! Mail, which according to ComScore has about 275 million active users each month, gets some significant changes, with more to come. "The opening of the mail platform is a huge benefit to users in terms of the additional forms of sharing and communication we can build in and to the developers who can build applications," said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo! Mail. It's not all fun and games. Building use of Yahoo! into members' social lives and letting them use applications housed on Yahoo! sites means more advertising for Yahoo!. And Patel believes the ads that can be delivered with the social context--for example clicking on the Yahoo! Music page for an album a friend just rated highly--will provide valuable context for advertisers. "Targeted (ad) inventory sells better than untargeted inventory," Patel said. The Yahoo! Open Strategy theoretically could help Yahoo! not just keep up with the Joneses, but leapfrog them. Yahoo!'s new strategy, though, is tuned to its own assets. Google has got a powerful search engine, but its online community is nascent compared to Yahoo!'s. Facebook and MySpace have got social ties, but not Yahoo!'s breadth of finance, sports, entertainment, news, and communications. Yahoo! Open Strategy is a recipe not easily reproduced in full by Yahoo! competitors. The Yahoo! Mail change is one of a host announced Monday. Among others: Yahoo! also announced changes to its customizable home page, My Yahoo!, that lets people add applications and customize the page's appearance. A new toolbar for Web browsers also gets drop-down interactivity that can show what a person's contacts are doing, what e-mail has been received, and other information.

Yahoo! Shows Ads in IM Chat Windows
(Extracted from CNET News.com, December 17, 2008) Yahoo! Messenger long has shown ads on its buddy list window, but the Internet pioneer is testing them in the instant-messaging chat windows as well. The ads are part of a test that began in August and ends in December, Yahoo! said in a statement. "Ads in Yahoo! Messenger will allow us to put even more resources behind developing and delivering valuable free features and services," Yahoo! said. "Yahoo! Messenger is a free service to our users, and our goal is to provide a useful and relevant experience while ensuring this is a profitable business for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is inherently an advertising-driven business."

Yahoo! Idles Jumpcut, Steers Video Users to Flickr
(Extracted from CNET News.com, December 17, 2008) Yahoo! has shut down new uploads to its Jumpcut service for sharing and combining videos, steering people instead to its Flickr service. Jumpcut now steers users to Yahoo!'s photo-sharing site Flickr, which got video abilities earlier this year. Jumpcut won't be shut down, and existing videos won't be deleted. Jumpcut let people upload and share videos, but also combine them into larger works. This option is still available for existing videos, but people's remixed videos can't be downloaded. "Jumpcut was built to assemble your movies in real-time so you wouldn't have to wait for rendering. The flip-side of this design means there's no single 'file to download," the site said. "There are third-party tools like http://www.clipnabber.com that you can use to get a partial download of your Jumpcut movies in .flv format, but the files created won't include any titles, transitions or effects that you added using the Jumpcut editor."

Most Trusted Companies; Survey Finds Privacy an Increasing Concern to Consumers; Google No Longer Among Top 20
(Extracted from The San Francisco Chronicle, December 15, 2008) Facebook, Apple, Yahoo!, Verizon and FedEx for the first time have made an annual ranking of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States. Google, however, dropped off the list, released today by the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe in San Francisco, as did Countrywide Financial, Bank of America (which acquired Countrywide) and Weight Watchers. At No. 1, for the fourth year in a row, was American Express, followed by eBay, IBM, Amazon and Johnson & Johnson. This the fifth year the survey has been conducted.

Yahoo! Invests in Indian Phone Directory Search Firm
(Extracted from PC World, December 18, 2008) Yahoo! has bought a 30 percent stake in Info Network Management Company (INMAC), a company in Chennai in south India that specializes in telephone directory search. Users in India will now be able to access information about local businesses and services through Yahoo! Web sites such as Yahoo! Local -- and also by phone through the Call Ezee service offered by INMAC, said Keith Nilsson, senior vice president and head of emerging markets at Yahoo!. Starting with data integration of the two companies' lists, Yahoo! also plans to look at other ways of integrating the business models of INMAC and Yahoo!, Nilsson said. The deal gives Yahoo! representation on the company's board, the company said. Yahoo! also has a revenue-sharing agreement with INMAC, Nilsson said. INMAC expects the funding provided by Yahoo! to enable it to continue to develop its team and technology as it seeks to triple its reach across India over the next two years. The Indian local search market is seeing significant changes, as consumers are increasingly using mobile phones to search for and find local businesses, Nilsson said.

Attack of The Purple People Meeters: An Ex-Yahoo! Helps Other Ex-Yahoos
(Extracted from The Wall Street Journal BoomTown Blog, December 15, 2008) Here's an interesting site, created by an ex-Yahoo! for ex-Yahoos to help them find jobs. Launched today by Ryan Kuder (along with a non-Yahoo!, Jonathan Tarud), it's called the Purple People Collective. Purple, of course, is the main color at Yahoo! and "bleed purple" is one of its favorite expressions. Kuder explains the new project on the site: When I was laid off in February, one of the frustrating things was that the daily professional contact that I had with my co-workers evaporated. If only there was a place where we could all get together and proudly say, 'We got laid off, and we can help you!' it would be a hell of a lot easier for the recruiters to find us. So when Yahoo! went through its second round of layoffs on December 10, the Purple People Collective was born. Hopefully it can help match up some folks in need of short term work with some folks who need short term work."

Yahoo! Offers Severance with a Soft Landing
(Extracted from CNET News.com, December 12, 2008) A pink slip for corporate America's newly laid off typically means a severance package and a "see ya." But when Yahoo! issued its layoff notices to 10 percent of its workforce on Wednesday, it came with a twist, according to several sources. Yahoo!'s 1,520 pink-slipped employees will remain on the payroll through February 13, retaining the ability to continue vesting any options that may come available through that separation date. By the same token, those laid off employees will be "on call" to answer any questions that those who will be taking up the slack may have.

Search Results Show Delicious Remains a Tech Niche
(Extracted from CNET News.com, December 19, 2008) There's no doubt the Internet enables a new level of social engagement--e-mail was, after all, its first killer app--but social bookmarking looks to me like it's been relegated to a techie niche. Yahoo! showed some evidence Thursday by publishing the top searches of 2008 for its Delicious service, which lets people store, tag, and share bookmarks. Nowhere on the list was Britney Spears, the prevailing top result for mainstream search engines. Instead, Delicious shows a search profile with a tech-savvy tilt.