Yahoo to make 360 geek deals in 2006? |
So here is your GYM weather report for December 2005: Google continues to become more borg-like, Microsoft fumbles around in the dark telling us how great things are coming (including more Xbox 360 consoles) and Yahoo continues its niche search engine offerings, API frenzy and geek shopping sprees. 
The title might seem like hyperbole, but man, Yahoo just keeps on making deals and it seems like every day I’m reading or writing about something new Yahoo is doing. I could realistically see them making 360 moves in 2006. What a fitting name for their substandard free blog hosting service.
The newest Yahoo announcement being that they will be the “preferred channel” to sell Movable Type for small businesses. Ok, so maybe that’s not huge news, but as of this writing it has top billing on tech.memeorandum. It’s like a free commercial for Yahoo and Six Apart, so hopefully instead of adding to the noise, I’ll provide some additional signal.
Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it will offer commercial blogs based on Movable Type as part of its existing small business Web-site management service. Yahoo provides customers with a unique Web address, blogging tools and business-class e-mail services with spam and virus protections for less than $12 a month.
Does this make Mena spout profanities of joy? Wonder if Ben Metcalfe will call BS on this one?
Seriously, Yahoo needs to do something with their Yahoo 360 service. Wordpress.com would be much better than that broken down Chevy with one door missing. Not just Yahoo 360 that has a lame free blogging client.
(Yeah, I know, it’s free, don’t bitch about free, yadda, yadda)
It’s like all the big companies got together and said: hey let’s make blogging clients that cripples our users as much as possible. AOL, Yahoo, MSN Spaces, all of them are much too restrictive. Seems like they are so freaked out about being hacked that they can’t find a way to sandbox a truly, decent blogging client for their users — even for a fee. It is probably a legitimate concern because any breach of security leads to negative PR everywhere for them, but there is an opportunity that goes missed because they want to integrate everything into their single login/authentication. I’d be willing to have two logins instead of one if it provided a better experience on these platforms, but maybe I’m in the minority on that one?
Unfortunately all these announcements — this one clearly more good news for Six Apart than anybody else — continue to have very little impact on YHOO stock. Maybe it’s because some of these moves have been of questionable worth like buying del.icio.us for undisclosed millions. Who outside the geek sectors (myself proudly included) have even heard about del.icio.us?
This is the news that concerns me most as a shareholder and the stuff that seems to get talked about the least. Can’t wait to read how Semel spins this one in the annual report. When is the Wall Street love going to kick in for Yahoo? They are making moves, they are clearly the most active of the GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) camps, so where is the stock love? When does that start kicking in?
Scoble, this is why Microsoft won’t give you the checkbook. Spending the money doesn’t seem to be making any noticeable difference on the bottom line. Sure, it’s a hit with the early adopters and geeks (myself proudly included) but John Q. Investor doesn’t seem to be that impressed.
Meanwhile, Apple is kicking ass and taking numbers (check out their stock over the last year) with their expensive but brilliantly designed hardware and subpar software that even Woz bashes. The Apple renassicance is upon us, thanks to the iPod and iTMS for paving the way.
Did this post make you go hmm?
(Hmm, no ratings yet)
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ON YAHOO! GETTING COZIER WITH SIX APART WITH MOVABLE TYPE
JUST YOUR TYPE? Well, Yahoo! is the first of the GYMAAAE companies getting a little closer with Six Apart, one of the biggest PRIVATE companies in the blog hosting, software and services business. As this Reuters story explains it:Yahoo Inc. and Six Ap…
Trackback by *michael parekh on IT* — December 12, 2005 @ 2:27 pm PST
The problem is that NONE of these services have done a decent job with INTEGRATION. Integrating features, and/or making at least consistent interfaces. In some cases, I can understand keeping separate feels… Blogger and AdWords, for instance, should never have similar UIs. But AdSense and AdWords? GMail and GReader? The dissimularities… and the utter lack of talking to each other… are both baffling and frustrating.
Yahoo’s done a bit of a better job in integration, but not by much. I mean, heck, look at their recent comment about how MyWeb and del.icio.us will “borrow some great features from each other” or something like that. EARTH TO YAHOO: These are both ridiculously similar services, in goals, at least. Talking about “borrowing” rather than intelligent integration is just plain stupidity.
IMHO, that’s why Yahoo’s stock price hasn’t budged much. The mass consumer — Y!’s bread and butter (did you actually think geeks clicked on ads? Ha! :D) isn’t going to care much for new Y! services unless they’re an integral part of things he or she does everyday already… e-mail and instant messaging, for instance.
As for Microsoft… well, it’s hard to even talk about that huge company as a single entity. Xbox, MSN, Windows… you get my drift.
Comment by Adam — December 12, 2005 @ 4:54 pm PST
Great points, Adam. Google does need to work on integration. I wonder if the reason they haven’t been very good at this so far is because everybody is working on these projects separately and they are just trying to pull them together as experiments and if they are successful then go through the work of integrating them?
As for Yahoo and integration, remember the minor Flickr revolt when they tried to join accounts there. It’s a very delicate thing merging users.
Comment by TDavid — December 12, 2005 @ 7:38 pm PST