Yahoo! Goes To Print

PreacherTom writes "In response to the 'peanut-butter' memo and a major drop in stock prices since January, Yahoo! is taking things in a new direction: local. Yesterday, they announced a partnership with 176 newspapers in an attempt to expand into local advertising. As part of the deal, newspapers will give their classified advertisers the option of also posting employment ads on Yahoo's HotJobs network. The newspapers stand to benefit by exposing customers to Yahoo's audience of 130 million unique monthly visitors while Yahoo gains a relationship with local advertisers. Revenue will then be shared."

Comments

In response?

[Anonymous Coward]

"In response to the 'peanut-butter' memo and a major drop in stock prices since January, Yahoo! is taking things in a new direction: local. Yesterday, they announced a partnership with 176 newspapers in an attempt to expand into local advertising"

Shouldn't that read "in spite of the 'peanut-butter' memo"? Clearly spreading things even thinner with a move into the print medium isn't going to help focus down on what they are doing.

postscript - my capatcha is "spastic" - don't know about the US, but here in the UK that is a word that is seen as pretty derogatory.

Re:In response?

[PreacherTom]

Disagree. It is still a focus upon online advertising as opposed to other forms of revenue generation. In fact, it gives them a unique competitive advantage over Google, which is really what they are going for anyway.

Coming Soon...

[eno2001]

...Wikipedia in bound volume format. 26 volumes updated daily at the newsstand for only 50 cents a day! Fine print: To keep the costs down please recycle the volumes daily by bringing them to the local Wikipedia print shop. Remember if everyone plays it's almost free!!!!

Yahoo! in print?

[smittyoneeach]

Yahoo! in print?
How 'bout a stint
Along the roads
As drivers squint?
Burma Shave

Compare this to Amazon's Mechanical Turk

[PHAEDRU5]

I'm afraid Yahoo will still be behind the curve, even with this initiative.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome) program is basically a jobs board, allowing matchups of skills and tasks for payment. And it's operational now.

I think that Yahoo's missed the idea that the internet makes the world flat. What's the sense of dealing with local want ads when the entire world is available to service job needs?

Re:Following Careerbuilder

[Josh Lindenmuth]

Exactly. Once again, Yahoo is playing follow the leader. Given the number of newspapers they are partnering with, it sounds like it will certainly help increase Hotjobs lagging user base (or at least the quantity of their postings). But this certainly is not going to impact Yahoo's prospects by any stretch of the imagination, particularly since CareerBuilder has already been doing this with the big conglomerates such as Gannett and Knight Ridder for at least 6 years.

The #1 portal honor is still Yahoo's to lose, but if they don't make some major changes to their search and advertising network Google will soon gain an advantage that Yahoo may not be able to counter. Considering where they get their revenue, responding to critics and investors by spending a lot of time and money propping up their ancillary businesses while search enhancements continually get delayed is just completely counterintuitive.