Yahoo! continues quest for youth with yet another acquisition Marissa Mayer has continued her acquisitions spree with the purchase of gaming software house PlayerScale for an undisclosed sum. "We are happy to announce the next big step toward our goal of building the best possible gaming infrastructure platform: we have been acquired by Yahoo!" said PlayerScale's CEO Jesper Jensen. "And …
"Our users are older," she acknowledged during a question and answer session, and Mayer knows it's a problem she's got to fix. There are 18 years-olds graduating from high schools across the land who weren't even conceived when Yahoo.com first went live on people's desktops and its core user base is aging fast."
Can't help but feel all these acquisitions are a cry of desperation.... You don't hear google or facebook talk this way. I said it before, Yahoo is just Excite on Life Support. Not that I relish this. I fear Google is the new Microsoft bully in the playground!
It is actually a concern. I recall dropping Yahoo as my frontpage back when every time I would fire it up, there with be pictures of Britney Spears on my newsfeed. Entertainment news was the last thing I wanted to see.
I like having a good frontpage when I log in. I like having a pain where I can see news headlines, weather. A few other commonly used tools. I currently use igoogle for that, but it is getting sunsetted. (I just went back over to Yahoo.com and guess what.. A picture of Jennifer Aniston. Followed by an announcement about the cast of an Anna Nicole Smith movie. Then, a still from the Hangover with a fake controversy/publicity blurb. The All News section is about the NY Jets. There is a remarkable lack of news in the news sections of their front page... sigh).
Yahoo did some interesting engineering in its day. But, they date from the push era of content providing and its not customizable. Seriously, does the age of average user matter if they can customize their interaction and interests?
I am not a fan of Mayer, but overall, she is shaking things up. She is making some of the right moves. The purchases do seem to be aimed at a full suite of complimentary services. (Honestly, at this point, I would not be the least bit surprised to see her go after something like myspace or other social connection service. That does seem to be their missing piece).
They have a pretty solid news service, even if I don't like the presentation. They have a pretty decent catalog of film uploading, music, and assorted other services. Hmm.. actually, Yahoo is almost completely complimentary to the services Twitter provides. And, Twitter is looking to go public, which indicates a cash-out for the initial investors and cash raising for further development.
I wish Yahoo would invest into a better Anti-virus program for their servers and also force the users to make their password stronger. We had to block users from accessing there Yahoo e-mail just because they would bring in viruses into the network. We doesn't have this issue with Gmail.
Zefy
Change the name if you are going to change your base and offerings.
I suggest RegWeb, everything you desire under on one roof.
On the subject of roofs, perhaps slate or asbestos.com might do the trick.
The thought is, most providers have either been bought out or become extinct through natural evolution (nothing innovative). punters love something new.
However, changing your name (millstone) might help.
WooHoo, YeeHa, PhuckMi and ShitheBed are are open to potential corp offers
"We can't have old users
They've got money to spend and that's not web 2.0. We prefer the web 2.0 way, making flashy unprofitable websites to bring the yoof in and hoping someone buys us out."
Hilarious. If only Yahoo tried to differentiate itself somehow, i.e. by offering more privacy instead of less chasing the race to the bottom following Google. Why chase a market anyway, that's so young its likely to dump you in a heart-beat once something more shiny and trendy comes along...
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