Comments on: The yahoos and Yahoo

By: links for 2006-11-28 « David-Black.org

links for 2006-11-28 « David-Black.org — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 02:24:46 +0000

[...] BuzzMachine Â» Blog Archive Â» The yahoos and Yahoo “I canâ€™t help but thinking that this is a meeting of old, old-media companies and the new, old-media company, Yahoo.” (tags: internet newspapers advertising classifieds recruitment yahoo) [...]

By: BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Giving up on journalism

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Giving up on journalism — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:45:56 +0000

[...] Jonathan Weber writes a damned good post explain why he is disappointed in the Yahoo/newspaper deal: The newspapers, led by Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group, are effectively punting on the opportunity to establish themselves as the dominant local source for online news, information, and advertising services. Since they are already the dominant players in the offline world, to essentially agree to go halves with Yahoo in markets they once owned is a striking admission of weakness. [...]

By: Jason Coleman

Jason Coleman — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:08:04 +0000

Ive seen two consortiums of publishers formed over the last 2 years…congoo.com and topix.net so what is this one called?

By: Craig Donato

Craig Donato — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:34:57 +0000

Jeff,

Great post.

Although I could object with your statement that classifieds is a dead category, I whole heartedly agree with your larger point. The marketplace model for classifieds, and certainly the business model surrounding it (where you pay to publish), is seriously challenged.

This deal doesn’t seem to go far enough in helping either the newspapers or Yahoo address the seismic changes going on in the classifieds market.

By: The Jeff Beckham Weblog » Statesman Part of Yahoo’s Deal with Newspapers

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:55:29 +0000

[...] The yahoos and Yahoo (Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine) [...]

By: people-powered era « bb’s notes and observations (uncut)

people-powered era « bb’s notes and observations (uncut) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:28:23 +0000

[...] How do we go to where the people are with what they need and how do we enable them to do what they want to do?â€™ [...]

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 01:58:46 +0000

Craig doesn’t prove “the Internet massacres middlemen,” as he became rich being a middleman on the Internet.

By: The Blogging Times » Yahoo Reaps Googles Sloppy Seconds

The Blogging Times » Yahoo Reaps Googles Sloppy Seconds — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 00:55:08 +0000

[...] Center for Citizen Media, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Yodel Anecdotal, Screenwerk, Teaching Online Journalism, AdJab, Rational rants, Global Nerdy, Monkey Bites, BuzzMachine, TechEffect, Mark Evans, Paul Mooney, Fine On Media, Mathew Ingram, Digital Micro-Markets, Blackfriars’ Marketing, Listics, Search Engine Journal, John Furrier, Search Engine Watch Blog, cheezhead, The Chad, Romenesko [...]

By: Delia

Delia — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:30:01 +0000

*testing, testing…*

Jeff,

I don’t know why you killed my last comment: maybe because I said “hi!” to a fellow commenter? (I figured it was just a nice thing to do… ) or because I wanted to get his input on my suggestion for NAN (is that forbidden *???*); anyways, would have been nice to know… not lastly so I could get some sort of a clue whether or not I should bother to make any more comments on your blog).

re: â€Craig didnâ€™t kill it. He was merely the first and smartest to see that the internet connects buyers and sellers directly.â€

You may well be right, but that’s certainly not Craig’s story. If you are not buying his story (that he was just a do-gooder that sort of stumbled into it) and believe that, on the contrary, he *purposefully* (out of his smarts or whatever) built a market on the internet… that’s good to know…

Delia

P.S. Ohâ€¦ and I agree with the other commenter that he *is* the middleman (for every ad where he charges a fee) — heâ€™s basically just moved a (for the most part) existing market on the internet (pretty smart thing to do! but if that would have been craigslistâ€™s declared raison dâ€™etreâ€¦ I donâ€™t think he would have gotten anywhere this farâ€¦). D.

By: Rick Waghorn

Rick Waghorn — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:37:16 +0000

Cards on table first; I’ve not proved anything yet. I’m only three months in to my grand adventure as a ’stand-alone’ journalist.
But three months in, for me, certain lessons are already apparent.
Unique and trusted content is the king - punters flock to content they know, like, trust and can’t get anywhere else. And if you’re servicing a passionate, niche market with that content, they will read every spit, dot and comma. And, on average, stay on your site for anywhere up to nine minutes per visit. Cos they care about the content.
And where the punters lead, so the advertisers follow - on the strength of my October numbers, I now ‘qualify’ to be an affiliate publisher for both Yahoo and Kelkoo. But as I also continue to service a local advertising market of LOCAL companies who have all, of late, built their own shiny, new websites but simply don’t know what to with them what I’m starting to discover is that jostling for position on a Google or Yahoo ranking - against half a dozen other PVC window manufacturers fom the same industrial estate, zip or postal code, etc, etc - is becoming a less and less attractive option.
Because it’s such a pain in the ass and, I suspect, increasingly expensive exercise trying to stand out in amongst the Google/Yahoo crowds; the more savvy - ideally - recognise the virtue/value in following the local audience to where they are actually living their web lives, on niche sites delivering the kind of content they want, where and WHEN they want it, ie not after the local newspaper’s print press has rolled.
Having come through a one-in-three redundancy process to get where I am - precarious a foothold as it may, for now, be - and with another one reportedly en route at the particular regional newspaper group I worked for, the other question on the great Yahoo/newspaper tie-in, is just how many, decent foot soldiers will be left on the ground to service the local news content that Yahoo appears to be buying into?
If that local content is provided by fresh-faced 18-year-olds barely out of the local media studies college, the punters will vote with their feet - or their mice - and click off to the nearest journalist standing alone in the midst of his niche audience and leave Yahoo/newspapers to run out their bite-sized and belated homogenised views of issues and institutions that still, in the midst of it all, remain so close to punters’ hearts.
So close that they don’t want to read an 18-year-old’s thoughts; they want it from a trusted and respected source, a professional journalist with a personality and a name - not from some faceless and increasingly byline-less Yahoo-Newspaper conglomerate.
As for the local advertisers - the second wave of small town firms and businesses newly-armed with their very own websites - they don’t want to be chewed up by the same huge processing machine. They want their name, their brand to stand alone, too.
That’s all IMHO, of course.

By: Mitch Ratcliffe

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:06:11 +0000

Jeffâ€”On the contrary, classifieds are not dead and gone, they are changing and in some markets newspapers still enjoy a huge advantage when it comes to listings. In real estate, for example, less than 20 percent of the listings market has moved online and local newspapers still hold a big lead. What they are missing out on is the other transactions around the buying or selling of a home, which is stil accessible to them if they move fast. You’re too busy trying to bury the past to recognize the changes are happening in a human scale that provides plenty of time for all players to react–not that they will do so successfully, but there’s no reason to paint the picture in black-and-white, as you do.

What’s going on is far more interesting than the idea of zombies rising from the grave to try to drag everyone back down into the past with them. It’s evolutionary.

I covered this in my blog today and in a recently published research report for The Kelsey Group.

By: mathewingram.com/media » Yahoo gets some ink on its hands too

mathewingram.com/media » Yahoo gets some ink on its hands too — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:11:02 +0000

By: Ethan

Ethan — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:10:43 +0000

Hey Jeff,
What about the Iraq War? Remember when you used to write about that? And then it goes bad and…no more.
Who can take you seriously? Who are you to lecture other people? You take a grand stance on one of the most divisive and important issues of our time, and when things become complicated, you disappear. You seem like a picture in moral cowardice to me.

By: Yahoo gets some ink on its hands too » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work

Yahoo gets some ink on its hands too » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:07:25 +0000

By: Henry Scott

Henry Scott — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:41:04 +0000

Jeff:

You say that Craig Newmark has figured out that ” the internet connects buyers and sellers directly. It massacres middlemen.” But what is Craig’s List but a middleman, a medium for connecting buyers and sellers? Sellers go to CL to post ads; buyers go to CL to read ads. Sellers used to go to newspapers to post classified ads, and buyers used to go to newspapers to read classified ads. As wonderful as the internet is (and it’s undeniable that the web is eating newspapers’ lunch), all the websites I know of “still operate on the media model of getting people to come into a centralized place” when they’re really looking for something. Sure you find ads on Google, but that’s serendipitous — the unexpected result of a search, not an action by a motivated buyer.

By: Media Blog

Media Blog — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:10:25 +0000

Jeff, I don’t think you’ve thought this through, have all the details, or, more importantly, looked at Yahoo! Local recently.

Furthermore, you’re treating this as “this is the only thing these newspaper companies are doing’ without acknowledging that this makes sense as a “one additional thing” to do. In a linked world, this is a good deal.

There’s more to this. This is a smart thing. It’s good for both Yahoo! and the participating media companies.

Also, classifieds are not dead. That is a GROSS overstatement and over simplification.

By: Ken Sands

Ken Sands — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:49:41 +0000

Jeff:
Good analysis.
So what’s a single, mid-sized, family owned newspaper supposed to do?
Wait for Google to come back with its own version of this, and hope they’ll offer us a seat at the table?
Or try to get the attention of Yahoo?
Or something entirely different?
Any thoughts?
Ken