Chris-Cuellar

This is a repost from my blog at Mint Tree Media

Today, I had the opportunity to catch the news on Yahoo's release of a new content site for women called "Shine" ok not a bad name for a news site directed at women. Here's where it gets sticky after reading the posts on techmeme and calacanis.com. Where readers are suggesting how bad a move this is on Yahoo's part primarily from a relationship perspective. Which at first glance might seem to have some substance. I couldn't help but notice for one of the first times in awhile somewhat of an intelligent business move on Yahoo's part. What struck me is something I have had on my mind all weekend "How is it that blogs are going to generate meaningful revenue for their publishers" with the housing bubble these days there has been a lot of reference in the news lately too the "tech bubble" which many feel started this mess and which some are concluding will lead to another tech bubble web 2.0. I noticed a short blurb on techmeme that seemed to jump out at me, the news release had a reference to "targeted demographics". It was all there, in others words Yahoo decided to publish a site that instead of catering to a general audience and letting an audience decide on how to filter which news was relevant to them. Yahoo aggregated content in a meaningful way to reach a demographic that had not had appropriate representation by their content providers....Finally! Something good from Yahoo. I know everyone seemed to critic this move as poor politics, and that is potentially true. However, I couldn't not ignore Yahoo's intelligent move to reach out to an audience that was currently not being served by its providers. Remember Yahoo's content network still has greater traffic volume than Google. Hence, Microsofts move to "reach out" to Yahoo shareholders in an effort to purchase Yahoo could have difficulty going through if Yahoo continues to use the relevant search demographics it receives from its audience. Jerry Yang might actually be right that the Microsoft offer maybe undervalued. Another thought to consider is this " this should actually be a call to action for Google and Microsoft to be more transparent in the information they receive about their audience and begin to share this information in a more meaniful way with their ad network". Only time will tell if this was the right thing to do for Yahoo's sake I hope it was....-Chris.

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