The UI has been improved somewhat since I last looked at it. As an app search tool it’s quite nice. Neither Google nor Bing offer anything comparable in their main search engines. Of course users can search directly for Android apps in the Android Market.

Somewhat ironically one of the mobile apps that Yahoo discontinued in a recent purge of mobile products was the Yahoo mobile equivalent of app search for the PC (AppSpot). Here’s what it looked like when it launched in June, 2011:

Other mobile apps recently shuttered by Yahoo include the following:

• Yahoo Meme (iPad and iPhone)
• Yahoo Mim (iPad)
• Yahoo Answers (Android)
• Yahoo AppSpot (Android and iPhone)
• Yahoo Deals (iPhone)
• Yahoo Finance (BlackBerry)
• Yahoo Movies (Android)
• Yahoo News (Android)
• Yahoo Shopping (iPhone)
• Yahoo Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone)

The apps will continue to function but won’t be “supported” or updated, according to a Yahoo statement.

Related Entries

• Yahoo Shutters 10 Mobile Apps
• Yahoo Q4 Blah: Display & Search Down Slightly
• Yahoo Expands Facebook Integration To 26 More Sites
• US Mobile Ad Projections Revised Upward: $2.6 Billion In 2012
• Study: 69 Percent Access The Mobile Internet Daily
• Pew: 19 Percent Of Americans Now Own Tablets, eReaders

In appointing Thompson, Yahoo is choosing a leader with a deeper technology and product background than prior CEO Carol Bartz who was abruptly terminated last September. In the interim Yahoo CFO Tim Morse has been serving as CEO.

Not going to sell itself now

There had been an expectation that Yahoo was going to sell itself or a significant minority stake to a private equity buyer or another company (perhaps even Microsoft). However the appointment of Thompson would seem to contradict that scenario. (Update: Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in the Thompson press release that the company was still considering a sale of assets.)

Thompson was PayPal’s CTO prior to being named president. Before that he worked for a technology subsidiary of Visa. And before Visa he was CIO of Barclays Global Investors. The Yahoo board undoubtedly likes Thompson’s resume, which offers a diverse mix of skills and capabilities.

PayPal has been eBay’s most successful business unit of late, outshining its parent. Thompson’s departure from PayPal will be something of a blow but probably only a temporary one to the payments platform, which is seeking to establish a leadership position in mobile.

The larger and more important question is whether Thompson has the capacity to bring new vigor and focus to Yahoo, the company and the brand — both of which badly need innovation and energy. Another question is whether he’ll seek to bring in his own team or do any sort of reorganization. Numerous personnel changes and reorgs over the past few years have been damaging to Yahoo morale and momentum.

Confronting a range of challenges

Thompson and a renewed focus on product could help stabilize Yahoo. But what we might call “structural” changes in the online ad market (including the rise of Facebook and Google in display) have perhaps irrevocably eroded Yahoo’s once dominant leadership in its bread and butter segment: display advertising. Thompson is also going to be inheriting a search deal that has underperformed and failed to live up to revenue expectations for Yahoo.

What Thompson is not is an advertising or media executive. However current Yahoo EVPs Blake Irving and Ross Levinsohn can more than compensate in those areas, provided that they’re retained or stay, as the case may be.

Mobile is another area that Yahoo badly needs to focus on. While it had an early leadership position in mobile product development and advertising that has been entirely erased by Google in the past two years. Thompson’s knowledge of and experience with the mobile market may also be extremely helpful to Yahoo.

Does he have the right mix of skills?

I had earlier written that Yahoo needed to find its own version of Steve Jobs. That may be too much too ask. But perhaps in Thompson Yahoo will get a fresh start with a new CEO who has the right mix of knowledge, skills and temperament to pull the company out of its protracted slide.

Below is a video from the 2009 Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco at which Thompson spoke about PayPal and mobile payments.

Postscript: Yahoo has officially confirmed Thompson’s appointment as CEO. Yahoo Board Chairman Roy Bostock also indicated in the press release that the company is still considering a sale of some of its assets:

“Scott’s primary focus will be on the core business, and as CEO and director, he will work closely with the Board as we continue the strategic review process to identify the best approaches for the Company and its shareholders. As part of this process, Yahoo! is considering a wide range of opportunities for the Company’s business, as well as specific investments or dispositions of assets,” added Bostock.

Postscript II: Now a couple of reactions from financial analysts who cover Yahoo. They’re consistent, seeing Thompson as a positive hire but expressing some concern about his lack of experience with digital advertising.

Mark Mahaney, Citi:

We Are Marginally Positive On YHOO’s CEO Hire – Mr. Thompson was with PayPal for the past five years – he has been CEO of PayPal since 2008 and before that he was SVP and CTO of PayPal . . . We believe Mr. Thompson has strong technical and organizational skills (like Carol Bartz) and should bring that rigor to Yahoo!. His track record at PayPal was excellent. However, we are somewhat concerned that he does not have strong media/advertising experience, which we believe Yahoo! needs, given the structural issues surrounding the company’s Search and Display initiatives. And by selecting Mr. Thompson, Yahoo! is explicitly pursuing a Growth strategy, whereas we believe a Value strategy might be more appropriate.

Ben Schachter, Macquarie Capital (USA):

We’ve always been impressed with how Scott Thompson led PayPal, and believe that his experience and track record of execution rank him amongst the Internet sector’s more capable executives. YHOO should benefit from Thomspon’s leadership, but we must admit that we find the appointment somewhat surprising given Thompson’s background as a specialist in the online payments/technology space. YHOO has been in the midst of an identity crisis, unsure of its place on the Internet. We look forward to seeing how Scott defines Yahoo, but at this very early stage that vision remains unclear. All else equal, we would have preferred to see the Board hire a candidate with deeper experience in the online advertising/media space, but Thompson could surprise by defining and executing YHOO’s vision in an unexpected way.

There were four announcements, lead by the formal unveiling of Livestand, Yahoo’s long-promised tablet news reader application. It competes with Flipboard, CNN’s Zite, AOL Editions, Taptu, Pulse and others.

Here is a quick summary of the four announcements:

• Livestand: Described as a “personalized living magazine,” it’s a mix of Yahoo’s own content and third party content. There will be ad-supported and subscription based content on Livestand. Irving also demo’d “living ads” for Livestand, which offered rich media interactivity.
• IntoNow is a tablet-based TV companion app. Yahoo said that in the past six months it has seen traffic “double” from tablets. According to the PR materials, “IntoNow identifies what people are watching, whether live or recorded; shows related content and personalized recommendations; and enables discussions with friends.”
• Yahoo Mail was also upgraded for iPad with more visual content and “personalized news, local weather, and Trending Now videos.”
• Yahoo Weather (for Android): Yahoo introduced a richer weather application for Android devices, with images from Flickr (tied to time and location)

Among the four apps, IntoNow is the most interesting from afar.

Before and after the main announcements and demos, there was considerable of discussion of various Yahoo technologies (“CORE”). It was Yahoo again asserting “hey, we’re a technology company.” Yahoo also showcased “fresh faces” from startups the company had acquired. There was also an interesting discussion of a new emphasis on “design” at Yahoo, which seemed to be taking a page from the Steve Jobs playbook.

Yahoo also spent time discussing social integration across its properties and apps. The company spoke in particular about myriad social tools now being rolled out for Yahoo News. My sense of many of these features is that they were a bit “forced” and cumbersome but Yahoo cited traffic stats to suggest they were working or would work to engage audiences.

I was asked by someone after the event was over, “does this move the needle?”

Whether or not Yahoo sees any traffic benefits from these apps, Yahoo is doing the right thing in seeking to re-establish momentum in mobile and build apps that associate its brand with innovation and “cool stuff” rather than simply management turmoil.

Speaking of which, to his credit, Blake Irving acknowledged the uncertainty about Yahoo’s future. But Irving also sought to put to rest a persistent issue that has dogged the company for the past several years. He rhetorically asked and answered the question “what is Yahoo?” He said, “Yahoo is the premier digital media company. Full stop.”

Mobile (and increasingly desktop) apps are are an important new content category that Seth believes must be addressed by search. Accordingly, this evening Yahoo is launching app search for the PC and a mobile app-search app, called AppSpot, for iPhone and Android. Eventually Yahoo wants to index RIM and Windows Phone apps, Seth told me.

Both app search on the PC and the AppSpot mobile apps are intended to make apps more discoverable and provide more context to users. App search will be available in general Yahoo search but also have its own dedicated “vertical” area. Apps will also show up in Yahoo Search Direct.

Beyond simply indexing apps, as mentioned, Yahoo has created a rich environment on the PC with additional content that helps users both discover and evaluate new apps. There’s a carousel that circulates top apps in each category. You can also search by keyword (“Angry Birds”) or category (“games for kids”) or browse by category (e.g., entertainment, education, productivity). There will also be personalized recommendations as users engage with app search and the AppSpot.

Each app profile page (see below) offers screenshots, descriptions, ratings and pricing information. And you can filter by free, paid and top apps. Numerous (though certainly not all) apps have been reviewed by Yahoo editorial writers.

On the profile page you also see a list of “trending apps” (like trending search queries) based on a range of signals, including search queries and social mentions (not just downloads). Seth says the Yahoo app search environment is intended to be highly dynamic and offer changes throughout the day rather than a static list of top downloads.

When users click on a yellow “buy” button they’re taken to a window that either sends them to the relevant app store or initiates a text message to enable downloading directly on the phone.

The mobile app, AppSpot, is not quite as polished an environment (at least the Android version that I tested). However it offers the same content in a slightly different UI presentation. Seth said that app search would be coming to Yahoo mobile search as well.

Here are some of the features of app search as explained by Yahoo:

• Daily Personal Picks:  Unlike ‘Top Apps’ lists that provide the same apps day after day, you’ll get new, personalized app suggestions on a daily basis, so you’re always introduced to the latest, most interesting, and relevant apps.
• More Precise Results: Using Yahoo!’s sophisticated search technology, quickly zero-in on an app by showing matching app titles as well as related keywords as you type
• Related Apps: Discover similar apps within the “more apps you’ll love” section to find related apps that best match your needs.
• At-a-Glance Shopping: Review the price, overall star ratings, screenshots, and description all on one screen to avoid the endless scrolling.
• Fast & Easy Downloads: Direct links to the specific app pages within the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace make downloading an app a snap.

Especially on the PC I think Yahoo has done a nice job indexing and building context around apps to offer users multiple ways to discover new apps. Yahoo partner Bing recently integrated iPhone app search into is mobile web upgrade.

Right now there’s no advertising or other real monetization (beyond the modest affiliate revenue) associated with Yahoo app search or AppSpot. Eventually however Yahoo will allow advertising in these areas.

For those who weren’t fast enough or weren’t there I’ve pulled a few of what I think are the salient mobile data points and slides from these sessions. However this is only a partial summary.

During two sessions, Microsoft shared these data points:

• 53% of queries have a local intent (previously discussed on this blog)
• 46% of queries are for “infotainment”
• The top category searches on mobile Bing are “movies” and “restaurants”
• 50% of adults are interested in “receiving and redeeming” coupons
• 61% are interested in “receiving location based coupons and offers”

In addition, during Mobile Search Ads Microsoft’s Dennis Glavin pointed out that consumers now often respond to prompts in traditional media with mobile searches or lookups:

This is essentially what consumers have been doing with traditional media and search on the PC; the mobile handset just makes the behavior more immediate (“on the spot”) and potentially more trackable. So advertisers need to consider that consumers can and will be able to act immediately on traditional ads if they’re compelling.

On the mobile apps panel Yahoo exposed data about when and why consumers use mobile search, as well as their attitudes and behavior surrounding mobile apps.

Thirty-one percent of mobile searchers, according to Yahoo, need something right now. Microsoft has previously said that 70 percent of mobile searches are initiated and completed within one hour, reinforcing the immediacy of mobile search user needs.

Yahoo’s Anil Panguluri  added, as a general matter, that apps are preferred to mobile websites and especially full PC sites on a mobile browser. Yahoo also showed survey data about the principal ways that consumer discover “branded apps” (word of mouth, then TV). He followed up with data on what most consumers do immediately after downloading those branded apps (join rewards program):

Compete presented data specifically on smartphone users and their behavior. Compete’s Danielle Nohe showed the Mobile Apps panel audience that smartphone owners use both apps and the browser to access mobile internet content.

However Nohe added that apps often replace traditional search in a number of mobile contexts.

SEM firms Performics and iProspect presented case studies on the Mobile Search Ads panel, which showed the better performance of mobile campaigns vs. PC search. However there’s also data in the market (from iCrossing) that argues mobile CPCs are higher and performance isn’t as good as PC-based search campaigns.

Performics confirmed what Google has been saying about mobile search usage being largely complementary in terms of day parts:

In contrast to that slide and perhaps somewhat surprising to the audience was data presented by Yahoo’s Paul Cushman on the Mobile Search Ads panel. He said that 55 percent of daily mobile search activity is happening in the home. (InsightExpress has separately confirmed this behavior.)

The chart above shows that 37 percent conduct mobile searches “while watching TV.” This goes back to the earlier point made by Microsoft about consumers conducting mobile searches in response to traditional advertising.

There was also a terrific presentation on the Mobile Apps panel by Angie Schottmuller of Interactive Artisan about using QR codes in mobile and traditional marketing. The Bruce Clay blog has a summary of some of the best practices she laid out. And here’s here best practices checklist.

The “uber takeaway” from these sessions is that mobile is real today. It’s driving substantial clicks, calls and conversions. Search marketers need to be experimenting, testing and refining campaigns now — or play catch up to competitors later.

The new desktop beta offers a stream-like display of local news, deals, events, and other content that comes from Yahoo editors, local websites and blogs, and community members contributing directly to Yahoo Local. A lot of that content is new to Yahoo Local; some of it expands on Yahoo’s recent focus on Deals-based content and some is made possible by the company’s push into hyperlocal content in recent months, as well as its purchase of Associated Content earlier this year. (If adoption picks up, the new Yahoo Local could become a hyperlocal blog/content network to be reckoned with.)

As Greg pointed out in his article, the local search box is gone and there’s not even a map showing (but there is a “maps & directions” link in the right column).

You can see all this on the beta page (desktop version) for San Francisco, or one of the other cities and neighborhoods where the beta is available. If you live in one of those 30 or so towns, you can access the beta at http://beta.local.yahoo.com.

The New Yahoo Local On Mobile

What’s new to today’s announcements is the availability of the Yahoo Local beta where it will really be most important: on mobile devices. After choosing your neighborhood, Yahoo presents a mix of hyperlocal news, events, and offers.

It’s an interesting mix of content. I’m seeing movie listings, Groupon offers (not shown above but further down the screen), videos from Turn Here, events from Yahoo’s Upcoming.org property, and articles from hyperlocal blogs.

But, as Greg pointed out in his article a couple weeks ago about the desktop version, it’s not very useful as a tool for finding local businesses — and that’s one of the primary mobile use cases. For now, and specifically for me as an iPhone user, that task is better handled by Yahoo’s traditional mobile app.

The new Yahoo Local is in beta for now, so I’ll be curious to see if local business search/discovery gets added as Yahoo continues to refine the product.

Postscript, December 9: In regard to my question in the paragraph above, it seems unlikely that local business search will be added to the new Yahoo Local. Through its PR reps, Yahoo has clarified that Yahoo Local is about “local discovery” instead of “local search,” and asked that we correct the mention in the first paragraph of a “local search interface.”

Below are screens showing the current and new Local UIs. First the existing site and then the new beta site for Local:

Overall the new site is less cluttered and more attractive visually. However it is also “missing” some features that are present today.

The first thing you notice about the new Local UI is that it’s essentially a list, likely inspired by Twitter and/or Facebook’s news feeds. Another significant change is the absence of a map on the Local home page or internal pages. There’s a link to maps on the right, however.

The new Local beta is really about “discovery” rather than search. Yet Yahoo has also apparently removed any category navigation, which means the top tabs are the only way to browse content. And there’s essentially no way to look up specific restaurants or local businesses within the new Yahoo Local.

There’s no local-specific search box here either. Entering a query in the field at the top of the page takes you out of Local to Yahoo Search results. Yahoo seems to have made a decision that it wants to consolidate search results in a single experience rather than offer distinct experiences as it does today.

Currently there’s a dedicated Yahoo Local search experience, as well as local results that appear within Yahoo Search. Below is a screenshot showing a Yahoo Local SERP, for “sushi San Francisco,” and then the same query result displayed in Yahoo Search results:

While it has removed features and content, Yahoo has added some new things to the Local experience that aren’t present in the current version. Top Picks and News are new content areas — and so is Deals.

Deals is a by-product of a new effort by Yahoo to collect and distribute “daily deals” and related offers from multiple sources. While there’s apparently no single deals destination contemplated at the moment — there is a pre-existing deals tab within Yahoo Shopping — it appears Local will be one of several deals distribution points within Yahoo.

In addition, Yahoo is putting a new emphasis on user-generated content (UGC) within Local as part of its newly launched Yahoo Contributor Network. UGC has been present in events since Yahoo’s acquisition of Upcoming in roughly 2006. However the broader integration of locally-oriented articles is new and built on top of Yahoo’s $100 million acquisition of Associated Content earlier this year.

Despite the new emphasis on UGC, reviews appear to be gone from the new Local experience. That raises the question: where will Yahoo source them going forward? Will it rely entirely on third parties? Yahoo was the leader in local reviews content until Yelp came along.

There are now several companies in the local segment, including Google, working on “recommendations” as a way to help people discover new places. This new Local experience puts Yahoo in that camp as well.

Here’s a statement issued by Yahoo about the new Local:

We are piloting a new experience to deliver personalized local content, including hyperlocal news, deals and events to users – offering the best source for what’s happening in their neighborhood and metro area. Currently available in select markets in the US via integration on Yahoo!’s mobile and PC homepages, we are focused on combining an open technology platform with a human touch to keep users informed and drive discovery of great local content.

I’m glad to see Yahoo updating Local. Admittedly this is a limited beta designed to elicit user feedback and it may change quite a bit before more formal rollout. However Yahoo will need to think through the “push” and “pull” scenarios and various use cases involving Local.

Yahoo has done a great deal to improve “discovery” on the site but has made it less useful in several respects as a tool to research places and local businesses proactively. (Again, Yahoo may be transferring that function entirely to search.) I would also recommend a simple mechanism to save or favorite a deal or place and save it for later reference on the go (mobile).

Speaking of which, there’s a smartphone experience coming at some point. However that’s not in evidence at the moment, or I couldn’t find it at least.

Yahoo appears to be totally rethinking the role of “local” within the overall Yahoo site and search experience. The company is taking some bold risks with the new design and content. We’ll see how users respond.

Yahoo Local Offers

Deals and coupons are a pretty hot item these days in the local space; credit Groupon and others for that. Yahoo announced its horse in the deals race: Yahoo Local Offers. It’s an aggregator that “will make it easy for millions of consumers to find, right on Yahoo!, the best local deals and savings in their area.”

Groupon, in fact, is one of the initial set of partners in Yahoo Local Offers. Others include LivingSocial, Gilt City, Valpak, Coupons.com, and more. Yahoo says Local Offers is currently in a “limited beta” — if you see a tab on the Yahoo home page labeled “Deals For You,” you’re in the test.

Sketch-a-Search Quick App

Previously only available on the iPhone, the Sketch-a-Search “quick app” will be expanded to desktops and the iPad later this week. Sketch-a-Search lets you draw the geographic boundaries of the area you want to search.

Yahoo spoke a lot today about restaurant searches; they say there were more than 35 million such searches on Yahoo last month alone. With that in mind, the new Sketch-a-Search quick app will show reviews of Zagat-rated restaurants, too.

Open Table Quick App

Also coming later this week, and also following the restaurant theme, is a quick app that integrates Open Table’s online reservation system. Users will be able to book restaurant reservations without leaving the Yahoo search results page.

Restaurant Comparison Quick App

To me, the most interesting-looking announcement of all is this one. The Restaurant Comparison quick app basically gathers all the restaurant search results for your query and collects them together in a grid- or chart-like display for easy comparison.

Yahoo says this is currently being tested with a limited number of users. You can see it in action, briefly — along with some of the other local products — in this Yahoo video.

Yahoo says it’s “pulling more essential information from the web, and employing the latest HTML5 technology to help you easily browse the content you’re interested in.”

A search for Brett Favre, for example, shows how the search results have expanded.

(three screenshots from scrolling down the search results)

There’s a lot of information being returned here:

• profile information with current stats
• news results
• web results
• Twitter results
• more web results
• links to Image, Local, and News search results
• related searches (“Also Try”)
• ads (one at the top, two at the bottom)

I counted 27 results, not including the links to ads, related searches and other search types.

Yahoo says the search result enhancements are available now at http://m.yahoo.com for most iPhone users in the U.S. and some newer versions of Android 2.x phones. It’s also available via the Yahoo Search for Android widget. Yahoo says more devices and countries will get the new mobile search experience in future months.

When the conversation focused on social media, Bartz had this exchange with USA Today’s David Lieberman:

Q: Who’s your biggest single competitor?

A: Facebook — not today, but they could be. If they keep going, they will have the vault of information on everybody in the world, and that’s valuable.

Q: Valuable, to the point of being scary?

A: Yes, creepy. I don’t care to find an old boyfriend. One time, just to see if they got fat and bald, but then leave me alone. But I’m old.

USA Today says the Q&A as it reads online is “edited for length and clarity,” so it’s uncertain if there’s any additional context to that part of the conversation. The wide-ranging discussion also hit on a number of other topics. Here are a few noteworthy quotes:

On Google TV:

“It is not a slam-dunk. There’s a lot of cable companies that want that business. There’s a lot of TV makers that want Internet applications. So it is pretty hard whenever there’s a new market forming to say, “Oh, that’s the leader.” It takes awhile to settle out.”

On Yahoo News vs. Google, AOL, and other news competitors:

“We not only license news feeds (for example from Reuters and the Associated Press), we also have our own editorial voice. We have human editors watching what seems to be interesting people, and feature that more prominently. So we are constantly tweaking what is delivered.

“For instance, on our front page we have a module called “Today,” which is what’s happening. Every five minutes we serve up 32,000 different variations depending on what you seem to be interested in. So it is very personal. It is engaging.

“Then we just bought a company called Associated Content: 380,000 writers, bloggers, in all the towns and cities who also contribute to this news feed. So it is a combination of what people can do and what machines can do.”

On Apple’s tight control over advertising:

“If you want to run an ad on the iPad, it has to be approved by Apple. I don’t think it is for us to say this ad isn’t pretty enough and to go through this whole back-end process of approval. I don’t think in the long run that’s going to work. Advertisers will have other options.”

Bartz later says that Yahoo serves up 10 billion ads per day across its properties.

On mobile:

“We are just neck and neck with Google for mobile installations in the U.S. We don’t have an operating system, but we have Yahoo Mail, Messenger, Finance — all those things. Mobile is huge for us, especially in emerging parts of the world where the only on-ramp to the Internet is going to be through a small screen. They are not going to have a desktop or laptop at home. But for the developed world, I don’t think you are going to let this (small) size screen be the only ramp on to the Internet.”

Bartz tap-danced around a question asking if Yahoo needs its own mobile device and/or operating system to compete against Google and Apple; she didn’t specifically say if that’s something Yahoo needs or has even considered.

On a related note, paidContent has published an infographic showing the executive-level changes at Yahoo since Bartz took over as CEO in January 2009.