Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says Facebook has a "creepy" amount of personal information about its users, and could become Yahoo's number one competitor because of the value of that data. Her comments came about 10 days ago at the USA Today CEO Forum in Atlanta, and have just been published today on the paper's website. 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 worl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: General | Yahoo: Mobile & Go | Yahoo: News

Yahoo has shared a sneak preview of a new content module that some users will see below individual stories on Yahoo News. The module shows related Yahoo content -- news articles, photos, and videos -- and also includes a handful of related search query links. The module is currently only being shown to a "fraction" of Yahoo News users, but the company says it's working well already: In its first week, our internal data indicates that user engagement with this related search information in Yahoo! News is nearly twice the amount we see with similar features. We will be rolling this out [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search

Yahoo has been investing in news, including original content development. Consistent with its content strategy the company paid roughly $100 million for "content farm" Associated Content just a few months ago. And, according to the New York Times, Yahoo is now planning to use search and search query volume to help drive editorial coverage. Yahoo is going to more systematically pay attention to search queries to help its editorial staff decide what to write about on a forthcoming news blog called "The Upshot." According to the Times: Yahoo software continuously tracks common words, phrases [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Top News | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: SEO

Major news portals -- like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL, and Topix -- are the most commonly used online news sources, beating out the web sites of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times. That's according to the the State of the Media report issued tonight by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study surveyed more than 2,200 online news consumers between December 28, 2009, and January 19, 2010, and found that more than half of online news readers use a major news portal on a typical day, and among younger news consumers (aged 18-29), more tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: News | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Stats: Popularity | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News | Yahoo: News

According to November comScore data (published by TechCrunch) Google News is the second largest online news property in the world in terms of traffic. Yahoo ranks as the top global news site. Here's the partial comScore list: Yahoo News Google News New York Times sites CNN China’s QQ.com BBC MSN In the US Yahoo still ranks as number one but Google News reportedly falls down the list below the traditional news domains, such as NY Times and CNN. However, over at Nielsen (via Editor & Publisher) the numbers appear to be quite different than the comScore data above -- espe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity | Yahoo: News

Yahoo has enhanced its News shortcut with real-time feeds and updates. The idea is to make the News Shortcut more current and more social with Twitter content in the form of videos, photos and tweets. The new shortcut has a horizontal tabbed interface that offers access to each category of information (see screens below). According to Yahoo this is the first such integration with Twitter, although both Google and Bing are starting to integrate Twitter feeds. The Yahoo Search Blog explains: Starting today, you can see relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story on the Y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News

Yahoo News was the web's number one choice last week for information about the death of entertainer Michael Jackson. In a post on the Hitwise blog, Heather Dougherty shows a chart detailing how the major online News & Media sites fared: Late last week I wrote about how each of the major search engines handled the extraordinary search activity that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett on the same day. Yahoo is in a unique situation as an actual content provider with writers and editors, and some of those staffers were called in from home to help Yahoo cover the break [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: News | Microsoft: Bing News Search | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Stats: Hitwise | Yahoo: News

An extraordinary day of breaking news on Thursday led to record-breaking traffic spikes as people searched online for information about the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and, especially, Michael Jackson. And just like their counterparts in traditional media, the news divisions of Google, Yahoo, and Bing responded with sometimes extraordinary measures to ensure they were giving searchers the most accurate and current news available. Below, a look not only at the extreme traffic spikes that took place, but also an insider's look at what happened as each search engine -- and Wikipedia -- grappled w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Features: Analysis | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News | Twitter | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search

This week's battle royale has pitted newspapers and traditional media against Google and online news. If you somehow missed it, the CliffsNotes version is that traditional media (Associated Press, newspapers, etc.) are accusing Internet sites (search engines, news aggregators, etc.) of diverting traffic that should be going to news web sites, profiting off news content in violation of copyright law, and essentially sending newspapers into the financial crisis that many are in today. Amidst all the claims and accusations, Danny took the AP and newspapers out to the woodshed and pointed out w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: News | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Stats: Hitwise | Yahoo: News

A couple weeks ago, Yahoo announced they will be going forward with rich ads in Yahoo search. Back then, we only saw a few examples in the raw Yahoo Search results, and they were for mostly video ads. I received a heads up from Gary Price that Yahoo is now showing image ads on Yahoo News. For example, try a search on ipod at Yahoo News and you should see these ads: These image ads come up for many searches at Yahoo News now. Gary tells me he uses Yahoo News daily and he has not seen this before. This looks very similar to how Yahoo displayed image ads on the Yahoo Directory [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search Ads

TweetNews is a new search engine that uses hot Twitter topics to bring more relevance and freshness to news search. It's a pet project developed by Vik Singh, a member of Yahoo's BOSS team. As Vik describes it on his personal blog, fresh news often doesn't have enough links to rank well in a traditional algorithm. But TweetNews replaces links with Twitter conversations as a signal; news stories that are being talked about the most on Twitter will rise to the top of a TweetNews search. It's an interesting mashup because it plays to the real strength of Twitter -- its ability to report [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Top News | Twitter | Yahoo: News

Today, the United States is electing a new president, voting on one-third of the seats in the U.S. Senate, and voting on all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. An important election? To say the least! And interest in the election results is higher than many of us "experienced" voters can ever remember. Tonight, while most of us will be glued to the television to watch election results come in across the U.S., millions of people won't have access to a TV, or will be away from home and unable to get local election results on TVs where they are. Not to worry, though. The internet, and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: General | Google: News | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Top News | Yahoo: General | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search

Yahoo News is inviting its throngs of readers to try its next version, which has new design and content features. Readers will immediately notice a wider footprint on the new Yahoo News, as well as larger text and other new design elements. Content has also been rearranged, with easier access to the most popular stories of the day and top news videos from around the country. TechCrunch reports another interesting change: Readers coming to Yahoo News from social media sites will see shorter versions of news stories at first, with links to similar stories featured more prominently. As TechCru [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo had a press day yesterday designed in part to pump up the media about the company's prospects and progress post the Microsoft-fiasco. As someone who's been positive about Yahoo, I oddly found the day leaving me less reassured, not more. In the end, ironically it might have been the Open! Open! Open! mantra that each Yahoo exec put out as part of the company's strategy. I'm weary of "Open" somehow being magic fairy dust that if sprinkled on a problem is something companies hope makes everything better. Google's tried this with Google Chrome, to stem fears its somehow tryin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: News

The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have made "significant enhancements" to how they show news results in the web search results. Yahoo is now showing news results in different positions throughout the web search results, based on their new "News Direct Display (DD)" algorithm. In addition, Yahoo improved how they detect news queries and will show more news boxes in the search results due to that improvement. For example, a search on spears returns a news box in the middle of Yahoo Search: I decided to see how Yahoo handled a search for Cuil (for more on Cuil, see Cuil Launches -- Can T [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search

A curious thing is happening: Yahoo seems to be executing in the midst of the chaos of uncertainty surrounding its future. Speaking at an IAB event yesterday, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Buzz | Yahoo: Employees | Yahoo: Flickr | Yahoo: General | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Video

Yahoo is buying news aggregator BuzzTracker (Kara Swisher reports for $5 million). Yahoo sees the acquisition improving and expanding its news coverage in a number of ways. BuzzTracker founder Alan Warms becomes GM of Yahoo News. Warms' decision to sell to Yahoo, as reported on the Participate Media blog was largely about monetization and scale: The decision to sell the business and move to Yahoo! was relatively simple. As anyone playing in the online space understands, online media is all about scale. The ability to garner real CPMs, the ability to sell ads directly, the ability to provide [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: News

Yahoo Experiments With Non-Yahoo Links On Home Page from Techcrunch reports that Yahoo is testing linking to non-Yahoo properties directly from their home page. Typically, the only non-Yahoo links from their home page are the advertisements. On May 24th, Yahoo linked to this Crunchgear article directly in the "Featured" news box at the top middle portion of the Yahoo home page. Yahoo told Techcrunch they are testing this out to see if Yahoo portal users will find the Yahoo home page more the relevant. Michael Arrington explained that Yahoo "will analyze the data and feedback from the test t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Other

Greg Jarboe reports Yahoo has added images and videos to the top of some of the Yahoo News search results. For example a search on apple options returns both image news results and video news results at the top of the news search page. Keep in mind, these are not images from Yahoo Images or Yahoo Video search. They are only images or videos from Yahoo News itself. Yahoo has been allowing you to filter by news images for a while. Just select the drop down menu on the right of the search box for those options. When you click on the "2 News Videos" in the example above, you'll see videos r [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News

Investment pundits have been scratching their heads this week over billionaire investor Sam Zell's $8.2-billion purchase of Tribune Corp., publisher of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and owner of other old-media properties. Newspapers have been bleeding cash and losing both money and eyeballs to online news, job and classified sites over the past several years. So what does Zell, regarded as a legendary market timer, know that makes him willing to pay up for the Tribune when prospects for the business look so glum? In a speech at Stanford Law School last night, Zell offered s [...]

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