: Work in progress. Yahoo News soon will be the online home of “Dear Margo,” an advice column from Margo Howard and will add other columnists — part of continuing efforts to increase content of its own even while counting on partners to provide the bulk. During his SIIA keynote early this morning, Yahoo News GM Neil Budde addressed the omnipresent speculation about Yahoo’s original content goals: “The answer is a resounding no — that should not put us in competition.” He stressed at various points (during prepared remarks and q-and-a) the reliance Yahoo places on content partners. For instance, “We’re not going to get into the local news business; we rely on local publishers to serve that market.”
– Budde’s real focus was on the bundling, unbundling and rebundling of news and information. He started with the Sunday LAT and NYT editions as newspaper bundles — the former subsidized by local ads, inserts, etc., the latter more expensive because of the national ad base. “What will be the price when they are no longer bundled at all?” he asked. No real answer, there.
– “I belive we’re just at the beginning of a further change in readers’ habits.” That change includes reassembling news and info into new bundles — and users doing that reassembling for each other, remixing it all.
– Budde said people who subscribe to RSS through My Yahoo tend to be more loyal to the personalized page.
– Asked about ad support for “The Hot Zone with Kevin Sites,” Budde said the war reporting site has had various advertisers but does not have a regular advertiser now, in part, because it’s still new after four months or so. But, he said, Yahoo “measures the success of that kind of an effort on multiple fronts” including traffic, advertising, brand building., drawing new users Yahoo might not have had.
I’ll be posting an interview with Budde Thursday. In the meantime,
ou can download the audio here . (13 min., 6.4 megs.)
The SIIA IIS coverage is sponsored by HighBeamTM Research
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