Linked by David Adams on Fri 4th Dec 2009 17:16 UTC
This 24/7 Wall Street article displays three common media ailments: hyperbole, a love for top ten lists, and an obsession with December predictions for the coming year (which off course OSNews is obviously also falling victim to), and there are some predictable losers on this list (Blockbuster Video, anyone?). I thought it would be an interesting topic for OSNews because three of the companies/brands are quite familiar to us: Palm, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems.
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RE[3]: What I see happening...
by sbenitezb on Sat 5th Dec 2009 05:07
in reply to "RE[2]: What I see happening..."
Member since:2005-07-22
If you compare Yahoo's approach to AOL's, AOL (believe it or not) does a much better job of building brand recognition by allowing each of its brands to flourish under its own banner
AOL is completely absent from the world. It only survives in the USA.
My only big pet peeve of Yahoo is that they're now the *only* major webmail provider that charges extra for POP access. What year are we living in???
In your country. In mine they don't charge for POP. They do for IMAP. And god I hate those giant animated flash ads they pop from everywhere. It sucks! Die Yahoo!... die!
RE[3]: What I see happening...
by FealDorf on Sat 5th Dec 2009 15:18
in reply to "RE[2]: What I see happening..."
Member since:2008-01-07
I agree that they're under-marketting their better products. But Yahoo has a very dominant global presence; AOL (or Aol.) has only recently entered India and many of Indian yuppies already heard enough bad news about Aol. to warn against it.
I feel annoyed about Yahoo! Mail too; although I *do* get POP access in my country..
Member since:
2005-07-06
Yes, I agree that although search is how Yahoo got its start, it hasn't been its reason for existence in more than a decade.
Yahoo's main function is and has been for a long time as a portal--a kind of replacement for ex-AOL users who just upgraded to "the raw internet" (which it was long before AOL itself turned into a web-based portal). It has long been one of the most "trusted" brands by average people for webmail, news, stocks, etc. Google on the other hand, started out with just search, and added all of the stuff Yahoo already had (mail, groups, news, etc) in a gradual manner. Which is why there are still plenty of people who go to Yahoo instead of Google, because they still see Google as primarily "just a search" site.
Yahoo also has lots of cool but severely under-marketed technology up its sleeve--it has a really nice AJAX web applications platform with Zimbra, and it's got an awesome content mashup tool in Yahoo! pipes. Yahoo's main problem as I see it is an unwillingness to experiment with any kind of branding that is not "Yahoo!" When it bought Konfabulator, it totally messed with its guts and renamed it Yahoo Widgets--a recipe for fail. Ditto for Zimbra--it's now branded the Yahoo Zimbra Desktop. Just about the only thing it didn't try to impose its brand on was Flickr (and thank god it didn't).
If you compare Yahoo's approach to AOL's, AOL (believe it or not) does a much better job of building brand recognition by allowing each of its brands to flourish under its own banner, without being obviously tainted by the AOL name. Engadget, MapQuest, Moviefone, TMZ, ICQ--How many people even realize that these are AOL properties? And yet AOL still gets the advertising bucks. Yahoo could learn something. Or (my favorite pet imaginary deal) Yahoo could just buy AOL outright and acquire a large stable of great content websites at a (most likely) bargain price.
My only big pet peeve of Yahoo is that they're now the *only* major webmail provider that charges extra for POP access. What year are we living in???