Yahoo is on a mission to hire some talent, and fast. As time moves forward things don’t seem to get any better for Yahoo as one CEO after another leaves and now even a prominent board member leave as well
Earlier this week we talked about the 2013 Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference and Tim Cook’s hype-speech pubbing the Apple Stores. It seems as though Tim wasn’t the only one hyping products and services though as quotes and business concepts from Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer have now come forth from the event as well.
Marissa on Yahoo Mobile Revenue
According to Yahoo insiders, direct mobile revenue only comes in at somewhere around $125 million annually for Yahoo, mostly from search revenue on mobile devices. We spoke recently on how Yahoo is attempting to partner with Google to bring more Google ads into the Yahoo network (see related link below). I suppose we can see why with just $125 million in revenue annually. With regards to the staggering low mobile revenue estimate, Marissa declined to share specific mobile revenue figures in Yahoo’s recent Q4 earnings call, instead merely hyping that Yahoo has 200 million daily active mobile users.
Marissa on Yahoo Apps
The Yahoo CEO says that Yahoo needs to reduce the number of apps they support to about 20% of the current number. Right now they have about 65 different web apps and it just isn’t paying off for them. One source noted that a good portion of them don’t even carry the Yahoo brand name.
Marissa on Yahoo Mail
Marissa posed a question. “How many of you have read an email on your phone and marked it unread so you could read it on your PC later?” Well that may be a general email issue for many IMAP platforms, but Yahoo has far greater problems with Yahoo Mail than just that.
Please allow me to digress here on a personal note to explain just how big an irritation Yahoo Mail can be.
I have a relative that’s a 10 year user of it, but recently can’t even click through the standard Yahoo mail web interface to “Send” messages. She currently has to use the basic HTML version of Yahoo Mail instead. After doing a bit of research, Yahoo said this is “known issue and our techs are working on it”. That canned response was made in 2011 as I saw other users with similar issues. Yet that response we guess still seems to work for Yahoo even now in 2013. So why aren’t people just running from Yahoo with issues like this? Well, we tried that and found out why many people probably stay on-board the sinking Yahoo Mail ship. In my attempt to lure my relative away from Yahoo Mail, I proposed we simply move her over to Gmail. Even getting a Gmail account though is an issue when migrating from Yahoo Mail. Why? Because Yahoo makes you upgrade to a Premium price ($20 or so) just to be able to use the POP3 feature and download all you old email messages so that you can wash your hands of them. Nice work, Yahoo.
Intuit CEO Ditches Yahoo Board
Well it seems like we’re not the only ones prepared to ditch Yahoo.
Intuit’s CEO, Brad Smith, sat on Yahoo’s board for almost 3 years but recently chose to give up his position and leave Yahoo’s board of directors behind. Why? Smith says that he didn’t feel like he could invest his time in assisting Yahoo any longer. Brad claims that in 2012 alone the board met 61 times. “It was hundreds of hours,” he said and “there wasn’t enough “ROI,” or return on investment, for all that time.”
Related Links:
* Apple CEO Tim Cook Promotes The Apple Stores In An Uncanny Way
* Google Adds AdWords Enhanced Campaigns & Yahoo Now Supports Google Advertising