Valleywag: Yahoo Newspaper Consortium in trouble
Steve Safran October 11th, 2007
Members of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium take note: Valleywag has some troubling news:
Yahoo executives keep touting the company’s deal with a “consortium” of newspapers. But from what we hear from insiders, the “consortium” is just a bunch of paper, with no real technology designed to power Yahoo president Sue Decker’s grand vision. Newspaper partners are growing increasingly skeptical that Yahoo will ever deliver. No wonder doubts are growing regarding Yahoo’s grand alliance. Aside from HotJobs, the job-listings site Yahoo bought which has long partnered with newspapers, what substance is there?
Valleywag also points us to Alan Mutter’s Reflection of a Newsosaur, who spoke with online newspaper folks who have a dim outlook on the program.
“We aren’t anywhere near matching the initial gains,” says an online executive at one of the earliest publishers to partner with HotJobs. “We are struggling and I don’t see how we are going to make it.” If this experience proves to be commonplace, it would throw cold water on the idea that hefty, double-digit advances in online sales in the next few years could help Yahoo’s newspaper partners offset an appreciable portion of their declining print revenues.
As always, the best idea is to build your own local advertising networks and not to rely on third parties.
2 Comments Add your own
1. Cory | October 11th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Ok, I’ll jump in here. Safran, it takes millions and millions of dollars and teams of top-notch engineers to build an ad network with the sophistication of Yahoo (not even to speak of Google).
Yes, the newspapers could’ve partnered among themselves conceptually, but it’s the technology that puts it into action. Newspapers don’t have the money or expertise to build it, so they need to partner.
Partnering is smart when it’s not your core competency and the barriers to entry are high.
2. Mel Taylor | October 12th, 2007 at 7:18 am
cory,
you know the ole saying:
buy, build or partner.
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