Yahoo is making a comeback. Or so the Q1 2013 numbers say. Their stock is up 50 percent since July 2012. And their earnings delivered more profit than in Q1 2012. But not all the news was good: display ads, and the revenue they produce, fell 11 percent. So there’s still more?work to do.
This is where CEO Marissa Mayer’s chain reaction comes in. That first?link was changing the work culture; this included insisting people coming back to work in the office. Now it’s a top place to work. This leads to the second link: getting talent. Applications and resumes have tripled during Mayer’s tenure.??During Q1 2013, 14?percent of?those hired were those who left the company and returned. Now this leads to the?links?three and four: building better products and reaching customers better. According to Mayer herself, by 2015, there will be more use of hand held devices than PC’s. Of the 700 million users, nearly half are subscribed on a smartphone or something similar (iPod touch).
Will the comeback continue? It sounds like they’re on the right track. Talent is coming back. Plus, talent is so abundant they can be selective in their choosing. This is always a good thing. They are trying to create apps, particularly for small devices. Yahoo execs believe this rebuilding process will take years. But there is already signs of growth now. One way they can speed up the comeback is better news articles. They’re becoming better at this, but what I’d like to see is less celebrity gossip and fluff and more hard news. I mean news you won’t hear anywhere else, like that 7.8?earthquake on the Pakistan/Iran border. What are some other ways Yahoo can improve?