Yahoo is serious about its product strategy moving forward, and they fully intend to be able to answer the question “what is Yahoo” in the near future.
In an email to all staff last week, new chief product officer Blake Irving told employees that he would be sending a two page document outlining Yahoo’s overall product strategy moving forward by the end of July. Later employees will be able to dive deeper into a twenty page document, and later still a 200 page detailed product strategy document would be available.
This 2/20/200 strategy, as employees are calling it, will be an interesting read. Assuming that it is distributed outside of Yahoo, which I’m guessing will happen shortly after employees get it.
Yahoo certainly needs some direction. CEO Carol Bartz is unable to succinctly state what Yahoo’s core mission is after a year and a half on the job. And Yahoo’s recent advertising blitz echoes that confusion.
“Your own personal eveything,” reads the ads, which include a picture of a woman with tattoos of products and companies. And for some reason one of those tattoos is the Facebook icon. Ironic in in a way.
Being the best at one thing is definitely a better strategy than being mediocre at “everything.” But it doesn’t take even two pages to outline how to be the best at one thing. Our guess is that Yahoo will continue to try for ubiquity, and flail around for another year or two.