Remember Yahoo? Some say it’s lost its way.
Others, like Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer, Blake Irving, say that the company has “delivered habit-forming communications products, highly intuitive search functionality, and awesome content services that make us central to the online lives of vast audiences on global scale — in turn, driving killer value to publishers, advertisers, and developers.” Whew!
Whatever the case, Yahoo has launched an almost ADD-like number of products and services since its humble beginnings as a search engine. At Yahoo’s “Product Runway” event today, Irving made a promise that the company will work to update its offerings more often and attempt to “bring the cool back to Yahoo” within three years.
In the short term, Yahoo will be releasing a revamped version of Yahoo! Mail, introducing rich search results for entertainment and news content—slideshows, videos, celebrity tweets etc., rolling out an iPad app, and integrating Twitter with Yahoo “so you can view and share updates with friends across both networks.”
The company is also ramping up its connected TV offerings, partnering with Toshiba to sell Yahoo-enabled TV sets with built-in widgets that can access various Yahoo-related content.
Those products will be rolling out over the coming months, while the three-year-plan is more vague. Irving said, “Yahoo in three years is a global series of Web experiences across a variety of different devices.” The company also “aims to increase the number of Yahoo visitors who log in while using its products from 50 percent to 100 percent,” according to MediaBeat.
More on Techland:
