Heaton: Yahoo Not Going Where the Audience Is

Terry Heaton writes that while the new Yahoo! Consortium gives it a better deal than the newspapers contributing content to it in hopes of getting clickthrough to their sites, Yahoo ultimately is a loser for its "come to us" model. "Yahoo! is all about bringing the network to them; Google is all about bringing itself to the network. Which company has been having problems with business and investors?" he writes.

Reminds me of a comment by Herb Scannell at an EconSM panel from April. Herb used to be a big TV exec, but now sees the old line media as "them" as he works on Next New Networks, which is about a lot of niche TV sites are brought together under one aggregated roof: "This whole idea of destination is what they're all about. We're about going to where the audience is."

In other words, do you want everyone to have to come to you and do what you want in a sort of dictated way, or will you forgo your impulse to dictate the navigation and let them have what they want where when and how they want it? And also let them use and meld and mold and manipulate it.

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