Blog title confusion
Posted by melting on Feb 23, 2008
I read the title of this blog article and my mind started to bend to try to understand.
The title you ask: “2 phones for everyone—if industry can’t get its act together.”
Well that seems simple enough Jacqui Cheng the ars technica author was simply stating that she thought the cellular telephone industry was headed for 200% market penetration if the industry could not add more features while still simplifying their interfaces. This seems simple but lets take a look at what that means.
Yahoo Music is also shaken up.
Posted by melting on Feb 4, 2008
I would be the first to admit that the news of the Microsoft bid to buy Yahoo! is not exactly surprising. Yahoo! has been struggling for some time now and Microsoft also could not fully create what it needed to compete with Google. When I heard the news about the second date between Microsoft and Yahoo! I had no inclination to write on the subject. Plenty of smart people have weighed in on that one, see here, here, and here.
What I am interested in is a product of Yahoo!’s that is very good and could be great with some time, energy, and marketing. Yahoo! Music. I have used the My Station which is implemented as a radio station with embedded ads. The twist is that you rank songs and it attempts to pick songs that you would like, poorly I might add.
There is a new rumor surfacing that the premium music service which provides unlimited listening and downloading for a small fee. I think the music site has done little to push its ability to work well with others and spend the time and money needed to make this part of their business great. Jettisoning the unlimited portion may be their realization that they need to get back to basics and focus on the advertising that could make Yahoo! great. The risk with this strategy is finding the right partners so users can still get the services they require. They could take this too far and also not have a value add for users and only be a gateway to other sites. This is an interesting time for Yahoo!, Google coming up from behind, Microsoft wanting more users and to compete on multiple fronts.
Yahoo! has many interesting products. It is time for them to get back to their innovative roots but also start simplifying their products and lean on partners to help with services out of their core competency.
By the way it is interesting seeing two large companies going back and forth like they were political contenders running attack campaigns. Just let your products speak!
