Exec Realizes Yahoo Isn't A Media Company

Ramblings

from the hollywood-and-silicon-valley-still-miles-apart dept

Much was made of Yahoo’s plans to create all this original TV-style broadcast content last fall, and its strategy — or at least the strategy of its new, Hollywood-bred media boss — to turn into a media company raised a few eyebrows. Now, after gaining even just a basic understanding of the internet (and Yahoo’s place on it), Lloyd Braun, the media head, says he’s changed his mind and Yahoo will scale back its efforts to create original content. Yahoo’s strengths are in its platform, not in creating content (as opposed to a company like ABC), and its focus should be in distributing other people’s content using its platform. To that end, Braun says user-created content will take a central role — perhaps something he figured out from Yahoo’s purchase of Flickr, among other things. There are plenty of people and users already creating compelling content, and Yahoo doesn’t need to get into that game. It just needs to figure out how best to get that content to its users.