Recently Salto Partners’ Andreas Scherer talked to E-Commerce Times about Yahoo’s acquisition of Alike. Here is the full analysis.
Yahoo is picking up speed and Marissa Mayer is the driving force behind this. She defines Yahoo’s core business in a simple way: It’s about delivering personalized content. Having a sophisticated mobile strategy is a critical part of this vision. Smart phones offer information about time, location as well as preferences of a user. The mobile internet allows news ways to combine relevant content with smart advertising.
Without any doubt, the Alike acquisition will boost Yahoo’s mobile presence. It lets a user know about nearby restaurants, bars or any other type of venue that is like the ones she is already a fan of. Users can share their preferences also on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The app can serve as a focal point of Yahoo’s future strategy. Along with this acquisition comes the inevitable clean-up of past attempts to compete in the mobile arena. The company has in total more than sixty apps. Marissa has to determine which ones continue to make sense. It will be likely a number between 12 – 15 when it is all set and done. The mobile strategy of Yahoo needed an overhaul. The Alike acquisition could be the turning point that brings a promising new technology and new talent into the company.
In the big picture Yahoo has to get three things right: Content, Distribution and Monetization. Marissa Mayer already overhauled Yahoo’s approach to monetization by entering into a strategic relationship with Google after recognizing that the Bing partnership didn’t grow combined market share. With the Google partnership it has access to the adsense platform – a well-oiled advertising machinery. Overhauling the mobile strategy helps Yahoo to catch up in a mission critical space. It remains to be seen what else Yahoo plans to do to provide premium personalized content.
One thing is for certain. Things are changing over at Yahoo. And they continue to do so until Marissa gets it right.
You can find the E-Commerce Times article on this subject here.