Yahoo’s Jerry Yang on Search & Social Media
Over at Comparison Engines, Brian Smith has the text highlights of Gordon Hodge’s chat with Chief Yahoo!, Jerry Yang from the Thomas Weisel Partners (TWP) Internet & Telcom Conference. Gordon & Jerry discussed the future and importance of Social Media to Yahoo and their growing list of competiton.
Here are some samplers of the words Yahoo’s co-founder on Competition:
You have the ability of start ups to come out of nowhere and become great companies. That’s what keeps us on our toes. We’ve had some big competitors over the last couple years – AOL, Microsoft, Google, eBay – and the competitive dynamics have only gotten more intense.
On China :
I think we always have taken a view that China is a long term project. The opportunity to be in China is huge. It is not wihtout potential pitfalls. At the same time, you have to balance the risk of not participating. We have journalists getting arrested for free speech violations, and you feel horrible. Are we doing better over the long run? Can we get the government to have a dialogue? If you want to do business there, you have to comply.
And on Yahoo Search Technology’s direction of Social Search, Tags, Reviews, Ratings & Bookmarks:
It is something that has a huge potential. It combines the user participation model and the algorithmic model. You have the 6 degrees of separation model…to run that as a service/technology is a challenge.
