Written By Reprise Media | March 1, 2005 | Share This |

PowerPoint isn’t always a bad thing, but we were grateful nonetheless when Yahoo! Co-Founder Jerry Yang announced that his presentation would be “PowerPoint Free” in the SES Opening Keynote this morning.

His half hour talk got off to a sweet start with the unveiling of a cake honoring Yahoo’s 10th birthday (who doesn’t want cake at 9:00 a.m.?). He and moderator Danny Sullivan got down to business, beginning the discussion by talking about how Yahoo! continues to remain innovative in such a competitive market.

Yang says Yahoo! has had their eye on innovation since Day 1, focusing on the broad picture (trends, user relevance, etc.) as well as the narrow picture (specific product and feature enhancements). His current pet feature is Y!Q, though it’s yet to be monetized, and he sees search not a destination or activity, but as something that is embedded into the system itself. The launch of the Yahoo! Search Developer Network was also touched on.

Sullivan switched the focus on to blogs and RSS, an area where Yang says big things happening over in Asia. He tied in the millions of personal pages on Geocities with the community aspect of the blogging medium and emphasized Yahoo’s role in fostering that kind of collaborative environment.

Some ‘look back and get misty’ type stuff came next, as Sullivan asked Yang to reflect on the past 10 years. Yang says he’s not that surprised by the major role search (and Yahoo! as a company) have played in the industry’s evolution, though he was surprised by how rapidly it unfolded.

Wrapping up, Yang says Yahoo! remains focused its user base, leveraging simple concepts with a high degree of personalization in a way that seamlessly reaches users and makes mass media more accessible. In short: Yang thinks everyone should be using Yahoo! Search.

All in all, a very enjoyable, if not hard-to-hear (the audience sounded a bit like a sick ward) half-hour. It’s great to see such a humble, cool guy talk about a business that has gone from at its roots a very manual information hierarchy to a highly personalized, automated system at the forefront of information technology.

Other Yahoo! News:

Overture brand shed

Opening of APIs

Topics: Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Distribution, Blogging, Investment, M&A, RSS, Search: Image, Search: Innovations, Search: Local |