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Citizen Engagement, Technology

Yahoo! CEO trumpets the power of blogging

By Robin Hicks | 17 November 2009

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz told an audience of Asian business leaders and government officials last week that specialist blogging is the “ultimate targeting” for reaching audiences young and old, and called the mobile phone the “new frontier” in communication for government.

Speaking at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Singapore, the former Chairman of Autodesk, told FutureGov that focusing on popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! Mail was one way to more effectively engage with youth as users’ repertoire of favourite web sites narrows.

However, Bartz said that blogs are probably the most important way the web is being used for communication. Yahoo! finds out what users think of its products using blogs. “We like to know what people think. So we ask three million people what they think of us via blogs,” she said. “Specialist blogs can be the ultimate in targeting. But you need to careful not to abuse the medium.”

Asia is home to more users and readers of blogs than anywhere. One third of the world’s blogs are written in Japanese, while China has the world’s largest blogosphere by individual users.

Bartz also hailed the mobile phone as a communication tool, saying that mobile search has already outstripped internet search in countries such as Japan and South Korea. But she warned that taking an online experience and putting it on a handset required careful consideration.

However, cloud computing clearly does not figure on Yahoo!’s strategic agenda. Bartz dismissed the idea that Yahoo! would build a public cloud to match rivals Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

“Frankly, we are not interesting in the idea of a Yahoo! public cloud where we offer a share of our computing power,” she said. “You won’t see us try to sell processing. We serve users and we sell advertising.”

Yahoo! is the world’s second most visited web site after Google, with 600 million daily users globally. But the company has struggled to keep up with Google in the search space and has failed to match the likes of Facebook, Friendster and Twitter in creating a sustainable social networking platform.

In Asia, Yahoo holds a stronger position against Google than it does in Europe and Latin America. It is the number one site in Japan and is strong in Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, the company has failed – twice – to enter India, where Google dominates, with much success, while the Yahoo! brand is now wholly owned by local player Alibaba in China.

Bartz identified Indonesia and Vietnam as two key strategic Asian markets for the future. “We go where the population and economic growth is,” she said.

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