4 ms·

Every so often an article crops up discussing Yahoo's popularity, and I am again and again amazed at the fact that so many people still visit Yahoo in general.

Every so often an article crops up discussing Yahoo's popularity, and I am again and again amazed at the fact that so many people still visit Yahoo in general. I haven't used their portal since late 1999, and I don't know many other people who do. There are a few ancient relics out there who still use yahoo mail, but even they seem to be fewer and further between (somehow gmail just appears to be more...professional, My friends would put gmail on their resume, but would not be caught dead with a yahoo mail account... it is akin to a hotmail account for professional purposes)... I would really love to see a thorough study of yahoo demographics and traffic driven, as well as how much of it is actually through partnerships (in Canada, Rogers partners with yahoo, so they kind of force feed you a lot of their services through the yahoo portals) and not direct yahoo traffic.

moultano 17y ago
E-mail is pretty sticky. That's probably the dominant case.
JacobAldridge 17y ago
Here in Australia the TV networks made their alliances a few years back - Channel 9 with Microsoft (ninemsn.com.au) and Channel 7 with Yahoo (yahoo7.com.au). In the case of the latter, all tv programs have their pages, back episodes etc (where applicable) through Yahoo, which would drive traffic.
seldo 17y ago
As an ex-Yahoo (I quit this week), I can tell you our demographic in two words: flyover country. Here's a demographic study on Google vs. Yahoo from 2 years ago: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/02/yahoo_search_draws_younger_aud.html http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/02/yahoo_... Google's big groups: affluent suburbia, upscale America, rich small towns. In short: you, probably. Yahoo's big groups: struggling societies, blue-collar backbone, remote America. In short: middle America (and also poorer urban folks). Within Yahoo, the general consensus is that our biggest market is middle-aged housewives from the midwest. This is a big group, although as the study points out we actually trend younger than Google -- this is because our media properties, likes games, sports, and IM, attract teenagers, a market Google doesn't really serve. While a certain amount of traffic is driven through partnerships, it's nowhere near big enough to account for Yahoo's enormous volume. Although they're not new or cool, properties like the Yahoo.com frontpage, Yahoo News (bigger than CNN and the NYTimes combined), Sports (bigger than ESPN), Finance (by far the biggest) and Mail (40% of the market) absolutely dominate their respective categories and, despite the general perception of Yahoo as a company in decline, are mostly holding steady or growing slowly in terms of audience. The selection bias amongst tech professionals in their perception of Yahoo is a huge barrier to Yahoo's hiring, acquisition, and new tech launches -- simply put, the tech community doesn't use our products, and as a result, they believe nobody uses our products. It simply isn't true. Yahoo isn't growing as fast as Facebook -- hence being overtaken -- but it's still growing and attracting new users every day, both domestically and worldwide. It's just not doing so in a particularly new or exciting way.
- endtime 17y ago
  If you don't mind my asking, why did you leave? If it was for career/professional reasons, that is - no desire to pry if it was personal.
  - seldo 17y ago
    Only too happy to say! :-) I am co-founder of http://awe.sm http://awe.sm, and following some delays with visa paperwork I am finally able to join it full-time. If your business would like better tools and metrics for using social media, please give us a call :-)
    - pclark 17y ago
      slightly off the cuff, but could I have an awe.sm invite? we've been talking about using your service for weeks but can't find anyone with invites :) peter@broadersheet.com good luck w/ startup.
    - swombat 17y ago
      The URL shortener service looks cool, and just what I've been looking for. You may get a mail from us soon... Would be good to have some idea how the prices scale up past 10k URLs/month before signing up though.
- patio11 17y ago
  Within Yahoo, the general consensus is that our biggest market is middle-aged housewives from the midwest Conversely, if you happen to have a stack of emails around for middle-aged housewives in the midwest, you'll quickly be able to verify that they Yahoo to their friends and coworkers in between browsing the Google.
- swombat 17y ago
  The selection bias amongst tech professionals in their perception of Yahoo is a huge barrier to Yahoo's hiring, acquisition, and new tech launches -- simply put, the tech community doesn't use our products, and as a result, they believe nobody uses our products. Is that not considered worth fixing by the Yahoo leadership? Having good support from early adopters seems pretty important when you're a tech company...
jsz0 17y ago
There's still a shocking number of homepage people out there who see Google.com as a very boring experience. They could use iGoogle but its existence is not immediately obvious. They want information pushed at them instead of seeking it out. Yahoo does a pretty good job at that. What's the other alternative? MSN.com? Not many well known classic homepages/portals left these days. Yahoo also has some pretty good properties so they can keep people coming back even if they're not offering the most innovative or geekiest stuff. Their current layout is actually pretty good.
- chrischen 17y ago
  I used to have yahoo.com set as home for that reason until I safari and chrome got the most visited sites thing.
eogas 17y ago
It may have to do with the fact that AT&T still includes a yahoo e-mail address with their DSL service. To tell you the truth, I have AT&T DSL service, and I haven't logged into my yahoo e-mail account since the day my service began. However, I think that a lot of people still use the e-mail service that is supplied by their ISP.

moultano 17y ago

E-mail is pretty sticky. That's probably the dominant case.

JacobAldridge 17y ago

Here in Australia the TV networks made their alliances a few years back - Channel 9 with Microsoft (ninemsn.com.au) and Channel 7 with Yahoo (yahoo7.com.au). In the case of the latter, all tv programs have their pages, back episodes etc (where applicable) through Yahoo, which would drive traffic.

seldo 17y ago

As an ex-Yahoo (I quit this week), I can tell you our demographic in two words: flyover country. Here's a demographic study on Google vs. Yahoo from 2 years ago: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/02/yahoo_search_draws_younger_aud.html http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/02/yahoo_... Google's big groups: affluent suburbia, upscale America, rich small towns. In short: you, probably. Yahoo's big groups: struggling societies, blue-collar backbone, remote America. In short: middle America (and also poorer urban folks). Within Yahoo, the general consensus is that our biggest market is middle-aged housewives from the midwest. This is a big group, although as the study points out we actually trend younger than Google -- this is because our media properties, likes games, sports, and IM, attract teenagers, a market Google doesn't really serve. While a certain amount of traffic is driven through partnerships, it's nowhere near big enough to account for Yahoo's enormous volume. Although they're not new or cool, properties like the Yahoo.com frontpage, Yahoo News (bigger than CNN and the NYTimes combined), Sports (bigger than ESPN), Finance (by far the biggest) and Mail (40% of the market) absolutely dominate their respective categories and, despite the general perception of Yahoo as a company in decline, are mostly holding steady or growing slowly in terms of audience. The selection bias amongst tech professionals in their perception of Yahoo is a huge barrier to Yahoo's hiring, acquisition, and new tech launches -- simply put, the tech community doesn't use our products, and as a result, they believe nobody uses our products. It simply isn't true. Yahoo isn't growing as fast as Facebook -- hence being overtaken -- but it's still growing and attracting new users every day, both domestically and worldwide. It's just not doing so in a particularly new or exciting way.

endtime 17y ago
If you don't mind my asking, why did you leave? If it was for career/professional reasons, that is - no desire to pry if it was personal.
- seldo 17y ago
  Only too happy to say! :-) I am co-founder of http://awe.sm http://awe.sm, and following some delays with visa paperwork I am finally able to join it full-time. If your business would like better tools and metrics for using social media, please give us a call :-)
  - pclark 17y ago
    slightly off the cuff, but could I have an awe.sm invite? we've been talking about using your service for weeks but can't find anyone with invites :) peter@broadersheet.com good luck w/ startup.
  - swombat 17y ago
    The URL shortener service looks cool, and just what I've been looking for. You may get a mail from us soon... Would be good to have some idea how the prices scale up past 10k URLs/month before signing up though.
patio11 17y ago
Within Yahoo, the general consensus is that our biggest market is middle-aged housewives from the midwest Conversely, if you happen to have a stack of emails around for middle-aged housewives in the midwest, you'll quickly be able to verify that they Yahoo to their friends and coworkers in between browsing the Google.
swombat 17y ago
The selection bias amongst tech professionals in their perception of Yahoo is a huge barrier to Yahoo's hiring, acquisition, and new tech launches -- simply put, the tech community doesn't use our products, and as a result, they believe nobody uses our products. Is that not considered worth fixing by the Yahoo leadership? Having good support from early adopters seems pretty important when you're a tech company...

jsz0 17y ago

There's still a shocking number of homepage people out there who see Google.com as a very boring experience. They could use iGoogle but its existence is not immediately obvious. They want information pushed at them instead of seeking it out. Yahoo does a pretty good job at that. What's the other alternative? MSN.com? Not many well known classic homepages/portals left these days. Yahoo also has some pretty good properties so they can keep people coming back even if they're not offering the most innovative or geekiest stuff. Their current layout is actually pretty good.

chrischen 17y ago
I used to have yahoo.com set as home for that reason until I safari and chrome got the most visited sites thing.

eogas 17y ago

It may have to do with the fact that AT&T still includes a yahoo e-mail address with their DSL service. To tell you the truth, I have AT&T DSL service, and I haven't logged into my yahoo e-mail account since the day my service began. However, I think that a lot of people still use the e-mail service that is supplied by their ISP.