 "Yvonne Chang")
Yahoo! has seen a number of changes over the past year—acquisitions, revamps and even a change in its logo. Yvonne Chang, managing director (India and Southeast Asia), Yahoo!, in an interview with Abhik Sen, talks about the philosophy behind these changes and the company’s plans. Edited excerpts:
Why was the company's logo changed?
At Yahoo!, the last year has been tremendously exciting. There is a strong sense of energy and renewed focus. This is reflected in the pace of innovation. We wanted our logo to reflect this change and, at the same time, retain some of the traditional elements that have made it an iconic brand. The colour scheme remains purple, the letters capitalised and, perhaps most important, the exclamation mark is still there. But there is distinct modernisation in the new logo---it no longer has serifs and each letter is thinner and taller than before. Additionally, we went with a chiselled look for each letter, adding depth to the logo. At Yahoo!, we are whimsical, and the nine-degree tilt of the exclamation is just our way of being quirky and fun.
The change in our logo is truly a reflection of how the brand is evolving. The refinement of the logo reflects our mission of delivering beautiful and inspiring products and experiences. We also wanted the logo to reflect how creative and fun Yahoo! really is.
The current economic environment doesn't seem to have dampened Yahoo!'s expansion plans. We've often heard Yahoo! makes more money from its holdings than product revenue.
Our revenue model is focused on digital advertising. It's not a surprise our users' daily habits are moving to digital and Yahoo! sits right at the centre of these habits. We are building next-generation web experiences to wow our users and deepen their engagement with Yahoo! products and properties. Our aim is to build modern, intuitive and highly personalised product experiences across screens and devices. We have invested in acquiring 23 start-ups in the last 14 months to get more mobile talent into Yahoo!. We have quickly and seamlessly integrated the talent and new technologies to build superior product experiences. To cite an example, the natural-language algorithms and machine-learning technology we acquired through Summly was used to power our Yahoo! app to deliver quick story summaries. This was done in less than four weeks, not to mention our investment in Tumblr, which has an incredible fit with Yahoo! across content, technology and user demographics.
We deliver true relevance through our personalisation technology. As a result, Yahoo! enables brands to reach consumers across daily habits. As with product experiences, we are also innovating with ad formats and have introduced beautiful, new Yahoo! stream ads and interactive billboards to make ads more engaging for users. We will continue to focus on our users and increasing traffic, which we believe will result in more value for the advertiser. And, we have two great investments in our Asian assets---Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan, which continue to perform very well.
How has the market changed over the years? How has Yahoo! kept pace?
The internet has evolved in many ways, some more far-reaching than others. At Yahoo!, we put our users first. From that perspective, the most dramatic change has been the platform shift to mobile and connected devices.
This is a global phenomenon, but of particular importance to India. Mobile growth has been explosive and mobile internet is growing rapidly, too. There is a huge opportunity for Yahoo! to get our products and services closer to our users in India by delivering cross-screen experiences. We are focused on not just developing new apps on the mobile platform but inspiring and entertaining our users with modern, intuitive and high personalised product and content experiences.
To give you an example, our app for Yahoo! Mail on tablets takes into account the inherent magazine-like experience of the device and offers a totally 'unboxed' experience for the user. Similarly, we are making our content experiences rich, immersive and seamless across devices. Take Yahoo! Cricket for example. This is available as native apps across iOS, Android and Windows 8. The experience you get through the apps is rich and immersive, be it match commentary, live scorecards or beautiful visuals ---these apps keep you connected to the game. In the last one year, Yahoo! Cricket has seen three-fold growth in its mobile traffic. There has been 54 per cent year-on-year (December 2011 to Dec 2012) growth in mobile UUs on the Yahoo! India network. Today, about half of our users in India access Yahoo! through mobiles.
Globally, we have increased our mobile users from 200 million to 350 million in less than a year. We continue to focus on making our products mobile-first and delivering highly personalised experiences to our users.
