Can Yahoo do content?

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Yahoo has also reportedly been working with Mark Burnett Projects on another online reality show called "Treasure Hunt," which would have contestants pick up clues online to find a real treasure buried somewhere in the country. That show has yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, the other big Net portals are also putting together original content. AOL recently announced that it's producing with Burnett an original online reality show, which is similar to "Treasure Hunt" but called "Gold Rush." And Google recently inked a deal with the UPN Network to let people watch a premiere of "Everybody Hates Chris" online. According to sources, Yahoo was in talks with UPN for the same arrangement.

"There's a difference of opinion about what Yahoo's real objective is here--whether it will be the HBO of the Web or not. Yahoo's strategy has always been to develop a little original content, and license a lot of other content, and focus on user generated stuff. And I haven't heard a clear articulation of what the agenda is," said Rob Sanderson, media and communications analyst at American Technology Research.

There have been other situations that, as much as anything, show the cultural divide between Braun's Hollywood and Yahoo's tech industry.

Earlier this month at a Los Angeles conference called "The Entertainment Gathering," a tech-meets-entertainment confab where self-promotion was supposed to be verboten, Braun took a shot at archrival Google. When he came on stage for a speech, Braun was asked by the conference host if he had seen a snake on stage earlier, referring to a gigantic boa constrictor brought on by a celebrity from The Discovery Channel.

Braun, who hadn't been there, said, "No. Was Google here?" Many in the crowd hissed.

Some Yahoo watchers see more than a little irony in Braun's struggles, given that Semel, a Hollywood veteran widely praised for turning around Yahoo, made the leap to the digital world that Braun is still struggling with.

"Terry's done a fabulous job re-creating Yahoo's business model, making it much more viable for advertising. From a pure media standpoint, Yahoo has come a long way," said Gary Adelson, a Los Angeles-based investment banker who runs the media, sports and entertainment practice for Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin.

But there's little doubt Braun has his work cut out for him. "It's a challenging mandate to integrate media and Internet technology to create a culture and following for programming. Is it a success yet? I don't think anyone expected results so soon," said Adelson.

[pentium4forever]

Lloyd Braun -- Serenity now.....sanity later!

Lloyd Braun character is funny on the Seinfeld sitcom.

[jamms]

Yahoo shot itself in the foot.

I was a yahoo fan until i switched to mac and discovered that most of yahoo's services are not compatable cross platform. I'm not talking about messenger or other stand alone apps, I'm talking about the website. If yahoo wants to build a website that only runs of windows, fine.. but don't get upset when people who move to another platform leave. Bottom line is you can get the exact same information and content at many other places on the web, and yahoo is not necessary.

[BakedPotato]

Yahoo: The Clock's Ticking

As directories and search engines, Yahoo and Google have excelled at organizing the web and helping individuals seek, find and access the things that uniquely matter to them.

Yet to take a position of creating original content and assuming it will successfully appeal to a wide enough audience is a notion that runs counter to that which brought those powerhouses such relevance and application.

If Yahoo is good at anything, it?s making it easy for people to get what they want when they want it. Back in the early days of the web, it simply took two guys in their dorm room to imagine and implement a strategy that continues to work today.

Perhaps it?s time to take a lesson from Apple who came to realize that straying too far from the shore and bringing in the big guns can spell ruination when the idea that put them there in the first place became lost.

Its time that Yahoo recognizes their true value and opportunity; simplify the experience for individuals to gain access to those who are willing to pay for the relationship, and let the content evolve from those who have the passion, talent and perserverence to rise to the top.

The clocks ticking?.

Gary Baker
President
Clipblast.com

[Robert Franco]

Message has been deleted.

[boymeyers]

AOL News As Well!

Your comscore data is missing a key player in online News---AOL, which is always ranked near Yahoo, MSN and CNN.

It seems to me Yahoo is trying to do what AOL content has done for years, original top notch programming.