Webwork - 4:30 pm on Jun 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

focus consumers on what defines Yahoo

Every time I see coporatespeak suggestive of "brand ownership" or control I cringe just a little.

I understand that "after changes upon changes marketing is more or less the same*, so I don't entirely fault those who are stuck living in certain constructs, causing them to experience a world of corporate brand ownership and/or brand control in, of and by corporations.

Yet marketing is clearly evolving and changing.

In the digital era the branding river defies both the gravity and gravitas - the ponderous seriousness of "We're the Marketing Department and we really mean it!) - corporate-speak.

This is especially true in the case of "digital properties" where brand as brand-as-experience now easily and quickly flows uphill, i.e., consumers define and exercise great control over Yahoo!'s or any other online entity's brand. Sortof a case of brand meets "Hey! It's the WWWeb, stupid!"

The only Yahoo! experience I've had lately was a brief revisit to the Yahoo! Finance stock message boards. After a decade that experience is still like wading into a cesspool . . of stock pump-and-dump wannabees and their ilk. All that money and technology, and a decade+ has passed, and Yahoo! still hasn't made a real effort to improve the quality of the financial dialogue. Guess that would reduce CPM billing, eh?

Once upon a time Yahoo! exerted a service-based pull on the Web, but its userbase was drawn away by the likes of Google offering the same easily replicable services - like email, news aggregation, etc.

What's left? What's going to emerge? Another free online socializing platform? What else ya got Yahoo!?

All those billions of dollars and no sizzle or dazzle or even uniquely valuable utility.

*Tip of the hat to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer".

[edited by: Webwork at 5:21 pm (utc) on June 25, 2009]