Is their no innovation left in these companies? Aren’t we moving away from newspaper readership as it descends and is documented time and time again? As these sites are losing market share, market dollars and are struggling with new Web 2.0 tools like our Push Posting 2.0 they are trying to stay in the game however newspapers, mass marketing and a mass audience are not the way to go. The way to go is a targeted granular approach and utilizing tools to reach passive job seekers. Last count their were 40,000 job boards for active candidates, however companies and recruitment advertising pay for performance like ours will only grow and prosper.

If I want to buy or sell something I go to http://craigslist.com, and have done so for six years now, I meet my fantastic girlfriend (3/years), sold my car, found a car, I started a photo hosting service to help craigslist users put photos in there ads called http://ImageDeposit.com.

What’s my point? I love craigslist and so do a zillion other people; Craigslist seems to be the dominant player with 5 billion page views per month.

If the headline had read [Yahoo acquires Craigslist] that would be something to talk about.

Where newspapers’ web strategies have fallen short in my opinion, is in not providing USER-CENTERED access to this information. THIS is the major component of web 2.0 that I think the newspapers need to embrace. Provide easy, useful access to the information. Don’t spam us with popups, and registrations, and aweful designs. And for God’s sake, don’t add features for the sake of adding features.

Look at LJWorld.com… sure there are incredibly innovative features like mobile, and blogs galore. However, the true innovation is in it’s clean, pleasant presentation. Without that, it could have all the features in the world, but i wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t stick around to check them out.

Seems to me that Yahoo wins in this deal (increased local content for them), and the users and the newspapers lose out.

I think that’s a huge part of this deal.

Assuming they are late, What do you suggest they should do? Sit longer and remain an audience? That’s loser man.

Yahoo should focus on their deal, snatch learnings from Google’s past experiences, refine their execution and overtake their competition.

Right now, if one wants news in a hurry, the market, the latest plane crash, or what your local city council did last night about whatever, most of us go to Google.

Gee. And what does Google do? Links us to the stories mostly from newspapers. And what does Google pay? Not squat.

Hmmm. Newspapers have tried charging users for content; most have abandoned he effort. But then, let’s think about this: Google has ads. Google has tons of money. Google is using newspaper (and TV and radio) content free. Gee.

The future, perhaps is looming.

i think everybody’s overestimating the popularity of blogs, honestly. high authority bloggers (aka, om malik, tech crunch, etc.) are where the popularity is, not so much the average joe talking about whatever is going on at school, etc. yet everybody thinks they need to add this to their platform. traditional media would probably do well with just creating and promoting blogs of their most popular journalists, then allowing readers to post comments like business week, SF chronicle, etc. do now. It’s not that creating user driven content on newspaper sites isn’t without benefit, it’s just that hearing everybody jump to offer user driven content makes me think there’s a lot people don’t understand about the market.

this is bad news for the 000s of smaller organizations that feed off the newspaper sites as the portal/aggregators will hurt their ability to grow.

Yeah Yahoo for figuring this one out…..

Part of the explanation for why it doesn’t seem so to some is due to perception, not reality. As is the case with the tabloids, “upheaval” and “bad” news proves the greater draw to readers than “all’s well” type news stories.

Such reporting makes the highs seem much higher than they really are . . . and the lows seem much lower than they really are.

Fact is, while all of us spend much (if not too much) of our time reading our favorite blogs, news sites, etc; for a very large percentage of Americans–where, by the way, most of the spendable money and net worth lie–still embrace that which they are most comfortable with; newspapers, magazines, etc.

Has the Internet sent shock waves through the offices of legacy media? Sure it has.

But the sky is not falling, and the world is not about to end, for the “old school” media of this world.

Not if they continue to make the adjustments needed . . . embrace the changes required . . . and develope the vision necessary.

The result? Employees, investors, and yes; their stock holders as well; will feast on the fruits of such labors.

Though it may not seem so today; especially to those with more time on their hands than money in their pockets; this new media/legacy media partnership (and its coming expansion) will one day be seen as one of the most prescient business moves of this decade.

Congratulations are in order for both Yahoo and the newspapers for embracing the future.

Let’s keep it going.

That or dominating click fraud growth.

NJG: Stock price is down substantially and Yahoo! says advertising is suffering dramatically. Obviously many people do love Yahoo! but Google is dominating both innovation and advertising growth.