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January 31, 2007

Yahoo’s Brand Universe Launches

Michael Arrington

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Yahoo’s brand-centric sites, announced in November 2006 and dubbed “Brand Universe”, have started to go live. These sites each revolve around a single popular brand - like this one on the Nintendo Wii - and have almost no original content. Instead, Yahoo is taking content from Flickr, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers and other Yahoo properties, along with some slick graphics, and hoping for page views.

Yahoo says to expect 100 or so brand-based sites by the end of the year, and will include sites for popular movies, TV shows, bands, celebrities, games, etc. The next sites to be launched will include the Sims, Halo, Lost, the Office, Transformers, and Harry Potter, says GigaOm.

Yahoo doesn’t seem too concerned with monetization of these pages yet, and they aren’t working directly with the brands themselves. Chances are both of those policies may change in the near future.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 4:37 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Paul Freet

    January 31st, 2007 at 4:52 am

    This appears to be an excellent concept. It ties together Answers, Fickr and del.icio.us into one vertical focus. And if you click through to the buyer’s guide, they pull in Yahoo Shopping and eBay. Nice.

    As far as monetizing it, I think the ad on the page will do that quite nicely.

  2. Neil

    January 31st, 2007 at 5:03 am

    wow, if you think that is a good site you are out of your mind.

    I think Yahoo are still flat thinking. Mash up some content, theme it and….sell Yahoo ads……..this is not a quality site, it may however attract newbies who do not yet understand what is on the internet.

  3. Rajeev Vashisht

    January 31st, 2007 at 5:41 am

    Well initially people have to work for free or subsidized rates before building payment models and taxing users.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  4. RqTect

    January 31st, 2007 at 5:51 am

    great article

    Mush up some content.

  5. Kosso

    January 31st, 2007 at 5:56 am

    This is nothing compared to the hoo-hah brewing over on the flickr forums, since we (paying customers) have just been told that we are to be FORCED to switch to Yahoo!

    http://flickr.com/forums/help/.....eply164692

  6. Razvan Antonescu

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:08 am

    Well…search engine spammers have been created sites like that for ages. Just aggregate content from various sources around a central keyoword. What’s the god damn difference here? Ajax? The Yahoo Brand? Don’t get it

  7. soxiam

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:28 am

    I do not understand what the ultimate goal of this product. Is it a microsite-in-a-box marketing product? Is it a showcase for their own properties? Is it a test for an automated portal?

  8. NeoTechie

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:31 am

    Yahoo’s Plan ???:
    First build a high traffic site then smack visitors with ads.
    The concept of aggregating the aggregators is brilliant!

  9. Raj Anand

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:35 am

    I’m excited to see the mashup of Yahoo Products. How would it look??

    I think it should be something i’m really looking forward too. Obviously if they get it right! Just the idea of seeing del.ico.us, flickr, answer, yahoo map, video…. in a single product in my opinion is an excellent idea.

    Particularly want to see their USP (unique selling point). Else as Razvan pointed out - it has been done before on numerous occasions

  10. milo

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:46 am

    Interesting, they mash up their (bought) services on that page, only delicio and bloglog misssing.

  11. milo

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:48 am

    Interesting, all services in one page related to the product. Finally Yahoo shows us why they bought some services, now they mash up their services on that page, only delicio and bloglog misssing.

  12. Amit

    January 31st, 2007 at 7:20 am

    What’s the point? I don’t really see one. Whatever.

  13. Jamie Stephens

    January 31st, 2007 at 7:21 am

    This seems to be very similar to what You Mon Tsang is doing at Boxxet - except the Boxxet model seems to be more organic in that users seem to have more control over the topics covered. It will be interesting to see the social model commoditized in this way. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.

  14. Baris Karadogan

    January 31st, 2007 at 7:32 am

    I think it is a smart move to attract brand advertisers.

    Direct response advertising is working phonomenally well on the Internet but much better so for Google than Yahoo, so Yahoo wants to go where it is harder for Google to go and attract brand advertisers with their content.

    I would love to see Google’s response to this.

  15. Neil

    January 31st, 2007 at 7:42 am

    Google are not going to respond to this. Yahoo are putting debris on the internet.

  16. Hornswaggled

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:10 am

    I agree with Razvan, all Yahoo is doing here is building out pages and getting pageviews, nothing wrong with that just nothing really note worthy.

    They can use their ranking power and traffic to instantly build a community and will make money around it. I have no doubt they will profit from this, why wouldn’t they? Overall its a good idea and as long as they can support it they should continue to do this to help their bottom line.

  17. Kashif

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:11 am

    I think it is a celver move to attract advertisers, now it make sense why yahoo bought some services.

  18. Startup Booster

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:22 am

    It is obvious that they are moving toward vertical content sites and this will help them attrach more brand advertisers like Baris mentioned above. However I think this will hurt other social media sites who focus only on specific area such as gaming and entertainment.

  19. Erik Schwartz

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:23 am

    Many many moons ago I used to run the entertainment group at Yahoo!. This effort is not going to work.

    This is not entertainment, it is news and information about entertainment.

    Entertainment needs to be actually entertaining.

    http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2.....ining.html

  20. Thom Kozik

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:28 am

    Makes perfect sense. First and foremost; remember that Yahoo! is a SEARCH ENGINE. Now, take a brand like Star Trek for example - how many *different searches* across Yahoo’s properties would give you a complete perspective on Star Trek.

    1) a gen’l Search from Y! home page shows you a list of *other people’s* sites, with a couple of internal Yahoo, and paid links scattered around the page,

    2) then go over to Yahoo! Shopping, and search for all the ST products for sale…

    3) then go over to Yahoo! Groups, and search for discussions about ST….

    4) then on to, Yahoo! Games, and search for all the listings for ST related games…

    5) then go Y! TV, and search for listings of all the ST reruns on in your area…
    …and the show notes
    …and the cast bios

    6) then go to Y! Movies, repeat the searches like you did for TV…

    7) then go to Del.icio.us, search again for all socially bookmarked ST references…

    8) then search Flickr, Y! News, Y!, and so on, and so on…

    NOBODY is going to do that as an individual… yet ALL that ST-related “content” is buried there, within Yahoo!, just in all these different niches. The top-level general Search can’t deliver it to you - we all expect that to do exactly as it does today on Yahoo, Google, et al - return a results list of OTHER (non-Y!) sites related to this topic — but we don’t mind a couple of internal links tossed into the results list for promotional purposes. If you actually did the ST searches mentioned above, and listed all the internal Y! results first - it could be a couple of pages before you ever got around to showing the first external link.

    SO… you’re Y!, you’re sitting on all this related content - but you can’t practically shove it in people’s faces on your general Search offering - what do you do? You solve your own internal promotion (& traffic aggregation) problem by creating these “brand-based portals” (BBP’s) to all things that have content on Yahoo.

    Cool thing is, you don’t even need the brands permission, let alone participation! No rights, no expensive licenses, nothing.

    What license fee does Y! owe to Paramount for somebody posting pictures of themselves in a ST costume in Flickr? None. For fanboys arguing about the sex habits of green skinned alien dancing girls, over in Yahoo! Groups? None.

    Would these BBP’s be better served by having the brands participate? Sure! But Yahoo! just reversed the flow of cash — instead of having to *pay* the brands for licensing - Yahoo! just created a whole that the brand will want to fill with their OWN advertising, or creative input/content/etc. When the next ST movie comes out - what’s a better ad buy for Paramount, and better revenue for Yahoo? Low-value, low-CPM ads scattered around on Y! Groups, Games, etc., or big flashy high-CPM ads right next to Yahoo!’s portal for all-things-Star Trek?

    Coolest thing? This is *not* easy for Google to duplicate under their current model. They *could* do it, but it’d require a bit of a shift in their thinking/approach.

  21. HJ

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:30 am

    Erik Schwartz, It’s hard to take your insights about entertainment seriously when your own project, foneshow, is so utterly lame. You’re just bashing people who suck as much as you.

  22. Erik Schwartz

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:45 am

    Hey HJ, it’s hard to take anything you say seriously when no one know who you are.

    Since I doubt you’re in the foneshow beta I wonder what you’re basing you claims of lamenss on.

  23. BillyWarhol

    January 31st, 2007 at 8:55 am

    Will Yahoo! or Flickr be Paying any of the $$$ Money back to the Users???

    I thought the comments from the AGLOCO dudes on Scoble were Bang On! with how these Social Networks like MySpace & YouTube & Flickr are built on the backs of the People without giving any $$$ Money back*

    Time fer that to change*

    ;))

  24. Magnusdopus

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:07 am

    This might be Yahoo’s first step into the growing business known as Lead Generation. Internet Advertising Companies like Valueclick will be in competition.

  25. pallet jack

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:13 am

    I agree, lol - This is the internets equivilant of Space junk.

    - Also - un-deserving of TC

    -

  26. Debbie Davies

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:15 am

    Sites with unfair terms of use, that don’t give enough back to the community, leave the door open for new services to step in and take the quality content that everyone is fighting over.

  27. steve

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:21 am

    if flickr users get moved what happens to the thousands of flickr mashups and plugins that helped make flickr great?

    glad I have been using smugmug more than my flickr lately

  28. whoopee

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:59 am

    this strategy will net some short term gains for yahoo…advertizers will love the brazen marketing of these sites, but users won’t.

    this is yahoo as a SITE circling the drain. just like tv stations that transition to infommercials to pay the bills. sure, the company creating the infommercial thinks its great, and yes a few dimwits actually watch the entire segment, but its a last gasp monetizing strategy, over time the bulk of the audience recognizes that the channel should be skipped.

    yahoo’s split into ad and audience divisions is more telling than people think. the ad group will be very motivated to seek revenue from the entire web, that means developing a full-on adsense alternative in ypn. no longer will yahoo.com sites be able to rely on the generous welfare program extended to their losing properties over the years by the ad network. over time my prediction is that the audience group will become a leper colony of infommercial siutes and loss leaders (mail,news,etc). this is a good thing, the whole concept of the “yahoo network” is DEAD KAPUT OVER.

    erik schwartz, man you flog your limited time and impact at yahoo so much! admit it, we all just cashed the checks while filo ran the site.

  29. Alaska Miller

    January 31st, 2007 at 10:14 am

    @Thom Kazik:

    You’re mistaken. Yahoo isn’t in the search engine game as much as Google is in the web portal game.

    Who the heck uses delicious? When I was in Kansas City and asked some of my friends there about Web 2.0 sites we take for granted here, not a single one registered any responses. No one cares.

    Your premise is also that people are willing to explore to that extent. Maybe losers that love love love Star Trek would, but others don’t care. IMDb probably serves as a better platform for TV fans to connect than anything Yahoo will ever come up with.

  30. Tony Wright

    January 31st, 2007 at 10:17 am

    I think it’s a great strategy… It’s really not dissimilar to Google News (intelligently aggregating content on particular topics). If they focus on user value (i.e. making sure great content bubbles up on their assorted content portals), then it’ll be a far cry better than going to a search engine and searching for one of these topics.

  31. rodrigo

    January 31st, 2007 at 10:29 am

    This is really smart. The variable costs of putting these sites together can’t be all that high and if any of the sites get traction then you have a nicer medium for delivering targeted ads than some blue Adwords on the side of a Google query. The value of the customer also strikes me as higher.

    The main challenge is execution: its already late enough in the game that for a new Wii community site to gain traction is going to be hard. They needed to launch this in November. If they can get these sites set up prior to a product launch (for the Wii or a Zune) then they stand a chance of actually becoming a relevant destination for any given product and they are creating real value off of some negligible variable costs for yet another new site.

    Right now the ad targeting is not good, however. I can’t imagine Google ever putting a Vonage ad based on a query for Wii (though the Vonage ad is now appearing on the wii.yahoo.com homepage). If they can clean up their execution this could do well.

  32. Farhad

    January 31st, 2007 at 10:43 am

    It’s interesting!

    Half the people here think it’s junk, the other half think it’s very smart.
    I also think that is makes a lot of sense once you look at it as a highly customized search landing page.

  33. drew olanoff

    January 31st, 2007 at 11:32 am

    ok, seriously. all of the money that they have over at yahoo to innovate and all they can come up with is….portals?

    good lord.

  34. Thom Kozik

    January 31st, 2007 at 11:40 am

    @Alaska…

    No, not mistaken in the slightest.

    1) Yahoo *is* in the Search game. Whether or not they match up to Google (they don’t) isn’t the point in question here.

    2) Your point re: adoption of things like Del.icio.us by “middle America”. Sure, I’ll admit that these tech memes don’t have as much relevance in Kansas City as in Daly City, but again - *not. the. point.* The point is about aggregation of what they DO have. I’d say that under this strategy, more people (including those in KC) will be exposed to Del.icio.us than might have otherwise ever stumbled upon it. Will they take it up? I dunno - irrelevant. Not the point. Will Y! monetize that “stumble” traffic? abso-friggin-lutely.

    3) MY premise is born out by facts. What people *search* for. Take a look at any of Y!’s “hot list” features like the Buzz Index - that’s what will flag for Y! what is worth building a BBP or not. And don’t get hung up on “Star Trek” as the example brand - THINK… it could be Lost, or American Idol, or any relevant brand that has context beyond just a simple TV or IMDB listing.

    @rodrigo - your last point is right on target. The challenge will be for Y! to wean themselves off the easy money from Run-of-network ads like the Vonage one you point out… and get more contextually relevant ones in there.

  35. Ryan

    January 31st, 2007 at 11:46 am

    The Wii branded site has been up since the Wii launch in November.

  36. Justin

    January 31st, 2007 at 11:57 am

    For what it’s worth I run a Nintendo Wii blog as a hobby and for a while in November I was getting a ton if incoming hits from http://wii.yahoo.com/

    Due to the dynamic nature of the page I wasn’t able to find the links back to my blog, but it indicates that these pages (at least the Wii one) are doing some pageviews.

  37. matthew

    January 31st, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    might as well call them splogs

  38. Micki Krimmel

    January 31st, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    I can see the value in this if I’m trying to search for information on a wii. But how often am I going to do that? I mean, I’ll check it out and once i decide I want one, I’ll never return to the site again. And how valuable is it for Nintendo to advertise to me there? I’m already interested in the product or I wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.

    The idea of a “brand universe” is not exactly compelling to me. I want to create my own universe on the web, built around my preferences and my social networks. The brands need to find authentic ways of fitting into that.

  39. Sramana Mitra

    January 31st, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Very recently, I wrote 4C: Yahoo’s Turnaround Formula, criticizing them for having haphazard offerings with no segmentation.

    This announcement addresses some of my points, in that they are actually tying together various disjointed and haphazard properties around a particular brand, and creating an integrated experience.

    I like it.

  40. Sean

    January 31st, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    Sorry, this is really lame.

    Are they just trying to take advantage of their page rank? I imagine that a search for “wii” would yield “wii.yahoo.com” very high in the results simply because of the yahoo.com domain.

  41. http://www.blogsaic.com/

    January 31st, 2007 at 3:06 pm

    I think this concept has merit, and will be a hit, what they need to do is introduce a forum like / comments feature (maybe answers will do) and a moderator/editor.

    essentially this is a search portal within a distributed set of search engines run by one company….

    wait till the ‘lost’ or ‘24′ brands start up…

    it’ll work

  42. zapotepetl

    January 31st, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    Will be interesting when it is not closed to brands and yahoo deciding which. When “anyone”, like me, can build a page of whatever subject or subjects I want with those tools. For personal uses, like Micki Krimmel points out, but think for example on great educational things that can be done if instead of a “brand” you create a page on a learning topic.

  43. Jinnan

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    This concept certainly has merit, but Yahoo are still doing it within their walled garden.

    We are already doing this for our clients like West Surfing: http://westsurfing.com

  44. jeezy

    January 31st, 2007 at 6:45 pm

    an abomination

  45. Biff

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Hey Jinnan, before you plug your service you may want to make sure what you are plugging actually works…sheesh

  46. Rich Valla

    February 1st, 2007 at 6:00 am

    I believe they have the money to operate and not to miss the cash flow it will give…

  47. Merrypinkcat

    February 6th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

    I think it’s great can’t wait for the harry potter one.

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