Yahoo's 2010 Turn-Around Strategy Revealed: A Cycling Team

clownjuggleOh, Yahoo.

Revenues are down. Search share is down. The social stuff has been outsourced to Facebook. The search stuff is about to be outsourced to Bing. Things are not exactly on the up and up. Not even just one “up.” But it would appear that Yahoo is not one to let grim news stand in the way of its latest ridiculous endeavor: Starting a cycling team.

Yes, in 2010, the company will officially launch the Yahoo! Cycling Team. CyclingNews.com has more details, including that they’ve hired a former professional rider, Kevin Klein, to not only run the team, but to deliver a “successful business model” out of the thing. But here’s the best part:

The whole idea behind the Yahoo! Cycling Team is the recruitment of high tech professionals in the Silicon Valley and to provide a platform for partners to achieve more involvement at the community level. If you do it right, everyone should win and grow their business,” Klein tells CyclingNews.

Um, what? I cannot for the life of me figure out what he’s actually saying. This team is about recruiting high tech professionals? To ride bikes? It’s a platform? Community? I’m surprised he didn’t throw “geolocation” or “realtime” in there to meet a buzzword quota.

Actually, maybe even better is that Yahoo apparently went ahead with this idea based on a survey. “An online survey targeted at Silicon Valley Professionals revealed that an astonishing 50 percent are cycling enthusiasts and follow the local scene. The results were presented to the Yahoo! Management, the internet services company which operates the third most-visited website in the world, and prompted it to come onboard as the main partner to launch America’s newest team in 2010: Yahoo! Cycling Team,” CyclingNews reports.

Ahh, so this is all about pleasing that huge, but under-represented cycling contingent in Silicon Valley. It’s good to know that Yahoo’s management is weighing all their options to make 2010 the year that Yahoo storms back.

But what I most want to know is, if the team fails to deliver four races in, will Yahoo outsource the sponsorship to Facebook or Bing?

Here’s the website Yahoo will be launching for the team early next year. And they already have a Twitter page.

Why is Yahoo spending money on this again?

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[image via]

[thanks Andreas]