What's Yahoo! To Do? Here's What -- Disrupt Video!

Yahoo!'s Marissa Mayer has been on the job as CEO for about 6 months now.  Still too early for a verdict.  But, just yesterday, Yahoo! redesigned its site to mixed reviews.  On the more pessimistic side, leading tech blog Gigaom calls "Yahoo!'s latest attempt to reinvent the portal [as being] too little and too late."

So, what's Yahoo! to do?

"Disrupt [the] legacy media distribution and consumption" model "via online video," that's what -- in a "must read" analysis titled "Video and Yahoo" by Mucker Blog.  Mucker Blog is the mouthpiece for SoCal start-up focused accelerator MuckerLab.

Mucker's analysis is well-reasoned, thought-provoking, insightful -- and whatever other "you know what I mean" words you can think of.  Definitely worth the time for anyone interested at all in the media business and online video (and the disruption to both happening right before our eyes).

Here are some nuggets from that analysis:

-- "Yahoo is a new media distribution and monetization company -- and its main asset is its audience of 150M monthly unique visitors and its 1000+ strong sales force for selling premium advertising."  "Put it another way, Yahoo is a new media network ... [and] is really closer to ABC, NBC, and even Comcast than it is closer to Google."

-- "Yahoo needs to re-invent yahoo.com as a major destination with video as one of its main forms of content."

-- "Yahoo should partner with companies like Maker and Machinima or -- ideally -- acquire one or both to gain scale and full economics right away."

-- "Yahoo should attempt to license premium TV content for over-the-top linear TV applications."  And, "Yahoo could become Hollywood's best friend and beat all the other online companies to the punch" in doing so.

-- "In the end, the right portfolio of online content combined with traditional TV content PLUS a native user experience for cross device consumption will be a game changer and sets the stage for Yahoo to take over the living room."

Q.E.D. and res ipsa loquitur.

Well said and well reasoned, MuckerLab and Mucker Blog!