A yahoo for Yahoo!

Hilary Schneider, exec vice pres, global partner solutions division, Yahoo, gave the keynote address. Here's some notes, but the bottom line is that I'm now wondering if we should have said yes to the Yahoo newspaper consortium partership, if only for the traffic it brings.

We're still in the early innings. We've just seen the tip of the iceberg on what we can do in integrated media.
Fragmentation is reality, users moving from broadbased media to other choices, there's a plethora of choices, so how do you stand out?
what are people searching for? Local internent search is top issue. then entertainment, then e-mail, general news then local news.
Online ad spending is increassing. expected to rise from $3.4 bill estimated in 2006 to $12.4 billion by 2010. That means $9 billion moving to online from other media.
Local search is also growing by leaps, bounds., at Yahoo, 1/3 of search queries have local intent.
How many is that? Yahoo has 500 million unique users monthly.
Most common searches: local queries, maps, local news and info, social media, classified verticals directory, other
That means there's a huge market opportunity for local advertisers
buying online is $120 billion, but researching onling but buying offline is $1.3 trillion
Geotagged photos are an example of the growing strength of local
what it leads to is local news meeting global news, with millions of personal prespectives shared bringing depth to national and international news.
such layers of information build relevance, give users the options
(check out Yahoo's Beta MAPMIXER gallery)
Not all user gen content is good, of course, but users can rate and value content for you, so you have to create editing functions in which the public edits for you, to help the cream rise to the top
she showeds how Mitt Romney's campaign let viewers create their own Mitt ad. the ad tested as well as professionally produced material. It let the most passionate users focus their passon on behalf of candidate.
Yahoo Democratic Campaign mashup allowed readers to create their own campaign debate.
The need to create more comprehensive features and coverage, such as the House of Lies by Miami Herald.
But you can link to third party content through partnerships can strengthen independence. Make sure you protect band and voice, just because you can doesn't mean you should (hey! that's my motto!) focus and place big bets as you go, seek out companies as partners that share your values.
She detailed how Yahoo partnershoip, now 19 members, 398 newspapers. 20 m sunday circulation. Local news, advertising, circulation (ie newspapers) is the best of breed. we don't want to supplant that, we want readers to click over, we're a distribution methd.
We want to embrace journalist values, look for new ways to engage readers in stories, partners to acquire best of breed technologies and platforms, change fast and often.
My favorite quote: Today's innovations will create tomorrow's digital leaders.
She talked a lot about maintaining traditional journalism values in new online world. But she left out how the culture of verification she cited can be implemented in the world of user-generated content. I asked her about this and she gave a good answer, but really, as with a lot of the things we're talking about here, it was an answer based on hope, that we have to trust our public to police this stuff. That works with communities of great scale, but I and several other inky wretches here are concerned about that barn door being left open. Only time will tell.