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Yahoo! Saga

What a crazy year it has been for Yahoo! It’s almost like a drama… and for the PR in Sunnyvale, this must be a bloody nightmare… First we had Steve laying a siege at Yahoo!’s doors with a $44.6 billion take over in Feb, which Yahoo! declined. It was all over the news for 3 months (poor PR folks….) until Microsoft made a final offer with an ultimatum of a hostile takeover. Yahoo!’s response was still a no… and the response from Yahoo!’s blog was amazingly extreme… At the same time, the rumors of a Google partnership was adrift

Then Carl comes bawling like a baby about how Yahoo! doesn’t have the best interest in their shareholders. Luckily, this time, Carl was seen to be the bad guy on the Yahoo!’s blog response. (Hell, that kicked ass!) But throw in that with the lawsuit of the severance program, man, talk about being in the limelight for the wrong reasons… Managing company rep like this is a nightmare…

Now Microsoft and Yahoo! opened up talks again with Yahoo! in my opinion throwing a red herring to Microsoft saying

we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders

And Yahoo! shocks the world by saying it has partnered rival Google for online advertising. Man, and what a bunch of mixed responses on the Yahoo! blog, although not as extreme as the rejection of the Microsoft deal… Of course, this is still with the legal side breathing down their necks…

You can read more about it here, here, and here…. (Many more but i’m kindda lazy… lol… )

It’s crazy the amount of media attnetion this saga has generated. How does a PR handle this? Not just with the anaylyst, media and other partners. How do you handle the bloggers? It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

Although some might think this is the start of the end for Yahoo!, i gotta admit their internal comms has been fantastic. Don’t know if I’m allowed to say much about it but i think in this day and age, to rally a battle cry based on trust is hard. But if Yahoo! can get through this, it’s gonna make an awesome case study for managing rep! (I’m so gonna do that course next sem!)

Social networking sites

Facebook has surpassed MySpace!!! Well, most ppl seem excited about it, and it just shows how fast Facebook is growing…

I think Sarah presents a good look into the future of social networking sites. The important takeaway is that social networking sites provide another medium. Although the nice market is gone and making way for the masses as more ppl join social networking sites, this medium is a good consideration for spreading your message should you do a integrated media campaign.

However, as more ppl join social networking sites, masses will demand niches again. What do i mean? It seems to be a vicious cycle. When a niche turns mass, masses will break out and go into niches again. Facebook was for college students, now its for the masses. Throw in the Google’s open social, (which i think that post didn’t take into consideration) and social networking sites aren’t just going to be popular cause of fancy widgets and apps. It’ll boil back down to the ppl and the ‘long tail’ theory will prevail… who knows though where we’ll go…

Anyways, these 2 topics just kept coming up in my blog and i tot i share m y2 cents worth of what i tot about them…. Have a good weekend! Citizen journalism is interesting!! Stay tuned!!