A big media company tried something similar (30 second commercials for the price of 60 seconds). I saw a transcript of a industry panel and more $ for less space in radio also went over like a "fish milkshake."

Let's look at these in terms of susceptibility to Google.

To address "In what area, exactly, is Yahoo #1?" ->

yahoo's #1 in web email,
yahoo.com is the #1 property in the world in terms of number of Users visiting,
yahoo's #1 in finance,
yahoo's #1 in display advertising,
yahoo's #1 in the social search space (answers.yahoo.com). Quite a few #1s, eh? Or were you looking for something that matches your pre-conceived notion that flavor-of-the-day google is #1 and yahoo is not (or the markets never lie, eh?).

I've long said GOOG and YHOO are media companies. People get it when I say that they publish pages of content with advertising. The difference between them is people. GOOG relies on machines to harvest content and publish it. YHOO uses media professionals and machines to publish content. It's a less efficient business model for these times.

YHOO's approach is to early, and in this business being too early is the same as being wrong.

- StoryMakerUpper 1.0 is a web-based proprietary software tool designed to help clients manufacture news stories with pushbutton, fill-in-the-blank ease. StoryMakerUpper minimizes the burden of actual writing skills.

- The StoryMakerUpper is almost identical to Shift Communicatons’ social media news release template and appears to be a derivative of the PRX Builder service announced in September. However, by also incorporating features such as comments and trackback, Edelman uniquely can help companies dramatically lessen the time it takes to get mugged by rabid pitchfork-and-torch-bearing idiots in the blogosphere.

Bryan, thank you for seeing my work as competing with the Wall Street Journal.

I had been avoiding giving out that advice for a long time because I quite like the fact that they lock away their best content and limit their distribution.

This not an example of someone being critical of a competitor. It is the holiday season and I am offering a gift of advice, one that is valuable and not in my self-interest.

It is better for me if WSJ, FT, and many other excellent news organizations, continue their present practices of restricted content distribution.

Ryan, yes, I did think that Yahoo was doing the right thing appointing Semel because it was a realization that it is a media company, a technology-enabled media company.

However, I now believe that it was too early in that move, and you are dead right.

In hindsight, there was still way too much money left on the table that could have been had by harnessing technology led initiatives rather than using less-scalable media professionals.

Let's remember that GOOG licensed some of its text-ad technology from YHOO(!)

PC World - Yahoo Licenses Technology to Google

William: I'd love to hear about what you've discovered regarding regarding video on the web...

I think this is pretty ironic, considering that your next piece is on the "New Mini Wall Street Journal." What do you care what the WSJ does or who it charges for what? Why don't you "concentrate on what's on your plate right now"? You care because the competitive landscape matters -- not because one wishes ill on one's customers, but because it's important to differentiate one's offering and philosophy. This isn't an excuse to simply dwell on a competitor's failings -- but it's fantasy to think that you can "focus on what is important in your business" without addressing what your competitors are doing, and how your approach differs.

Dead-on, Tom!

How many times do you see a two page spread, where some megafirm wants to say something with impact. You open it with both hands, arms spread wide, and all you can see is the message. How can you do that smaller?

Publishing requires that you first consider the advertising context of the format first, and then the content, and then the user convienence.

I can tell you that this also is very true for video on the web as well, with some interesting surprises.

David: I'm all for StoryCrafter and the other efforts in this direction. And thanks for the clarification about links in PRnewswire and BusinessWire. I'm amazed then that links are so rare in releases...

Though it's difficult to determine precisely what you think about StoryCrafter, the main point seems to be that it could make your job easier... which should be the goal of every foray into the NMR.

Regarding "My understanding is that they [PRN and BW ] charge extra for every link carried in a news release." This is incorrect. The only thing that it would count towards is word count, and if a url brings the word count over a certain threshold, then yes, it would cost more.

@Dar: I didn't check the hosting, I checked the contact address provided to Alexa.

So no going back, sorry.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for mentioning PRX Builder. There's a lot of innovative work going on right now, and I hope you'll be pleased with the final results. There's still a long way to go.

Dear Annonymouse, I agree, journalists get their own stories which is why I'm constantly away from my desk interviewing people and running around so I can produce original and exclusive stories. But, as you know, journalists also get a huge chunk of their stories from press releases and end up doing the same: rewriting press releases with their own spin/commentary. Journalists also get pre briefed all the time, which is not much different from getting the news from press releases...

"And Dan's blogger elite is far faster in covering breaking news than the salaried journalists."

Mate, I would describe what is happening there as "re-writing and/or commenting on Yahoo press releases".

Real journalists get their own stories, as well as the PR drudgery.

Cheers,

A "salaried" journalist

Umm ... I hate to break it to Mr. Schaap, but just because something is *hosted* in California doesn't mean it was *created* in California.

I'm NYC based, but host my site at California-based Dreamhost. And I'm sure there's lots of other people who do the same, using lots of other Calif.-based hosting services. (The Bay Area being the center of all things techy, it's not surprising that many of the major players in the hosting industry would be located there.)

Sorry, Yvo, that's a faulty data point. Back to the drawing board.

Very interesting piece.

Just a question Tom, on the margin of the main issue here: do you really think Semel was the right guy back in May 2001? At the time I happened to have been covering Yahoo for Upside and remember the big push at the time was for 1> premium services that could be priced and sold to consumers and 2> better relations with big advertising accounts.

At the time it was already clear Google was a big threat. And yet Yahoo went in a very non-Google, old school media direction, and brought in old school media vet Semel.

There’s a growing amount of buzz about social media lately, but specifically of interest is social media press releases. As we fold the new media press release, press room and media relations tactics into our PR strategy, I’ve been monitoring a number of resources on the topic of new media PR and the hRelease or social media release