Talking Tech: The new Yahoo: What's the verdict?
LOS ANGELES — For two years, former Google superstar Marissa Mayer has been trying to revive the fortunes of Yahoo, the onetime Internet staple, as its CEO.
The results? Not so good with advertisers, who are spending less with the company.
Mayer has been on her own spending spree, trying to transform Yahoo into a cool place to be again.
Yahoo had a disappointing second quarter. When it reported results last week, it said revenue fell to $1.084 billion, down from $1.135 billion a year ago.
We talked to consumers for their thoughts on Yahoo and took a critical look at some of the additions to the Yahoo stable. To get the next generation onto Yahoo, Mayer has spent billions on acquisitions (including $1 billion for blog site Tumblr) to give the service a more contemporary feel.
Based on what we heard on the boardwalk, Mayer has a lot of work ahead.
Troy Storm, 18, of Chicago, says that these days, "A lot of parents' e-mail are at Yahoo.com because before, Yahoo was the big one."
Pablo Pannichio, a street performer known as "Purple Reggae," said he uses Yahoo, but doesn't like it. "Most of the time, my computer is stuck on Yahoo. I have go to Yahoo before I can go to Google. I don't know what's up with Yahoo, man."
Here's a Yahoo status update:
• Yahoo is reviving the canceled cult NBC sitcom Community beginning in the fall. Mayer hired Katie Couric to be Yahoo's "global" anchor, and former New York Times columnists David Pogue and Matt Bai for tech and political coverage. Friday, Yahoo hired away ABC's Good Morning America weekend anchor Bianna Golodryga to be an anchor for Yahoo News.
Our take: There's room for improvement. Though the high-profile hires may sound great in a news release, you need to be a good detective to find Couric or Pogue on Yahoo's home page.
Community should resonate with its rabid online audience if Yahoo does a better job of letting people know how to discover the show.
• Three new digital magazines, devoted to tech, movies and beauty and health, offer tips and tricks, videos and bite-size items to read.
The digital "magazines" are mostly more of the same — primarily, collections of online content from elsewhere, prettied up in a contemporary, graphic setting, looking more like BuzzFeed or Huffington Post than the Yahoo of yore. They're all anchored with original content from the likes of Pogue and cosmetics queen Bobbi Brown.
• The home page got a makeover. It's the same old Yahoo but less cluttered with stuff you don't care about, and it's newsier.
• Flickr, the once dominant photo-sharing site, has a new look, too, and it has the most liberal usage terms in town — 1 terabyte of free storage. The changes at Flickr look great, but uploading is a more cumbersome, multi-step process compared with competitors, and it needs to get easier.
• Finally, Yahoo has introduced mobile apps devoted to sports, finance and news.
The news and weather apps are particularly attractive and can keep you busy with information for many minutes. The stunning weather app presents the temps with great-looking photos from Flickr.
In discussing the "disappointing" second-quarter results this week, Mayer pointed to mobile as a positive. She said Yahoo's user base has more than doubled in a year, to 450 million users, from 200 million.
But Yahoo has a long way to go to catch up to rivals Google and Facebook.
The apps have yet to make much of a dent on the download charts. Apps from Google and Facebook are in the top 20 on iTunes' top download chart, while the highest-charting Yahoo app is No. 54, according to app tracker AppAnnie.
At one time, Yahoo was a "portal" to check e-mail, news from around the Web, stock quotes and sports scores — things many of us now get from Google, Facebook and Twitter. Netflix and YouTube became the new TV, and photo sharing went from Flickr to Facebook.
Can Yahoo fit into this new world? It appears the complete Yahoo story is still being played out.
In a conference call with analysts, Mayer asked for more time. "We believe a transformation of this size and scale will take multiple years," she said.
Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter: @jeffersongraham.