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January 10, 2006
Does Yahoo Skew Old?
Rupert Murdoch (self-servingly -- he owns MySpace) argued at the Citigroup media conference in Phoenix yesterday that Yahoo and the rest of the portal (I know, I know) incumbents are at risk because they skew old:Today's portal model risks going out of business, Murdoch said, arguing that Yahoo! Inc. and others don't reach enough users under age 25.
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Can't speak for everyone, but as someone who will be under 25 for another 7 months or so, I use the features from portals that I like and ignore the rest. I use Yahoo Finance, Sports, and Fantasy Sports, and that's about it. Maybe that doesn't bode well for www.yahoo.com but the "child sites" have nothing to worry about.
Couldn't this be another case of media preferences changing as we get older? Joe Sixpack might watch Nickelodeon as a kid, MTV/VH1 as a teen, and then CNBC/MSNBC/Fox News/etc as an adult. Likewise, maybe he'll use MySpace/Facebook/etc as a teen and move away from them as he ages.
This is rich coming from that old dinosaur.
well maybe rupert can discuss the ongoing revolt among myspace users at the thought of entering his realm. these youth community sites will be like night clubs, they'll be coming in and out of fashion on a yearly cycle. rupert better squeeze his monetization out of myspace in the next eighteen months - after that it will, like friendster, go the way of acid wash jeans.
He may be right. 7 years usually mark a generation, and myspace is a phenomenon not unlike yahoo was in the late 90s. I also am a believer that yahoo, with semel, are moving backwards towards an old world media company...
Speaking of young any thoughts on alloy.com totally focused on genY and target for many social networking sites looking to monetize content.