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Yahoo! and the Multimedia Home: by Ken Pyle |
December 2nd, 2003 Issue |
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| Jeff Schrock, Vice President of Broadband at Yahoo! is a frequent reader of the Viodi View, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to meet him at Parks Associates, “Home Multimedia Experience.” He provided the view point of a content packaging entity. Schrock talked about how technology is changing the way the traditional content packagers do business. As evidence of this change, he used the examples of downloaded music and DVRs as being those activities where users have adopted digital technology before the content packagers could change their business models. This has upset the traditional value chain, whereby most of the power was with the content packagers and they could control the rollout of technology to drive sales of their content (e.g. the migration of music from records to cassettes to CDs). In this new era, users of the media, empowered with this new technology, have usurped the power from the content packagers. Consumers’ habits die hard, ,however, so it is generally difficult to get the mass market to use new devices, especially if they have to learn radical new behavior. Yahoo! looks at themselves as a platform company that enhances the usability of products. It unifies experience across devices, when appropriate. Schrock suggested that when technology upgrades cause more work than they save, then they won’t be adopted as readily. Pretty obvious, but a big part of Yahoo!’s value is to make it easy to transition from an existing device to a new one. Yahoo! keeps an individual's content in Yahoo!s database, making electronic devices much more portable. He gave examples of using the Yahoo! functionality to keep address books for mobile phones, PCs and PDAs. In addition to the address functionality, theYahoo! parental control functionality allows protection to effectively follow the kid, regardless of the device they use. Other potential uses of Yahoo!s platform include controlling and downloading movies to multiple devices. As such, Yahoo! is working to enhance the usability and portability, for the 2 inch (e.g., PDA), 2 foot (e.g., PC) and 10 foot (e.g., TV) experiences. Note, I use their database functionality for my personal email and for storage of other information. I have found it to be very useful over the years, as I have changed computers multiple times, but have never had to hassle with transferring my personal email mail list. The key to this service is that the consumers have to trust Yahoo!, which I do. Of course, this trust could be that they are a Silicon Valley company and I am a bit of a homer [sports metaphor alert – a homer typically describes a broadcast announcer who, instead of objectively reporting the play-by-play action, roots for the team that is his direct or indirect employer], as I live in the Silicon Valley. All displayed trademarks, logos and service marks are the property of their respective owners. © 2003 Viodi, LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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