Sunnyvale, California — If you cannot beat ’em; join ’em. That seems to be the reflection behind Yahoo’s latest strategy to drive traffic to its site. In a clear sign the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s reshuffled leadership team plans on making a big splash in the social media space by accelerating its efforts to join the social media revolution, launching a new service similar to Facebook Connect, where users can log into a variety of other websites with just one click of the mouse, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Citing sources, The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo is gearing to debut “Y Connect,” which will let media publishers, Web developers and other websites integrate elements of their services with Yahoo itself. In The Journal’s own words, the forthcoming feature will “imitate” Facebook’s existing strategy, which is designed to drive site traffic.
The soon-to-be-launched Y Connect will empower users to sign into media sites and other password-protected domains by simply clicking on a Yahoo icon at the top of the page. From there, users can “like” content and share it will their list of Yahoo contacts. This is an approach Facebook uses to allow sites to forge links to the popular social networking site.
“Such efforts can help Internet companies track the activities of users around the Web and better tailor advertising offerings to them.” Y Connect will motivate users to register with and log into media sites merely by clicking on a Yahoo button. “If successful, such connections could spur more activity on Yahoo sites and help the company better understand the interests of users and figure out which online ads are more likely to be effective,” reports The Journal. Still, that is a big if, as site owners and visitors might not see any reason to incorporate a Yahoo button to into their digital routines.
Similar universal authentication services have already been offered by Google, Facebook and Twitter, and many social-media watchers believe that these systems are the most potent tool emerging from the social media revolution, because they allow advertising networks to track user profiles across the Internet and offer targeted ads based not only on context and inferred intent, but also on user-defined profiles.
In other words, for instance, a law firm seeking to appoint attorneys could target ads in specific cities to Yahoo users who happen to define law as an interest in their profile.
Additionally, Y Connect will offer participating websites a great number of benefits. Due to the fact that Yahoo requires users to fill out a profile when signing up for their services, connected websites will be able to understand the key demographic that visits their page and modify their advertising accordingly. Furthermore, site traffic is bound to increase if users begin sharing content across their list of contacts.
Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, told the Journal that he was skeptical “about whether Yahoo will persuade the market” to choose the new tool, as so many sites have already signed up with Facebook. Web developers and media websites are more tending to partner with Facebook because the social media giant can offer them deeper user profiles than Yahoo, making targeting advertising a bit more controlled.
As one of the most popular Web portals and content networks, Yahoo still enjoys enormous cachet among Web users, tens of millions of whom log in to it on a daily basis to check email, read the news, or to use its popular instant messenger system. Nevertheless, a boost for Yahoo is well overdue as the company has been struggling with flat revenue, executive departures and rumors over a potential merger between Yahoo and AOL, although the company has not been approached by potential suitors.
While Yahoo representatives failed to confirm the report, the news source expects Y Connect to be rolled out later this fall. The specific launch date will most likely be based upon how quickly Yahoo can get an adequate number of websites to sign up for the service.