Content Bridges

Freelance Organizer Helium May Be User-Gen 2.1 for News Sites

Consider it user-gen 2.1.

It's easy to see Helium, whose Marketplace product comes out of within the next week or two, as a website organizing the loose and large gaggle of freelance writers out there. It's attempting to do that, and that in and of itself is interesting. Even more curious though is how it points a way toward organizing user-gen and/or citizen journalism, separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion out there.

Think about the main argument against user-gen out there: Sure, there's a tiny amount of great stuff among so much junk, and how can you find the good stuff? Helium's answer to that is to throw a set of 2.0 tools against the problem. User rankings, star ratings, a meritocracy that rewards the best stuff with money and recognition. It's a set of tools -- but more importantly, a way of thinking -- that should have a lot of resonance with those news sites trying to figure out how to engage and to apply quality-centric standards to non-staff written content. (More on applications for news sites below).

Mark Ranalli started Helium in fall of 2006. Check out the site, and you can see its basic intent, that organziation of freelancers. Ranalli 's argument is clear: why should freelance be bought and sold the same way it has for a couple of hundred years when web tools can make the selling -- for freelance writers -- and the buying -- for editors of all stripes -- easier.

To that end, Helium offers what seems to me to be a straightforward approach, adapting web tools pioneered by sites as disparate as eBay. Amazon and NewsTrust, Fabrice Florin's fledgling news-rating and rater-ranking site:
---Freelancers sign up and then can "publish" their articles on Helium
---The Helium community then rates the pieces. Ranalli says he has put into action a set of anti-gaming-the-system processes to prevent ratings click fraud and friendly logrolling.
---Articles are categorized by topic (this week, for instance, "What impact will Ralph Nader's Candidacy Have on the Presidential Race,"  and  "Is the New Contraceptive Pill  That Stops Menstruation Healthy for Women". Each topic had about two dozen pieces written by freelancers, and by my quick read, is, politely, all over the board. I can see more value in the feature (travel, pets+) topics than in political ones, in which the level of content is subpar. But as Ranalli suggests, the system may improve the content over time.
---Would-be buyers then can buy any of those articles, and of course will gravitate to the top-ranked ones. In additon to the ranking of individual articles, the writers themselves are rated (1-5 stars), on a tough curve. Ranalli says only 4.5% of the 100,000 writers (who have added 625,000 articles to the site) have earned a single star, with two dozen attaining 5 stars.
---A new Marketplace allows buyers (who would be editors of newsletters, magazines, websites, etc.) to let it be known that they're seeking an article on particular topic, say "The importance of self-image in the business world" or "Best vacation destinations for a nature-filled getaway" Publishers set a fee (currently there's a range of $16 to $100). Then Helium writers submit pieces, the publisher selects its fave and the piece is bought. Helium takes a 20% fee of the total paid by the publisher as its cut. Helium provides a standard freelance contract, further smoothing the buy/sell transaction.

So far writers' incomes are small: "A handful have made thousands of dollars, hundreds are making hundreds and and tens of thousands less than a hundred," says Ranalli.

There's a community section of course, and overall the functionality looks well-thought-out and works well.

So for any of us who have ever bought or sold freelance pieces, we can see the potential value here. It's kind of like Mochila's web-enabled syndication system. It's well-thought-out, taking what people do in the terrestrial world and using web tools to simplify and expedite it.

Is it Time for the Times to Get Out of Local Paper Business?

You can feel the walls closing in at the new, light-filled Times building off Times Square.

Consider:

---America's (the world's?) largest newsroom is getting a major haircut. Of the current 1300 jobs, 100 will be gone soon, victim of the increasingly familiar buyout/layoff grind. That's 7.5% in one clean sweep.
---The Firebrand Partners/Harbinger Capital Partners' charge isn't going away. After voicing its concerns about the direction of the Times Company, it has upped its share in the Times first from about 5% to just short of 10% now to about 15.6%, as it runs its slate of four directors for the upcoming board election on April 22.  Its goal it says is for the company to aim for 50% of its revenues to be digital in five years. Sure, the Sulzberger family has legal control, but such pressure is still real and felt. When Morgan Stanley pushed, the family pushed back. Now with Firebrand/Harbinger upping the pressure, its slate may get a more favorable hearing from investors who previously sat out votes.
---There's an increasing divide in performance between the Times flagship products -- the print Times and the NYTimes.com -- and its regional products, the Boston Globe and the New York Times Regional News Group, comprising 15 markets. We don't yet know how the Firebrand/Harbinger people (who are also pushing on Media General) want to get to that 50% digital revenue level, which would be a leap from today's total of about 12-13% of total Times revenue, according to my calculations. But I have little doubt, they'll be saying: Focus on the Times, not on those other papers.

While it pains me to suggest it, I think they may be right. It's time for the Times to look at selling off its regional properties and concentrating its future on what will make most sense for the Republic and for the potential prosperity of the Times brand.

Why, and why now?

Well, the Times ownership and management can sniff at other people's ideas on how to run a newspaper company. The Times did that last year, staring down Morgan Stanley, and Executive Editor Bill Keller did it when he derided the Washington Post Co.'s reliance on education company Kaplan to provide it growth and revenue, calling it "an education company that happens to own a newspaper.

The Times, on the other hand, having sold its broadcast group last year (not a bad idea, given the relatively maturing fortunes of that business as well) is almost wholly dependent on newspapers. About.com and a few other web ventures are good, but they contribute only 3% of the company's overall revenues. 

If the Sulzbergers have the resources to provide resources the market is no longer providing and want to use those resources to do it, that would be one thing. News of the massive newsroom reduction, though, says they don't, on one score or another. With newspaper fortunes looking like they will only further decline -- those who see plateau on the horizon may be about to fall awkwardly off a cliff -- we've got to ask the question of how and where the family will draw the line in terms of NYT newsroom funding, which today runs about $200 million a year.

It's not quite Sophie's Choice we're talking about here, but, it's a business decision with consequences for the country. The Times, even with its occasional stumbles (well-illustrated last week when it mis-edited sexual innuendo into a decent McCain ethics story) is a national asset. We can't see it further diminished, especially in a year in which the only other serious US national paper has been bought up by Rupert Murdoch.

While we can all criticize the Times almost daily, we're increasingly reliant on the Times for much original reporting across the country and around the globe. That reliance is only growing as major metro papers that used to provide (and staff for) substantial national/international reporting recede into the sand-trap of "local-local." That list is long: L.A. Times, Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Atlanta Journal Constitution, the San Jose Mercury News, and, yes, the Boston Globe.

Four Things About QuadrantONE

QuadrantONE moseyed out of the gate last week, after a few false starts. It got good ink because it offered good numbers: a potential of 50 million unique visitors waiting to be served in 27 of the top 30 markets. The new network will leverage sites owned by its four co-owners, Gannett, Tribune, Hearst and the New York Times, though neither the NYTimes.com nor USAToday -- national, not local -- sites are included.

QuadrantONE of course is not unexpected. News about it had leaked out a couple of times as Gannett and Tribune -- the two prominent holdouts from the Yahoo newspaper consortium -- have tried to put it together. They romanced a number of consortium members, including Cox and MediaNews. And where's McClatchy, Tribune and Gannett's sometimes partner? It is telling, though, that in the end only Hearst and the Times ponied up and joined in as equity partners.

How well will its staff of 17, anchored in TribuneLand (Chicago), fare?

My sense is that QuadrantONE faces an uphill challenge. Why? Consider these four things about QuadrantONE:

---Scale: QuadrantONE's numbers sound big, but analyst Greg Sterling's Comscore chart of top-ranked networks show that it will place about 34th among those already established, already knocking on the doors of hyperactive, interactive buyers. Centro, at 23rd, clearly is supplying lots of revenue to local news properties already. Real Cities is still hanging around, as is the Newspaper National Network, which Greg notes in his post, Onion-like headlined "Newspapers Create Another Ad Network", is owned by the same companies starting up QuadrantONE. The new network may get bigger (where for instance are the LocalTV sites, now under common Tribune management under Randy Michaels) as other news chains join as affiliates, but it could still be sub-scale. Importantly, there is no clamor from the ad buyers -- to whom power in the marketplace is plainly moving from ad sellers -- for a new, local network. QuadrantONE: Y(et)A(nother)H(ierarchcal)O(nline)O(uting)?

---Technology: The ad business is increasingly all about technology. We're leaving the selling space (newspapers) and time (broadcast) in the rear view mirror. Analytics is everything. Curiously, QuadrantONE says an unnamed technology partner is involved. My sources tell me that those companies pitched to join as equity partners weren't even told who the partner would be, a stumbling point that helped dissuade them. Coincidentally this week, Reuters Americas -- which is now coming on strong in the US market -- announced a deal with Guardian America to represent it for ad sales. I talked to Stephen Smyth, general manager of Americas Reuters Media, about the deal. He understands how technology isn't an add-on, but the very basis of a modern ad network. Who is Reuters affiliate ad network partnered with? Unlike QuadrantONE, he can name his partners in a flash: "Doubleclick for ad serving, Revenue Science for behavioral targeting, Operative for inventory management, Salesforce for CRM and Rapt for forecasting and pricing. The water level [in digital ad sales] is rising," he says. "Everyone needs to have numbers and the analytics to even be in on the RFP."

---The Guarantee: Part of QuadrantONE's value prop is that it can guarantee space to advertisers, commanding 10% of member sites' inventory across vertical channels. That's a two-edged sword. It may be a value to advertisers -- although access to such site inventory hasn't been a loud hue and cry. But it's a deterrent to getting more sites to sign up as affiliates. There are lots of news site gm's with QuadrantONE affiliate agreements on their desk as we speak. These are sites/companies that decided they didn't want to put up the $500,000 or so each to fund the start-up. Now, they are wondering if they want to guarantee inventory (though maybe less than 10%) to a network that will determine pricing. Can QuadrantONE really deliver more than these sites can get themselves or from Centro and other networks? What if turns out to be more of a high-end remnant network than a high-CPM one?

---Tribune: Yes, it's the new Sam Zell Tribune, but Tribune's still the elephant in this room. Going back now more than a decade, Tribune's been an elite presence. Count in New Century Network, CareerBuilder, Classified Ventures and more. As several would-be affiliates are mulling: Different people, but same feeling. Chicago-based. Tribune-led. The need for centralized (meaning Chicago-based Tribune) decision-making. That's one of the reasons Yahoo's HotJobs and consortium has mojo as CareerBuilder's struggling.

What cheers some in the industry is that it's one attempt for the newspaper industry to reclaim its future, to act independently. That thinking: QuadrantONE is a beachhead, a new place for newspaper leaders to come together, strategize together and streamline revenue opportunities and cost savings. That's a good hope, but one that mystifies me.

What, in fact, then is the Yahoo newspaper consortium? Take away the word Yahoo, and you have 22 companies with more than 500 titles agreeing to act (fairly) jointly. The consensus has been rare and the organizers of it deserve kudos for getting it done and achieving a kind of scale that hadn't been achieved before. Now, can they act together -- with Yahoo, yes, but with numerous others -- to seize the many opportunities to build new revenue streams and cut costs smartly (how about a single platform?)? Call it what you want -- consortium, QuadrantONE -- but that's clearly what these times demand.

Newspaper Editing: Escape into Modern Times?

Time for newspapers to get out of the Industrial Age and into the Digital? Alan Mutter makes a great point of wretched editing excess and he's apparently hit a good nerve in the industry, in his post, "Can Newspapers Afford Editors." (Maybe excessive editing, no, but good headline-writing's always a winner.) And that got me thinking about a recent conversation with AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll.

Alan conjures up visions of Chaplin's Modern Times, describing the many hands that each newspaper story passes through. He makes the case (using a little chart in which, of course, one commenter found a typo) that newsroom operations can't compete against web standards, especially those coming online in the age of bloggers. Especially noteworthy is how much editing daily newspaper reporters' own blogs are getting these days. That's been a bone of contention as reporters started blogging. It should be, and some newspapers have used the innovation to re-think editing standards. Mutter's case: Re-think some more and cut costs where you can without reducing journalism quality.

He's right, of course, as long as such cuts are made with some thinking and not with blunt-force cutting. Which is of course is what will happen soon, given revenue declines.

It's funny. I've begun noticing cracks in the usual perfectly editing armor of my hometown newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News. Typos on page one, headlines that don't track, missing jumps. To Alan's point, the editing quality reduction has already begun. Now though it's a runaway train, and better for an engineer or two to re-engineer the process.

As is the case with lots of rethinking, it is often the wire services that can be ahead of the pack. The wires -- principally AP and Reuters -- will be winners in the Internet age. They are global in their reach -- lots of customers beyond "local" -- and are used to creating lots of external relationships to do their business, again unlike newspapers. And both are adding staff, creating lots of video (1000 segments a month each). But to the point of re-thinking the very basic of "editing", AP's already there.

I recently talked to AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll. AP is the midst of re-orging its US operations into four regional bureaus. As part of that process, it has had a task force looking at how it does its business.

The biggest epiphany: "There was one nothingburger tropical storm story, and it was handled by 46 people, and they weren't doing anything substantive, putting in code...We were all gobsmocked.[Find that in the AP Style Book]" says Kathleen.

"Look at a map of the US and there's a circuit for each state. For a story that occurred in Maryland, but was of interest to Texas, an editor in Texas had to mark the story with a note and send it on a circuit to Texas."

Though AP had tasked the task force to find such inefficiency, when AP'ers stepped back and looked at how they operated, they were shocked.

"We knew there was a lot of work involved. It was really horrifying."

So now AP is moving on the report, movement that includes "reorganizing in the US that will replace human transmission. Technology will liberate us from transmission."

And the payoff: "These efficiencies will free up resources for more reporting."

Exactly. And though AP's complexity greatly surpasses the average daily newspaper's, the issues are the same. Re-think. Re-work. And then Report.

Rupert and Jerry Could Mean More than "Our Space"

Okay, I've pulled myself away from the larger American drama of Barack and Hillary, and her coming "Alamo Firewall." Which brings me to another reality show. Maybe we could call it "Rupert and Jerry's Our Space." (You know "Our Space is a very, very, very nice, place, with.......")

At the core of the proposition we know is a MySpace for 20% of Yahoo swap, providing a News Corp tentacle into the web's largest aggregator. We can debate relative values of that swap every which way. What's the real value of Yahoo; Microsoft's current or next offer? Jerry's $40 number? A real break-up number? The future value of MySpace itself? That's a big number if you look at the out-sized duration and frequency numbers of MySpace and Facebook. That's a smaller number if you absorb the lessons of Facebook's Beacon -- it's hard to find socially acceptable ways to monetize a social site.

But beyond that path, I think News Corp's further interest in Yahoo has all kinds of interesting angles. We can talk gaming (News Corp's IGN/Yahoo Games), movies (News Corp's Rotten Tomatoes/a struggling Yahoo Movies) and endless potential for sports (News Corp's highly successful regional sports networks and Yahoo Sports. That's just a few of them. You can play your own mix and match; just check out News Corp's "Other Assets."

All those have interesting potential, but let me focus on two others, both of which seem like naturals of this moment in web time.

First consider business news.

Remember the justification for Rupert's 60+% premium for Dow Jones? It was global domination of business news, in print, online and on cable/satellite (in addition to mobile, no doubt, as it develops). Sure, Rupert's pulled back from a free wsj.com -- apparently accepting the advice of his execs that the market for business advertising on the web, while lucrative, just wasn't ready to support a free product. But that doesn't mean he won't relentlessly seek new audiences to monetize that costly content.

So put together the Dow Jones brands with the considerable power of Yahoo Finance. For Yahoo, the semi-exclusive ability to display DJ content would help Yahoo Finance break away from the pack of too-indistinguishable Google Finance, MSN Money and AOL Money and Finance.  It could integrate lots of Marketwatch and selective WSJ and Barron's content. Then there's the fledgling Fox Business Network, which produces lots of content, but, oh, doesn't really have an audience yet.

For Dow Jones, Yahoo brings many more eyeballs to the content and the parties can figure out how to sell and share the advertising. Wouldn't that make a lot of sense for both companies, especially if Rupert has an equity piece of Yahoo as well?

Second, consider news video. One of the first areas that News Corp has moved on in achieving synergy out of the DJ deal is in video. Remember, Fox produces lots of news video and it is gearing up to produce even more with the web now firmly in mind. So just recently we've seen (check the brand) lots of Fox video showing up at wsj.com Video Center and the Marketwatch Multimedia (the two now offering the same videos).

Already, those in and around the industry tell me that $25 is the average CPM for news video, with top-branded business video selling out at $90 and now surpassing $100 CPMs. So if News Corp can gain preference on the web's largest news audience, it can make a lot of money fast. Preference, you know, like Yahoo newspaper consortium members are getting on Yahoo Local pages. Preference works, creating new pages views and new monetization.

How well-equipped is Fox video to compete? Well, let's think about what we watch.

Of the breaking news we watch, how closely do you watch and know whether the breaking news video is coming from? Whether it's coming from Reuters or AP -- now in fierce competition and producing more than 1000 news videos a month -- or CNN or....Fox. If Fox can gain greater access to audience -- beyond the newly bought Dow Jones properties, the monetization of that video can skyrocket.

Yahoo itself, as in so many other areas, has been behind the curve on video, with Comscore assigning a 3.4% of the video market to the company. Hence, its Maven purchase.

What's news video worth? 2007 revenue totals weren't huge -- $500-750 million is the range of estimates -- but it grew 40% YOY. It's expected to grow 40% again this year and credible estimates put 2011 market size at about $4 billion. So yes, a News Corp/Yahoo video play could yield big and growing dividends as well.

If, against Microsoft odds, Jerry and Rupert do team up, expect a scorecard that goes well beyond social networking.

 

MSFT + YHOO = BALL(MER) & CHAIN? -- Special Newspaper Consortium Edition

Well now. Yahoo's been piling up its own set of endorsements from newspapers over the last year. It has convinced newspaper chains of two things: 1) they needed a big brother with a big network of readers and the latest in search/ad technology; 2) that big brother is Yahoo. With the newly ascendant Dean Singleton leading the charge, a core group of eight entered the Sunnyvale castle. Since then Yahoo has talked, literally, to every one of the rest and now 22 American newspaper chains (with more than 500 of the 1500+ American dailies) are within the gates.

So when Microsoft stormed those gates, formally and officially, Friday, among those parsing the hot breath of Redmond is the news industry.

Microsoft is a familiar, though often distant character, in the newspaper/Web saga. Publishers have made many a pilgrimage north, and Microsoft has offered uneven diplomacy of its own. Overall, the takeaway -- from those Sidewalk/Netscape origins -- has been one of suspicion. It's been hard to walk away from Microsoft meetings without the sense your pocket has just been picked, or its hand is still in it as you depart town. Microsoft earned its early reputation as a "partner" who would pick your strategy clean, taking your experience into its IP, and then decide to go another way. It may have lived down some of that reputation more recently, but the sense persists.

So the news of the Microsoft $44 billion bid for Yahoo sent some shock waves through news industry corporate suites. Here they are, in the first year of marriage, and someone may have switched the groom. The signs that the groom may have been distressed were clear, my "Be Careful Who You Consort With" post of late January was among those that pointed that out. But still when the possible switch is announced, everyone finally takes the new seriously.

Much more's to come, beginning this week, in this takeover (See "MSFT + YHOO = BALL(MER) & CHAIN?"), but here's my beginning list of nine questions. What's yours?

Do you hear the echoes of the Sidewalk era? Sidewalk was Microsoft's push to get into local media in the mid-'90s. Its vision was right-on: becoming the dominant local online events site. Microsoft sent an early scare through the news industry, picking off some top talent, but it was too early in the game. Microsoft folded too soon, selling the remnants of the business to City Search. And don't think Steve Ballmer hasn't kept the foray in mind. Quoted in the New York Times last January:

“But Sidewalk was really aimed at what we now call local search,” Mr. Ballmer says. “Sidewalk is one we should not have gotten out of.”

In its heart, Microsoft still harbors dreams of being a media heavyweight.

Does the deal set back the clock? The newspaper industry hears the ticking of the clock louder each year, with each new year less friendly than the old. The increasing volume has been one prime reason the companies ceded some autonomy to get at Yahoo eyeballs and technology. But given that this deal would take 6-12 months to get finalized and integrated -- and that's really optimistic -- the payoff to publishers in traffic and revenue would only be further set back. Alan Mutter agrees on that point and discusses the consortium angle here.

How will newspapers exercise any change-of-control clause they have in the consortium contracts? At least some of the players have them, giving them a bit of leverage to renegotiate with Microsoft/Yahoo and/or Google.

Would the newspapers like to buy or buy into the HotJobs business to get equity as well as shared functionality and network scale? If Microsoft would be serious in redefining its technology provider/media owner equation, such a deal for equity could further cement relationships with these publishers around a still-essential vertical going forward.

Doesn't the deal open up a new opportunity for the 22 newspaper consortium members to re-think, re-negotiate and reckon its deal with Yahoo? The consortium members have gotten somewhat more comfortable over the last year working with each other. Can they now step back and decide how better to share costs of marketing, sales and technology, working with one of the behemoths or contracting centrally -- oh, Lord, is it finally time -- to create the universal forward-reaching publishing platform all can use and grow on.

Won't this deal help push further rationalization in the recruitment marketplace? Yahoo HotJobs has had the mojo over the last year. Monster's been struggling along with the Gannett-Tribune-McClatchy-owned CareerBuilder. Yes, that CareerBuilder -- in which Microsoft took a 4% stake last June. So the would-be tangled ownership stakes cry out for rationalization.

As recruitment becomes less and less a listings business and more and more a tech-driven matching business, it might make sense for tech/ad company -- Google certainly comes to mind -- to roll up Hot Jobs competition. Monster's got to be available, and each of  now-struggling Gannett, the New Tribune and a seeking-to-reduce-debt McClatchy all have reasons to sell. If they could sell a majority of the company, perhaps, retain some equity and preference in the product, we could see a new duopoly recruitment duopoly born.

Nine Questions: MSFT + YHOO = BALL(MER) & CHAIN?

Okay, we get it.

$44 billion is a small price to pay for share and time, and that's what Microsoft thinks it's getting out of this would-be deal. Four times more search share than it currently pulls in (Yahoo gets 12.8% while Microsoft is down to a puny 2.9%), and lots of audience (587 million uniques compared to its own 540 million). But Microsoft's key problem is obvious to many -- it doesn't know quite what to do with that audience, with audience monetization not a core competency of Microsoft. (John Battelle notes how Yahoo could be Microsoft's "half-hearted media arm," here.) So I think it's share + the elusive value of time. It's the flipside of the Microsoft mantra: We seldom get it right out of (shrink-wrapped) box, but give us enough time, and we'll get it good enough.

"Half-hearted" is one good way to put it. Another is to play with the name of the new combo. MicroHoo and MiHoo have been out there early. I'm thinking: BALL(MER) & CHAIN? We read that Bill Gates has given his blessing, but this is Ballmer's deal and may be his weight to carry around for his remaining years as ceo.

With that notion before us, let's look at a starting list of nine questions about the Ball & Chain that would be. What's yours?

Wouldn't the acquisition just multiply the questions about what's a media company and what's a technology company? Yahoo has kept on acting like a media company, creating vertical after vertical (often competing with itself and confusing its customers), but ultimately making most of its money off of its search and ad matching technology. Microsoft's plainly a technology company with a reverse Midas touch when it comes to consumer products. Over the years, we've seen Microsoft's various Media Center plays, trying to make itself the center of our consuming media lives. It's tried Sidewalk. It's tried Slate. It's tried MSNBC. And sold each one for small money.

Does the acquisition just give Google a greater edge in time? Time -- think development and deployment -- is the name of the game in the search/ad matching business. For starters, once a deal is struck, it will take 4-8 months to close, and during that time, much will put on hold and key talent will be up in the air and out the door. Then, once done, there's integration. Months more. In the meantime, Google expands its already-substantial lead. 

While the puck may be in the cost-per-click zone, isn't it moving to cost-per-action? All the companies are working on it, with Google just recently making an expansion announcement. Especially with a gift of time, isn't it more likely to get there first and bigger? The next puck may be in the text world now, isn't it likely it moving toward video with increasing advertiser want pushing up CPMs that have already topped $100 for the best verticals? Even a combined Ball & Chain starts from behind in competing credibly with Google's YouTube and increasing ad platform/video plays.

Can you imagine a world without the Yahoo brand? Don't get too Excited, but no Lycos, we've all adjusted to a changing web Netscape every few years.That said, I think Techcrunch has it right that Yahoo's still a superior brand compared to the underachieving MSN. (Same post, Techcrunch offers good functionality-by-functionality comparison.) Add in the WindowsLive and Live.com consumer confusion, and Microsoft's declining search share, and you have one brand that's been fading into obscurity and the other well-known, but surprisingly little defined.

Could it be that being number one means less than it used to? For a long time, Yahoo's been a #1 player in news reading, having lost that lead recently to a CNN push aided by its smart inclusion of Internet Broadcasting numbers in its roll-up (via investment and affiliation). Yahoo may have proven there's less value achieved when you are #1 by default.