Bartz holds court on Yahoo's 15th birthday
Bartz has certainly gotten to know Yahoo quite well in the 14 months she has occupied the CEO's office. But Yahoo is an old company by the standards of this place, celebrating its 15th birthday Tuesday with purple cupcakes and foosball tables for founders Jerry Yang and David Filo to be awarded later in the day. It has been eclipsed in recent years by the likes of Google and Facebook on the Internet, and in many quarters is no longer seen as the innovator it once was.Such matters appear to bother Bartz less than they bother others, but she acknowledged that there's still room for improvement at Yahoo. In a 90-minute roundtable discussion Tuesday, she held forth on a wide range of issues, from Google and China to search and advertising.First off, Bartz wished to clarify remarks she made on CNBC's Power Lunch earlier on Tuesday suggesting that she'd be willing to sell the company if the right price came along. "The company is not for sale," she said, although had she been occupying Yang's chair in 2008 when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer came knocking, she likely would have taken his offer.Yahoo is looking to grow this year through acquisitions and aggressive hiring, she said. Expect Yahoo to pursue smaller companies--100 employees or less--as that's an efficient way of getting a good technology and a good team in-house, she said.Of course, there's another Internet company in Silicon Valley buying up seemingly every start-up it can find: Google. Yahoo rarely finds itself in bidding wars with Google, Bartz said, adding that Yahoo did not pursue Flickr partner Picnik, which was acquired Monday by Google.Google came up several times during the discussion. Bartz said Yahoo has not complained to the U.S. Department of Justice about Google's behavior, the way Microsoft acknowledged on Friday that it had. Yahoo is a member of the Open Book Alliance, which opposes Google's Book Search settlement with authors and publishers, but that's different from lodging a general antitrust complaint against the company, she said."I'm not usually interested in government intervention about anything," she said. "I don't wish antitrust on anyone."She danced carefully around the issue of Google, China, and cyberattacks, refusing to confirm reports that Yahoo was hacked as part of a widespread attack against U.S. companies."We have always been hacked, and we have always had a policy to not disclose," Bartz said. "Shit happens all the time," she followed, explaining that Yahoo is under near-constant attacks from cybercriminals of one type or another.Count Bartz among those cynical of Google's intentions in China following its January statement that it was no longer willing to offer a censored search engine in China and would consider pulling out of the country. Nothing has happened since, as Google told a Senate committee hearing Tuesday that it is still evaluating its options in China."I actually thought that if they were that heartfelt, they should do it. Looks to me like it was more of a statement than an action," she said.She did sympathize with Google's plight in Italy, expressing concern about the European Union and the behavior of individual countries toward business and the Internet. It could have just as easily been a Yahoo property that was the target of Italian prosecutors, she said.When it comes to her own company, Bartz said she's getting increased interest from major advertisers whose purse strings are starting to loosen a tad, at least compared to last year. Yahoo wants to give its users more freedom to customize their Yahoo experience, which has the nice side benefit of providing greater targeting for advertisers.In addition, Yahoo plans to roll out more of its own content to attract users alongside new advertising formats, as it has been signaling for some time. "We're a company that wants to deliver great content, and I want our ads to be as interesting as our content," Bartz said.But when you consider the scale at which Yahoo operates in the U.S., Bartz said, money can be spent more efficiently courting existing users and instead trying to find new users outside the U.S. Yahoo's $100 million marketing campaign has been a dud in the U.S. but has produced better results overseas, she said, citing India and the U.K. as examples.By the time Yahoo's next birthday rolls around, Bartz wants the company to have made more progress on sharing user data across content sites and personalizing experiences for its users, whether that's through social networking, niche content, or some combination."That's aspirational," she said, noting that to really pull that off Yahoo would have to host a front door for each Web user on its network: something like 600 million people. Still, it seems that Bartz would prefer Yahoo chug along producing its own unique mix of content and technology, attracting big-name advertisers without getting into the industry squabbles so prevalent today."Everybody's pissed at everybody right now," she said, referring to disputes among Apple, Google, Microsoft, phone makers, the telecom industry, and governments. While she may be concerned about the EU, there's one country she wouldn't mind emulating: "We're Switzerland."
Pandora rival iHeartRadio hits 50 million user milestone
Pandora rival iHeartRadio hits 50 million user milestone
iHeartRadio, the online radio service from terrestrial radio giant Clear Channel, has hit 50 million registered users, a milestone only three years in the making. The pace of iHeart signups -- faster than that of rival Pandora, the biggest radio provider on the Web, as well as Twitter and Facebook -- reflects the growing popularity of streaming music as well as the promotional heft that comes from a giant like Clear Channel as the parent of the developing service. Related linksiHeartRadio retunes iOS, Android apps for more talk radioAmazon adds streaming Prime Music to play against Apple's BeatsApple finally confirms it's buying Beats for $3BApple hears the music on subscriptions with Beats. Now what? However, Clear Channel Chief Executive Bob Pittman said that horsepower -- 850 owned radio stations in the US, giving Clear Channel the largest reach of any radio company with 245 million monthly listeners -- wasn't necessarily a blessing that guarantees iHeart's success. "If you look at the history of traditional media companies, the heft alone isn't enough," he said in an interview with CNET. The annals of the Internet are littered with "traditional companies that don't make the leap," Pittman said. In the past few years, streaming music services have grown in popularity among consumers -- revenue from them rose to more than $1 billion last year globally -- and that, in turn, has made the online services increasingly adored by recorded-music labels as digital music downloads begin to slow. Like any burgeoning opportunity, the market is rife with intensifying competition, including the Web's biggest radio provider Pandora with 77 million monthly active listeners, startups like Spotify, marketing powerhouses like Beats, and giant technology corporations like Apple, Amazon, and Google. Pittman, who rose to prominence in the media world as the wunderkind who founded MTV, views iHeart's competition more simply: by not conflating radio with other options. "Let's not combine music collections and radio as one category," he said. "They rarely live together. Now it appears that downloads replace CDs, maybe subscription replace downloads, but it's still the same thing. It's still your music collection." "When you go to the radio, you want to hear what's going on in the world," Pittman said. Pittman added that the 50 million milestone puts iHeart in a top tier of online music services, competitively. "If you look at the marketplace, there's the four of us and then everybody else," he said, listing iHeart, Pandora, Apple's iTunes, and Spotify. "At 50 million, we're clearly in that league." iHeartRadio is a free, ad-based online service that combines the live and on-demand streams of Clear Channel's terrestrial radio stations with a Pandora-like online radio option: create a station based on an artist or song and iHeart serves up a radio channel with related tracks. Originally launched in 2011, it hit 97 million monthly unique users in May. iHeartRadio's strategy has been to take advantage of its assets as a longtime partner of the recorded-music industry and expand the brand into a talk-radio "audiosodes" feature, a nationally televised primetime awards show, and a yearly music festival with top acts like Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney, and Katy Perry. "The future is some sort of electronic -- today it's digital, it's streaming," Pittman said. "We're doing open heart surgery on a beating heart...we're all trying to build this digital market in a intelligent way."
iHeartRadio, the online radio service from terrestrial radio giant Clear Channel, has hit 50 million registered users, a milestone only three years in the making. The pace of iHeart signups -- faster than that of rival Pandora, the biggest radio provider on the Web, as well as Twitter and Facebook -- reflects the growing popularity of streaming music as well as the promotional heft that comes from a giant like Clear Channel as the parent of the developing service. Related linksiHeartRadio retunes iOS, Android apps for more talk radioAmazon adds streaming Prime Music to play against Apple's BeatsApple finally confirms it's buying Beats for $3BApple hears the music on subscriptions with Beats. Now what? However, Clear Channel Chief Executive Bob Pittman said that horsepower -- 850 owned radio stations in the US, giving Clear Channel the largest reach of any radio company with 245 million monthly listeners -- wasn't necessarily a blessing that guarantees iHeart's success. "If you look at the history of traditional media companies, the heft alone isn't enough," he said in an interview with CNET. The annals of the Internet are littered with "traditional companies that don't make the leap," Pittman said. In the past few years, streaming music services have grown in popularity among consumers -- revenue from them rose to more than $1 billion last year globally -- and that, in turn, has made the online services increasingly adored by recorded-music labels as digital music downloads begin to slow. Like any burgeoning opportunity, the market is rife with intensifying competition, including the Web's biggest radio provider Pandora with 77 million monthly active listeners, startups like Spotify, marketing powerhouses like Beats, and giant technology corporations like Apple, Amazon, and Google. Pittman, who rose to prominence in the media world as the wunderkind who founded MTV, views iHeart's competition more simply: by not conflating radio with other options. "Let's not combine music collections and radio as one category," he said. "They rarely live together. Now it appears that downloads replace CDs, maybe subscription replace downloads, but it's still the same thing. It's still your music collection." "When you go to the radio, you want to hear what's going on in the world," Pittman said. Pittman added that the 50 million milestone puts iHeart in a top tier of online music services, competitively. "If you look at the marketplace, there's the four of us and then everybody else," he said, listing iHeart, Pandora, Apple's iTunes, and Spotify. "At 50 million, we're clearly in that league." iHeartRadio is a free, ad-based online service that combines the live and on-demand streams of Clear Channel's terrestrial radio stations with a Pandora-like online radio option: create a station based on an artist or song and iHeart serves up a radio channel with related tracks. Originally launched in 2011, it hit 97 million monthly unique users in May. iHeartRadio's strategy has been to take advantage of its assets as a longtime partner of the recorded-music industry and expand the brand into a talk-radio "audiosodes" feature, a nationally televised primetime awards show, and a yearly music festival with top acts like Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney, and Katy Perry. "The future is some sort of electronic -- today it's digital, it's streaming," Pittman said. "We're doing open heart surgery on a beating heart...we're all trying to build this digital market in a intelligent way."
Could the future of iTunes be digital software downloads-
Could the future of iTunes be digital software downloads?
What I'm getting at is that Apple's in the perfect position to start offering digital software downloads to the masses, and tie it into a software system that millions of people are comfortable with giving their credit card information to on a daily basis. I'm speaking of course, about iTunes. Apple's got all the pieces in place to start offering people computer software the same way Valve's been doing with video games with its hugely successful Steam service for the last six years. I love Steam for many reasons, but primarily for its built-in updating tools and easy-to-navigate digital storefront that make it easy to buy software with one click and not have to worry about it again. If I could get the same performance from an app that's admittedly become a little bloated but already has a decent updating system, I'd be happy as a pig in mud.Two things stick out in my mind as being good signs such a service is in the works via iTunes:CNET Networks1. The Apple software updater for Windows. Apple snuck this into iTunes 7 as a better way to update itself and QuickTime at the same time without the user having to go to Apple.com and run an installer, but it could easily be checked against a database of other user-installed applications for patches and updates similar to what CNET's VersionTracker offers with its VersionTracker Pro service. Additionally, Apple had a similar standalone utility to update iPods, which it later built-into the iTunes iPod dialogue. Since iTunes and QuickTime both have self-checking updaters, why even start including this app in the first place if there isn't some larger plan at work?2. Apple's already got a directory of all sorts of free and shareware apps on the downloads section of its Web site but sells the bigger, more professional applications via its online and retail stores. While a good number of the software items featured through Apple's store have digital downloads at their home site, there's no such option through Apple's store.So what's next? If the iPod's move to Flash storage, and the original iMac's ditching of floppy drives have been any indication of how Apple moves a trend from one end of the spectrum to the other, we'll be seeing disappearing optical drives from Apple's other laptops in the next few years. Does that mean the digital downloads store is right around the corner? Probably not just yet, but with a year of Leopard under its belt and an iPhone SDK out in February, Apple might need something to get developers excited come WWDC later this year, and a digital distribution store might be just the thing.
What I'm getting at is that Apple's in the perfect position to start offering digital software downloads to the masses, and tie it into a software system that millions of people are comfortable with giving their credit card information to on a daily basis. I'm speaking of course, about iTunes. Apple's got all the pieces in place to start offering people computer software the same way Valve's been doing with video games with its hugely successful Steam service for the last six years. I love Steam for many reasons, but primarily for its built-in updating tools and easy-to-navigate digital storefront that make it easy to buy software with one click and not have to worry about it again. If I could get the same performance from an app that's admittedly become a little bloated but already has a decent updating system, I'd be happy as a pig in mud.Two things stick out in my mind as being good signs such a service is in the works via iTunes:CNET Networks1. The Apple software updater for Windows. Apple snuck this into iTunes 7 as a better way to update itself and QuickTime at the same time without the user having to go to Apple.com and run an installer, but it could easily be checked against a database of other user-installed applications for patches and updates similar to what CNET's VersionTracker offers with its VersionTracker Pro service. Additionally, Apple had a similar standalone utility to update iPods, which it later built-into the iTunes iPod dialogue. Since iTunes and QuickTime both have self-checking updaters, why even start including this app in the first place if there isn't some larger plan at work?2. Apple's already got a directory of all sorts of free and shareware apps on the downloads section of its Web site but sells the bigger, more professional applications via its online and retail stores. While a good number of the software items featured through Apple's store have digital downloads at their home site, there's no such option through Apple's store.So what's next? If the iPod's move to Flash storage, and the original iMac's ditching of floppy drives have been any indication of how Apple moves a trend from one end of the spectrum to the other, we'll be seeing disappearing optical drives from Apple's other laptops in the next few years. Does that mean the digital downloads store is right around the corner? Probably not just yet, but with a year of Leopard under its belt and an iPhone SDK out in February, Apple might need something to get developers excited come WWDC later this year, and a digital distribution store might be just the thing.
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