Yahoo! Takes Another Giant Plunge…

news…

It is not true to think that this particular pie = source of income is in its infancy and therefore will triple over the next 3 years. Both web search and web advertising are quickly reaching a mature stage in the West. The Far East is a different story. Japan is on par with the U.S. and Europe. Russia and Eastern Europe have some catching up to do. The total number of clicks may grow tremendously but the charge per click is going to come down drastically. (This has to do with exposure/quality etc. - not for now.) In other words total dollar revenue is quickly approaching a mature status.

It is just a matter of time until Yahoo and Google realize that they are sitting on top of a gold mine. Take for instance a company that provides airline tickets and cheap hotel rooms like PCLN. When paying per click essentially Yahoo pays itself. Think of what free unlimited marketing means in real terms. This type of web based company heavily relies on web advertising to sell their products.

Any business that relies on advertising and is not a brick and mortar operation eventually will find the likes of Yahoo and Google running their own subsidiaries in their field. As long as the actual service or product is provided by a third party and Yahoo doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel they will succeed. (What I mean by the ‘wheel etc.’ is proprietary – sorry.) This is the real potential for Yahoo and Google. Companies like OSTK and AMZN are not threatened as they are the type of business that Yahoo and Google must stay away from.

Disclosure: This comment was written by a CrossProfit analyst and does reflect the opinion of CrossProfit.com.
http://www.crossprofit.com

Facebook has opened it’s service recently to high school students, and select organizations and companies. I assume with the Yahoo! takeover, the doors will be opened to all.

According to Alexa - Facebook is the 70th most visited global web property. It trails Myspace, and Friendster in the social networking category.

This has a good chance of becoming official though. Any thoughts on the deal?

Neither FaceBook or MySpace have any kind of technological moat. It’s all about the users. FaceBook’s greatest asset is their access to college users (who used to be the only ones who could use the site). I haven’t been on a campus for a while, is FaceBook still a big deal?

If you compare this to the MySpace deal, it looks like Yahoo is paying more for less.

Looks like they just did.

Fresh off the wire, Yahoo purchases Facebook for $1bn.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5367120.stm

Looks like the #2 search property now owns the #3 social network in world (data by Alexa).

I’m going to take another look at this stock as it recovers from this most recent hit. Some questions I’ll be asking myself:

- How is this dip like the dip last month?
- How is this dip like MSFT’s dip this summer?
- Where is the support for YHOO? Will $25 break? Will $20 catch them.

YHOO has the largest internet property in terms of traffic. So there should be no doubt they are an important company, but some have been questioning their ability to turn into a _prolific_ company with staying power. In Motley Fools terms: they were a great “rule breaker”, but can they transition into a “rule maker”?

Google is winning search. And I would guess Microsoft, if they can nail integration with Vista has a chance to take over second place.

When Yahoo! does release their new ad system, they are likely to provide some real competition for Google on that front. And they’ll surely get some use, which will be good for the bottom line. But then even though online advertising is a growth opportunity, the competition is going to eat into profits. Currently, there is no sign that Yahoo!’s product will be revolutionary enough to dethrone Google. And that’s what they need with this, because who wants to bet on a product that is just going to get the crumbs that fall out of the top dog’s mouth?

(I need to run some numbers on this. What does YHOO stand to gain from their new ad system? How will that affect their earnings-per-share and stock price?)

The trend in the stock is down for the interim. We need some reasons for a turn around? The focus is on their new ad platform, but I’m not sure that will do it.

Yahoo! needs to convince investors that there is more to the web than search, and then convince us that they are still going to make boatloads of money with it.

Yahoo! is playing into investors who think that the web = search. Search is a large part of the web, but not everything. Why isn’t Yahoo! toting “the social web” more? Is it because that term is now more associated with MySpace than Flickr and del.icio.us? Yahoo! Answers has become a big hit, but what else are they working on worth mentioning?

I hope to answer some of these questions myself. I love Yahoo!; I have faith in them. I think they are a great company.

Are they worth investing in the long term? If so, does the current weakness allow us to get a good price? What is that price?