I met briefly with Irv Henderson this morning as part of a Yahoo! breakfast associated with the Web 2.0 event in San Francisco. Henderson is VP of Product Development for Mobile and Local.
I was encouraged to hear his enthusiasm and some interesting ideas. For too long Yahoo! Local has just been languishing and I’m happy to see somebody taking ownership with some new creativity.
Henderson impressed me as a very thoughtful person and said that local is “an increasingly important area of search” for Yahoo! I neglected to ask him for a number (Google’s conservative estimate is 20%.) It’s also good to see Yahoo! connect mobile and local in a single individual. While these categories are distinct in many respects and the user experience and use cases are often different, there’s also huge overlap.
Henderson and I also spoke about how Yahoo! Answers, which just celebrated its billionth answer, is an underutilized asset. He gave me the impression we’d be seeing some interesting developments with that property.
Yahoo! also has more plans for the iPad, which were hinted at in an informal conversation with other mobile folks. And so I’m interested to see what appears in terms of new Yahoo! apps.
Yahoo! Mobile VP David Katz also informally told me that mobile advertising is going extremely well, although the company hasn’t put out any PR on that front in some time.
May 4, 2010 at 6:30 pm |
I’ve always been a fan of Yahoo! Local. I’m glad to hear it (sounds like it) won’t be going the way of the Dodo come the MicroHoo unpleasantness.
Will
May 4, 2010 at 7:00 pm |
I’ve been hearing about interesting plans for Yahoo Answers for about a year now. Hope they follow through at some point soon.
May 4, 2010 at 10:14 pm |
I too have heard this. And I also hope to see some “action.”
May 4, 2010 at 9:08 pm |
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May 4, 2010 at 9:17 pm |
So is Irv now the main point of contact at Y Local?
May 4, 2010 at 10:13 pm |
He’s the product guy. I don’t think he’s the right guy re issues, but maybe. I’ll try and find out
May 4, 2010 at 11:37 pm |
Hi Greg, very interesting and very encouraging – would love to hear more so let me know if you are up for speaking at our conference in September, or perhpas you could put me in touch with Irv?
May 4, 2010 at 11:38 pm |
Which conference Martin?
May 5, 2010 at 12:58 am |
Greg, even an analogy to a corresponding personality at Google or Bing (i.e. Carter? Ari? Ryan? Mikko?) would be helpful if you could ask Irv
As of now, if he’s the “Product Guy” that seems analogous to Carter, who obviously isn’t the “issues” contact but has clearly demonstrated his interest in reaching out to our community…we haven’t seen that from Yahoo in awhile–witness SMX West of course.
May 5, 2010 at 1:15 am |
I sent him a note asking who the contact should be.