Within the next six months, Yahoo expects to roll out video sharing within the site, Terry Semel announced at Ad Age’s 360 Degree Media conference. Additionally, Semel, interviewed by Ad Age publisher Scott Donaton, said that video on the net in general could use an overhaul. “I don’t think the future of internet video is just ‘clips,’” he said.
The company is currently developing tools to make it possible to share video within Yahoo. For an hour, Semel held forth on those subjects, the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit, his lack of previous tech experience (not a big deal), the future of print (it has one) and the initial success of Panama (wait for the earnings results in two weeks).
He also talked about the growing impact of mobility, in general and in emerging markets. Plus, he believes the iPhone will open up further possibilities in the U.S.: ”I’m excited by the iPhone, and I’m excited about working with Apple, as we will be providing mobile search for it.”
But mostly, he said that Yahoo will keep doing what it’s been doing – especially when it comes to maintaining Yahoo’s high regard for honoring copyrights and why you didn’t see a video clip of soccer star Zinedine Zidane’s brutal headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final last year. Semel: “Yahoo has been and always will be an aggregator of content. I have never wanted Yahoo to be a major production company. It’s like the early days of TV. Warner Bros. [where he was chairman and co-CEO] weren’t always the ones to develop great ideas. They bought them and distributed them. That’s our role and it will stay that way.”
-- On user-generated content: “I take the point of view that says, if your business is going to be disaggregated, disaggregate yourself first – if the nature of your business is changing, get out in front of those changes. In the case of user-generated content, too many companies are just dipping their toes in the water. I don’t see the future of user-generated content as just clips. There are opportunities to do other things than a version of America’s Funniest home Videos. I also see user generated content becoming more targeted. It will definitely get better in terms of tapping people’s creativity.
-- Online Video Is Not TV: “In the overall online video space, I haven’t been happy with a lot of pitches. People keep pitching online video as if they were pitching TV shows. That’s really what they were thinking: TV, not online, not interactive. This is not TV and you can’t think that way. It has to fit and use all the capabilities of the medium.”
-- Viacom lawsuit: “Yahoo built websites for FIFA during the last World Cup. Does everyone remember the head-butt? Well, that clip was everywhere. I asked why we couldn’t get that clip on Yahoo. I said I wanted it on Yahoo. I was told, ‘Terry, it’s licensed.’ So we spoke to FIFA and even though we were partners, it took several days to get permission and by that point, it was old news, it had been everywhere. We made a decision, and we’ve stuck with it: we want to stay friendly with the people we license from. It makes me ill when I see my partners’ clip on someone else’s site. But we’re in it for the long run.”
-- Panama: “I’m all smiles. Because we got such a great response and so many great notices in the press, I suggested that we change the name of our search engine to Panama. I spoke to our marketing department about it. I thought it was a great idea. But I was voted down. We’re closing the gap with Google, though. I don’t want to say any more. We have our earnings call in two weeks and have some exciting numbers.”