Today at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz took the stage for a sit down with host John Battelle. One of the key things she had to say was about Yahoo’s content strategy going forward. It has to be about personalization.
“We’re content, that’s what we are. It went off track when people thought it was a ‘search’ company,” Bartz said. She said that search was a hard problem and an arms race, Yahoo needs to focus on the front-end of things.
“We serve 6 million different frontpages a day,” she said. Different types of users want different types of pages with a variety of content. These are built using a mixture of data, machine learning, and some editorial help, she said.
The human element is interesting and important because it sort of how Yahoo became Yahoo back in the day before scaling got in the way.
Bartz said that Yahoo also serves up some 18 billion ads a day now across their network.
More: Bartz Has The “What Is Yahoo?” Answer Down To 15 Seconds. It’s Both Expansive And Vague