Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s CES 2014 keynote liveblog
No-one was sure what to expect when Google’s Marissa Mayer took over at Yahoo, but it’s clear that she wasn’t there for an easy ride. In less than two years, the company has bought a clutch of other outfits, including Tumblr for $1.1 billion, redesigned its logo and brought some much-needed love to Flickr. Now she’s here at CES, ostensibly to talk about the “next wave of innovation,” which we hope includes some dirt on Yahoo’s future direction. Care to join us for the play-by-play?
January 7, 2014 4:00:00 PM EST
Hello and good day to everyone. We’re now comfortably sat in the LVH Theater, waiting for proceedings to kick off. Words are being provided by me, Dan Cooper, and pictures by the tremendously talented Alexis Santos.
If you’ve got any predictions on what you’re expecting Marissa Mayer to say today, or anything you’re hoping for, why not tweet me at @danielwcooper and any entries I see that are, you know, publishable, I shall share with the world.
You can also compliment Alexis’ photography skills at @alexissantos.
Today’s pre-roll music is HAIM’s Forever. We’re trying to rock out as best as we can in these fairly constrictive theater seats, to show our commitment to the rock.
Understandably, the whole stage is shrouded in purple light. Maybe Prince will be the musical guest.
As you can see Mayer is playing to a capacity crowd today.
Music is now Avicii’s ‘You Make Me.’ And no, *You* needed Shazam to tell you that.
here we go folks. There’s a pre-roll video with a deep voice talking about how great CES is. According to this, it’s pretty great.
Gary Shapiro, president of the CEA (i.e. “Mr. CES”) is now on stage to introduce the keynote.
‘Marissa Mayer was just 37 when they named her as CEO of Yahoo, before that she was at Google for 13 years.’ Now Shapiro is rounding up her achievements so far, both as one of the first Googlers and now her Yahoo career.
Playing Yahoo’s ‘Don’t stop dreaming’ commercial.
and now Marissa Mayer has taken to the stage.
Mayer: “Yahoo’s mission is to make the world’s habits inspiring and entertaining.”
Mayer is talking about Yahoo’s “mobile-first” strategy, with smartphones growing 27% each year, and tablets 78% year-on-year.
Mayer “This shift is not just about the direction of devices, but the amount of time we spend with them, which has increased in the last three years”
Yahoo recently surpassed 400 million monthly mobile users, and that excludes Tumblr.
The future of search is contextual knowledge — leveraging your own data to help you.
Which is why Yahoo is purchasing Aviate.
Aviate will help the company suggest data and apps based on contextual clues, so it’ll offer you a GPS app when you get into your car, or if you always check your stock when you wake up, Aviate will offer that up to you automatically.
She’s now moved onto search more generally, having added 869 search partners, and conducting 600 experiments to help improve search within the last year.
Mayer: ‘People come to Yahoo to communicate with their friends and family. Part of this innovation is the inbox — the most magical place in the world. Your inbox carries the keys to your life. Our teams have been focused on organizing the inbox and making it more personalized, thoughtful, precise and secure.” She’s referring to the recent activation of SSL on Yahoo’s email service.
She’s now turning toward Media, and how Yahoo’s media streams have been upgraded and strengthened, which includes broadcasting NBC Sports and Good Morning America.
Katie Couric, a recent addition to the Yahoo family, is now on stage, to whoops and cheers from the audience.
Katie Couric says that she got into the news business 35 years ago, a different time, where “harass” was two words instead of one. Her first job was changing the purple ribbons on teletype machines, which makes her feel “like the Geico caveman”
In short: the internet has revolutionized news broadcasting.
Couric: “The news is available when you want it, instead of when a program says you need it.” But more than that, anyone with a smartphone and a twitter account can now become a reporter.
Couric feels that the internet has helped to kill fact-checking and understanding, replaced with immediacy. She’s old-school, and she feels that Mayer respects this commitment to quality news broadcasting.
Couric is hoping to start a new news organization from a blank slate, and is looking forward to interviewing newsmakers, sportspeople, authors, entrepreneurs etc. She’s hoping to develop a new interview show, we guess.
That’s all from Katie Couric, who has left to enormous applause. Back to Mayer.
Mayer: ‘It’s increasingly difficult to find the news you need / want. This problem has led to the issue of tl;dr’
No surprises that the next person on stage is Summly’s Nick D’Aloisio
Who is announcing Yahoo News Digest, which presumably bakes in Summly’s technology under Yahoo’s banner.
The issue he’s sought to solve, is to prevent people from being overwhelmed by news. Yahoo News Digest hopes to solve that by digesting news twice a day.
Nick’s going to do a live demonstration. The splash screen has a big cover image, and beneath it you’ve got headlines that are clustered together.
There’s a summary that has been produced from multiple services, which bakes in extra contextual information. For instance, on the screen there’s a piece on a conflict in the middle east — and there’s a map you can access, tweets concerning the piece you can read or direct links to Wikipedia.
There are also things like infographics, stock tickers, scoreboards, and when you’re done reading the news, the app tells you that you’re done.
and that’s that from Nick and Summly.
Mayer has structured this presentation like Yahoo’s News Digest, racing through announcements in a tl;dr version. Now she’s talking about a way to combine magazines and the internet, called Yahoo Digital Magazines, launching with Yahoo Food.
Mayer is now introducing David Pogue, who will launch a Tech news verical in the coming weeks.
Pogue is riffing on his stock image, which resembles the cover of ‘Dianetics,’ and is now talking about the split between ‘Gearheads’ and ‘Normals’ when it comes to the tech readership in the US.
‘You know what a Snapdragon CPU is, you care about BUS speed… you have a Google Plus account.’ Pause for the audience to groan.
Oh, he’s sassing us. Aww.
Pogue is saying that the top and very bottom ends of the tech readership are well served, but those people in the middle are being ignored.
Pogue is now showing us through his articles, and pointing out that Yahoo! Tech isn’t run by advertising.
Pogue’s going to concentrate on Kickstarter reviews, too. It’s launching right in front of our eyes.
and with some strobe lighting, Yahoo! Tech is launched. Pogue exits, pursued by the strobe lights, and Mayer is back on.
We’re now moving onto video content.
Adam Cahan is now on to talk about video.
Yahoo is seeing a fundamental change in its users behaviour. With mobile, people spend a lot more time with their devices, and with tablets, people are now watching in bed for much longer.
So if your colleagues and friends begin staggering in bleary eyed because they’re not getting enough sleep, you can bet that they just bought a tablet.
Yahoo Smart TV is introducing ‘Smart Guide,’ which brings together personalization and recognition to help guide you through the TV minefield. The service is designed to learn from what you watch and help you find something that you’ll enjoy.
The company is also working on making ads smarter, using an example of an advert for FedEx that offers people the opportunity to track packages they have in transit. Which is a bit better than watching yet another advert for hair cream.
Cahan is gone, Mayer is back. Talking about the fact that users can now get Daily Show, Colbert Report and SNL clips on the service.
We’re now seeing a clip from SNL’s Weekend Update, but the clip has now stopped, and they’ve wheeled out the update desk to the floor. Oh, and Cecily Strong, who is sat on there.
Cecily Strong just suggested that Kristen Stewart would make a great Grumpy Cat in a live-action movie adaptation.
Keenan Thompson is now on, pretending to be the Rev. Al Sharpton.
“Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here either, but thanks to Marissa Layer, CEO of YooHoo for inviting me here”
“When you think the cutting edge of technology, you think Al Sharpton.”
“I lost a lot of weight using an App: Apple Maps. I got lost and had to walk around a lot”
The SNL duo have been wheeled off, and the audience is trying to regain most of its composure.
Mayer: Yahoo is simplifying its business and simplifying the way it delivers information. Now the company has been simplified down to Search, Communications, Digital Magazines and Video. These four areas are powered by two engines: Flickr and Tumblr.
Mayer: Earlier in the year, we gave users 1TB of storage and created a photo-centric experience, and this service now powers Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Mail.
Mayer: Tumblr is the platform that we’re using to launch our digital magazines. It’s something truly special, and it’s been a privilege to work with David Karp, who is now taking the stage, dressed in the regulation start-up outfit. Plaid shirt, skinny jeans, hoodie, etc.
Karp has seen that people Tumblr posting from mobile applications has tripled in the last year.
Karp is talking about engagement, which is business speak for people paying attention to Tumblr.
Karp is talking about how advertisers are using Tumblr to show off their stuff. He’s also mentioned that the average Tumblr post is shared on 15 Tumble Blogs. The average sponsored post, however, is shared and seen more than 10,000 times.
Karp’s announcement is that Tumblr’s sponsored posts are now powered by Yahoo’s advertising platform. Given how important advertising and new business is for Yahoo, it’s a reasonably notable move. That’s him done, and so it’s back to Mayer.
Scott Burke is now on, talking about advertising technology. A lot of the business press have been musing upon Mayer’s record as Yahoo! CEO being dependent upon the company growing its advertising base.
Burke is saying that Yahoo is launching a new unified, one-stop advertising solution for media buyers. I.e., if you want to buy adverts from Yahoo, you just need to go to this place and throw your money at the company, and boom.
He’s still talking about advertising. Hope you’ve been able to catch the rest of the great stuff we’ve been working on at CES this year. We’ve got some killer gaming news with Razer’s Project Christine and Oculus Rift, not to mention that Intel is working on a smart onesie.
Mayer “We want you to know that we take the entertaining part of our mission pretty seriously, so to play us out, it’s John Legend”
If you’re curious what that sounds like, I’m informed that this YouTube video will help replicate the experience for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bWonUm3OtQ. Just shine a purple light in your face as you listen to it.
Anyway, it looks as if things are now wrapping up here, so I’d like to extend my enormous thanks to the tremendously talented Alexis Santos (@AlexisSantos) who furnished us with some beautiful pictures today. Thanks everyone for reading, I hope you enjoyed it and that you stick with us through the rest of this week’s CES in Las Vegas.
Filed under: Internet
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