Yahoo Or Google, Will Tumblr Change Which Website You Visit?

Screen Shot 2013-05-19 at 4.23.13 PMScreen Shot 2013-05-19 at 4.22.48 PM

 

For the past few years Yahoo.com has struggled to keep its website and affiliates at par with its competitors, which include Google, Ask, and Bing. Yahoo has relentlessly tried to modify its site to meet the demands of its customers, as well as retain new users to visit the once sensational site. Three years ago Yahoo completely changed its design capacity for the site, going from a search engine with many links, to a website that prioritized news feed. This new integration has helped the site reach new heights, but has still left them in the dust compared to its main competitor, Google. Around the same time as Yahoo’s new design, which helped utilization and efficiency for the website, Google purchased an even bigger venture, known as YouTube. This astounding company has helped Google become a giant in their industry. In addition, Google recently has increased its stock share to over $900 per share, making it one of the highest growing stocks of this year. Yet Yahoo is still at a measly $26 per share, but has been increasing for the better part of six months. Why has Yahoo’s stock been increasing when Google has completely overwhelmed all of its competitors?

Today the answer to that question was given. According to CNN, Yahoo has purchased Tumblr for a record $1.1 billion. Clearly Yahoo is not afraid to spend money, as a famous person once said, “you need to spend money to earn it.” By purchasing Tumblr, Yahoo hopes to compete with Google at a much more even playing field. According to Wikipedia, Tumblr “is a microblogging platform and social networking website,” which “allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private.” Moreover, when Google purchased YouTube, Yahoo’s usage rate fell dramatically, and today they purchased Tumblr in hopes to change that. In addition, according to the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, Tumblr “would allow the search engine to tap into a young, active online user base at the social network.” She goes on to say that our goal is to “engage Internet users and get them excited about using Yahoo again.”

I firmly believe that Google will always hold a slight edge over Yahoo, mainly because of its simplistic search engine. However, I do consider that this new business enterprise will dramatically increase user traffic on Yahoo’s website.  Do you think that Yahoo will finally be at par with Google, or will they continue to be an after thought in the search engine industry? Moreover, do you use Tumblr, and if so do you think this will prompt you to use Yahoo more often? These are questions I am very curious about, as I believe Yahoo will become a giant along side Google moving forward.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/19/technology/yahoo-tumblr/index.html

Infer: Better Math Can Produce More Sales

Infer is a company that develops technology that allows company’s sales-tracking system to rank customer leads based on how likely they are going to purchase something. The company has raised 10 million over the last two years while working on this technology. Infer is rather simple as its software starts with basic information. For example, if a customer decides to enter their name, address and company when signing up for a product. The Infer system will then start doing research behind the person that signed up for the product.

The CEO, Vik Singh is young as he is only 28 years old, but he believes that his mathematical formulas will increase sales. Vik Singh and his 10-employee team are in the midst of improving sales by using better math.

Vik doesn’t seem to be short on confidence as he feels that this new  innovation is sure to help increase sales. The problem is the fact that he is  very young and there may not be that many people that believe in his new ideas. He may not be the best person to trust for sales, but he certainly has the right engineering track record. He worked with Google fine tuning search systems before moving to Microsoft. At Microsoft, he developed technology with Jim Gray, who of the greatest computer scientists of the last half century. He finished working with Microsoft and built a new Yahoo search system.

Vik Singh has worked with some of the biggest technology gurus in the world. Vik Singh says, ” The way the typical company manages data is piss-poor in comparison and there is more science at Facebook (FB) behind seeing which of your friends are getting drunk across the street from you.” This seems to be a common theme with all the new web-savvy engineers that are trying to make new rules for business applications. Vik Singh wants to treat sales deals like a puzzle. If Infer can makes their sales deal like a puzzle then it can be solved with an algorithm rather than a dinner between people who have ideas.

Infer has worked with Box and other customers to verify their research. It works with historic sales and compares outcomes with their own predictions. Singh continues to tell everyone that the experiments come out nearly perfect, but he has not released any proof of this for businesses to see. In my opinion, there are a lot of other things that factor in when dealing with sales. There needs to be more facts when trying to rely on just math to increase sales. From a management point of view, I don’t know if Vik is taking things a little too far with all these math equations, but he does have the technology background to speak for him. Then again who has time for someone that is only 28 years old and is trying to change the way selling works?

Links:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-24/infer-promises-more-sales-through-better-math

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/infer/

http://blog.studentrnd.org/post/37455656817/why-asians-are-better-than-americans-at-math