Yahoo Tech Ticker: More Details And A Screenshot
Yahoo's new technology business video show, TechTicker, is set to go live soon (officially, in the next few weeks, but I'm hearing that some early stuff may come out as soon as next week). — The show will be hosted by Henry Blodget …
Context & Ripple Effects
This follows Yahoo's December 2007 announcement, reported by the New York Times, that it would build an Internet program aimed at technology investors. TechTicker is that program taking shape: a video show going live within weeks, with Henry Blodget confirmed as host and early material possibly surfacing ahead of the official debut.
The launch lands amid a burst of Yahoo product activity in early January 2008 — an embeddable MP3 player, a new mobile advertising strategy pitched directly against Google and Microsoft, and a stated ambition to be consumers' indispensable starting point on the Web. TechTicker reads as the media-content arm of that same start-page strategy.
First-order effects
- Yahoo gains an original video property aimed at technology investors rather than syndicated or aggregated text, adding inventory for its display-advertising business.
- Henry Blodget moves from blogging about markets to fronting a portal-distributed video show, giving Yahoo a recognizable personality-led format at launch.
Second-order effects
- Business and technology news outlets serving the same investor audience face a free, portal-scale video competitor, pressuring them to treat online video as a core product rather than an experiment.
- If TechTicker draws advertiser interest, it strengthens Yahoo's argument that original programming differentiates its start page from search-first rivals Google and Microsoft, whose competition Yahoo has framed around mobile ads and starting-point relevance.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward portals evolving from aggregators of others' content into producers of personality-driven video programming, with talent deals and show formats becoming competitive assets in the fight for audience time.
- For financial media specifically, a major web portal commissioning investor-focused video signals that the audience for market commentary is expected to migrate from print and broadcast to browser-delivered shows.
The trend: Web portals are moving into original, personality-led video programming to defend their role as consumers' starting point against search rivals.