Yahoo is apparently about to release the first major new consumer product in 32 months, according to Amir Efrati at The Information.
Yahoo’s first new product under Melissa Mayer
It will be the first product that Yahoo has built from scratch under CEO Marissa Mayer, and it’s going to be a kind of messaging app.
Here is the description:
Later this quarter it will unveil a mobile app that combines live and recorded video and text, blending aspects of live video apps like Meerkat, YouNow and Skype and the recorded video messages popularized by Snapchat, according to a person who has seen the product and a person who was briefed about it.
It is not clear what format exactly it will take, but it seems like it would be ill-advised to judge on such a tiny snippet of information. But of course, when Mayer arrived at Yahoo from Google, she was known as a product-oriented CEO.
The new app will be highly scrutinised, and there will be many who want to see if her leadership is producing results, perhaps unfairly. Even companies like Facebook face an uphill battle to launch successful new apps – for example Poke, Paper, Slingshot and Rooms. Those apps that Facebook launched did not gain any traction in the market.
It is unlikely that Yahoo’s new app will be a huge success, but it needn’t be a failure. Yahoo needs to release a steady stream of new products, and hope that it hits on one that’s successful. And this is the first step in the right direction.
SOURCE: The Information
Larry Banks is a keen follower of technology and finance. He has worked for a variety of online publications, writing about a diverse range of topics including mobile networks, patents, and Internet video delivery technologies.