Since Marisa Mayer took the reins as CEO at Yahoo, the company has been cutting the fat and refocusing on mobile aspects of the news and search company.
At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference Mayer took the main stage in New York to directly qualm any rumors of the company's identity crisis, directly answering the question whether Yahoo was a internet tech company or web media focused.
"Over the years in Silicon Valley [the question has] became Yahoo's version of navel gazing; is it media, tech driven media, media driven tech?" Mayer said.
"In short it does not matter," she argued. "What matters is we build products that people love that they use everyday but are beautiful, inspiring, and use technology in new ways."
Building up video
Furthering Yahoo's media empire, Mayer noted that the company will start incorporating video into its specific news verticals including finance and sports.
On top of that the company has recently announced its plans to produce its own original video content a la Netflix originals. These two series include Other Space, a space borne romantic comedy, and a behind the scene look at the Las Vegas NBA team called Sin City Saints.
Yahoo isn't any stranger to video content, but Mayer said it is taking a different tactic by "doing fewer things that we think are bigger and have a better chance of success," she said.
With the verticals Yahoo plans to shoot smaller or shorter form content support its news coverage whereas in the past everything was branded as its own series. "Literally last year we produced 86 different series," Mayer recounted. "None of them you remember or heard about because it was just a failed branding exercise."
Additionally starting July 1, Yahoo will livestream concerts for the summer season.
Going mobile
Earlier this year Yahoo surprised us with a News Digest app made specifically for mobile news viewers and that could just be the tip of the spear.
During the Disrupt talk, Mayer shared the story of how she started her first week at Yahoo to realize the company only had 60 mobile engineers. "When I got to Yahoo mobile was everyone's hobby," Mayer quipped. "Everyone did a little bit of [mobile] and it was literally no one's job."
Since then the company has built up its team and now it has over 500 people on its mobile team. It should be interesting to see what Yahoo's bulked up Mobile staff has in-store for us next.
- Yahoo also might be thinking of getting back into games like pool and poker
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