Yahoo!XTRA launches tomorrow, nothing new for customers
Telecom NZ’s XTRA and content and service partner Yahoo! is launching their new portal tomorrow under the somewhat awkward name Yahoo!XTRA.
According to the teaser site, “good things happen when Xtra meets Yahoo!” and customers will get the best of Yahoo! in the form of:
- Messenger
- Search
As is true with the current XtraMSN portal, the new Yahoo!XTRA portal will also provide local content in the form of:
- News
- Sport
- Entertainment
In other words, nothing new for customers. All of the Yahoo! services, bar Music, can be used by New Zealanders today, and local news, sport and entertainment is of course already offered by XtraMSN (and many other content providers).
It is obvious that the partnership is not about new direct revenue streams from Xtra customers. At least not initially, as almost all of Yahoo!’s services are free and already available in NZ. This is all about online advertising. Yahoo! gets direct access to kiwi eyeballs, and eyeballs equals revenue. Xtra in return, will undoubtedly get a share of this advertising revenue stream.
The question is: is the Yahoo!XTRA partnership only about advertising? Well, as long as Yahoo!XTRA sticks to the standard “free” Yahoo! services, we think yes, it is pretty much only about advertising. However, this may change going forward. For example:
- Yahoo!XTRA may decide to offer services and content that is exclusive to Xtra customers. However, this goes against the way that Yahoo! operates, and we think this is less likely to happen. Yahoo! is unlikely to want to make any of its content or services exclusive to a single provider.
- Yahoo!XTRA may decide to offer paid services, like Yahoo! Music. (Of course, Yahoo! Music will have to compete against the iTunes monster, and to struggle with the fact that the music cannot be loaded onto iPods.)
- Yahoo!XTRA may make it cheaper or more attractive for XTRA customers to use its services by discounting paid services.
Of course, Xtra will argue that the partnership is about much more than advertising and that it is about providing leading edge content and services to New Zealanders. However, if these services are simply the existing Yahoo! services, they are already available to New Zealanders today.
We will follow the launch tomorrow with interest.
10layers.com covers the next generation internet from the physical to the political layers.
8 comments
Robby | March 1st, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Plus Yahoo are supposed to be very interested in the Yellow Pages, so it makes sense that they form a partnership. Microsoft weren’t going anywhere with xtra, so it was good that they got a divorce. This could be a very good thing for Telecom, if they take full advantage of it. Currently I am not impressed with the new yahoo xtra site, as it seems very bitty, and the have hacked old pages from the xtra site, and pasted them into the new yahoo site. This is very rough for a professional company. Also the URL displayed in the address bar is nz.yahoo.com. A NZ website should be using the .co.nz extension. SUpposedly they are going to be adding a whole lot more stuff. I also wonder why Ferrit isn’t included on it anywhere on the new YahooXtra site, maybe this is a sign that the ferrit is almost dead…
Peter Wogan | March 2nd, 2007 at 7:48 am
Click on the Shopping link on YahooXtra and it’ll take you to Ferrit. We’re alive and kicking. Cheers. Peter Wogan, head of marketing at Ferrit
Robby | March 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
It took me a while to see the link. It is strange that it isn’t under the main menu along with the following. I would expect it to appear between ‘Sports ‘and ‘Travel’
Business
Entertainment
Horoscopes
Lifestyle
Music
News
Real Estate
Sport
Travel
Weather
It is almost as though xtra are using a generic Yahoo website template, and are currently working out how to add their own links and content to it.
I am a telecom shareholder, so I hope telecom can make a goer of this new relationship.
Robby | March 2nd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Whoops, I mean between ‘Real Estate’ and ‘Sport’
Looks like telecom are looking at this website :)
Foo | March 6th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Any plans for 10layers to cover the QoS being proposed by Telecom?
10layers | March 7th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Foo,
Yep, we will certainly cover the QoS plans that Telecom has proposed. Stay tuned!
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Demetris | August 24th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Sorry :(
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