Jerry Yang: Time to get Yahoo yodeling again

It sounded a lot like the Yahoo of old, the one he co-founded — but pretty different from the Hollywood approach that former CEO Terry Semel took at the Consumer Electronics Show in recent years. Semel, a former studio chief, enlisted help from the likes of Tom Cruise and Ellen DeGeneres.

Yang walked onto the stage Monday and emphasized the similarity of his mission to the one Yahoo launched with 13 years ago. His conclusion: “It is time to get Yahoo yodeling again.”

Yahoo wants to become the starting point for consumers’ Internet experience. To do so, Yang said, Yahoo plans to take the complexity out of people’s lives and make the Web simpler through technology.

To show what he meant, Yang gave a “concept” demonstration of future software that would tap into users’ social connections to make their Internet experience more personal and relevant.

It revolved around new technology that can determine someone’s most relevant personal connections, then prioritize important messages based on frequency and volume. He showed how the “smarter” Yahoo inbox, which displays e-mails, instant messages and voice mails, would be able to interact with other services such as online maps and invitations.

Mobile also is a big push for Yahoo, especially generating advertising revenue as more people use cell phones to surf the Internet. Marco Boerries, Yahoo’s executive vice president for Connected Life, showed off ways to give users easier access to e-mail, search, news, weather, maps and other services on their devices. Those included a new mobile home page with a fresh layout and more content, plus the latest version of the company’s mobile-phone software, Yahoo Go 3.0.

MySpace, eBay Inc. and MTV Networks each have created mobile services that are accessible through the new Yahoo home page and Yahoo Go.

Another big push is to encourage software developers to create Web programs to run on the phones. Yahoo also introduced software that lets advertisers create promotions for cell phones.

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