Social media game plan similar to Yahoo. Cool.

Yahoo got dressed down last week on Wall St due to poorer than expected earnings reports. I read the news on www.paidcontent.org. In Yahoo’d defense, CEO Terry Semel was quoted extensively, admitting that Yahoo could do better, and pointing to the things Yahoo does well, like Social Media.

From paidcontent.org: Semel was echoed by Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig, who said the company knows there will be a social media ad glut “for a while” but that Yahoo’s user data, audience quality “which I think is debatable in some of these other environments” plus contextually relevant ads give it an edge

I’ve added the bold and underlines to that last sentence because it highlights our strategy exactly. The keys to the kingdom going forward, in my opinion, will be to stress vistor QUALITY over visitor QUANTITY.

Remember, Yahoo has more traffic than any other site on the Web, and they’re talking about visitor QUALITY being key to profit on the Web. That tells me a lot.

You’ve gotta have significant traffic, but in the end user data (both quantatative and qualatative) will be the difference between the leaders and the followers. As quickly as possible we need to get away from selling “eyeballs” and move toward deeper relationships with the fans who participate in the Colts Fan Network.

I may sound like a broken record on this point, but it’s crucial; and it’s encouraging to see that Yahoo, a company that generates nearly $3 billion in on-line ad revenue, is thinking along the same lines.