Yahoo's Garlinghouse: Time to Focus on Social Media

As more details of the screwed-up negotiations between Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) come to light, it's likely that this takeover circus will soon be much ado about nothing. (Except of course for those shareholders trying to make a quick buck - hello, Carl Icahn.) Yahoo needs to be given a chance to focus on what it does best: community, mail, and social media.

"It's been a rallying cry, making people want to get stuff done," said Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, speaking to me a few weeks ago about his staff's reaction to the Microsoft bid.

As the author of the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto, Garlinghouse is no stranger to calls-to-action. "I'm thinking of a future where all of the Internet becomes social." And by that he means, well, you know. "All of Yahoo must become more social."

Yahoo has indeed cut a wide swath into the forests of community, and with the specter of Microsoft takeover perhaps fading, it's worth asking about the relationship between Yahoo email, Yahoo instant messenger, photo-sharing service Flickr, bookmarking utility Delicious, and so on. Admittedly, with Yahoo's millions of users, there's a ton of potential, but Yahoo still needs to make these services work seamlessly together.

And what about social networking? How does Yahoo tie into Facebook or LinkedIn? "Social networking as a silo is not sustainable," Garlinghouse said, referring to the current community-building approach favored by the networks. "We've never seen walled gardens succeed over the long-term.

This is in step with Yahoo's efforts to become more open, perhaps transforming itself into a gigantic, integrated social media platform, and one that will start with the Yahoo home page, naturally. "The Yahoo home page must be all about being relevant and engaging. If we're relevant and engaging then it's about developing a relationship, a positive virtuous cycle."

Garlinghouse went on to describe the future Yahoo as becoming more like a neighborhood than a nightclub. "It's intended to be an experience about who you really are and the relationships you have."

In such a scenario, community is communicating. But what then of Garlinghouse's title - he's SVP of Communications and Communities, after all. "Well, I don't view community and communications as separate things."