With the alliance with Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo's focus is no longer on the technology that powers search and trying to beat the competition with it - the "megawatt war," as Sam Diez reports at ZDNet. Instead, it wants to ride the back of Microsoft technology and channel it so users will want to come back to Yahoo every time they have a query. They want value added user experiences.
To accomplish this they need to offer value added niche content. One example, would the type of focused search experience that Tvissimo can offer, for example. Tvissimo lets you not only find what's happening on television, but you can also set up alerts for when your favorite shows, actors, movies, etc. come within a two week window so you will not miss them. That is a service that will keep you wanting to come back.
Sam concludes by wondering if "given the time and resources to focus on customer experience instead of back-end technology (Yahoo) gains some ground and starts building itself back up." Services such as TVissimo would help them. It can become a big factor in accessing television content, especially as it becomes available across computers and mobile devices.
Tom Wilde recent wrote in Search As Television’s Savior? that one critical need for the new multi-screen reality (when people use computers and TV at the same time) is “a new metaphor for programming, and this is where search can play a vital role.” He points out that users are increasingly in control of the content they consume so search is the perfect approach to delivering individualized content discovery. To be successful publishers need to be aware of how their content is discovered and organized across the multi-screen reality.
He goes on to outline some useful search optimization techniques. Having a robust search capability such as provided within TVissimo is another way to bring more control to users. Having both is the ideal way to go. Nielsen Research came out with interesting statistics on overall video consumption last week indicating that total TV consumption reached record levels when considering traditional broadcast video, time shifted video, web video and mobile video. People want to the content ad they do not want to miss what is important to them. The web gives them an increased desire for control. Search can put more of this control in their hands.
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