Yahoo started distributing an Ipad magazine, which illuminates the Internet Company’s ambitions and the recurring hiccups that have thrown its fate into doubt.
The free magazine called Livestand has an intriguing potential since se its software can be customized in pulling a deep pool of content from Yahoo’s website and other participating publishers so that it could cater to the needs of its users according to their interests.
However, the magazine was not available until Wednesday, well behind Yahoo Inc.’s own schedule for the product and 19 months following the time that Apple Inc. began selling the iPad.
After it got launched last year, the iPad thrust tablet computers onto the revolutionary of both technology and media.
Yahoo counts on Livestand so that it could keep its brand and services pertinent as more people embrace the iPad and other mobile devices in consuming digital content. The company also expects that the magazine’s customization tools make it easier in determining what each reader likes so advertisers can target their messages at people that have a high chance of buying their products.
Yet Yahoo’s delays in seizing such opportunities have been a recurring problem during the past decade. A combination of hubris, bureaucracy and poor decision-making caused Yahoo to react too slowly to threats posed by Google Inc. in Internet search and Facebook, in social networking. That has left Yahoo badly weakened in two key markets.
Such setbacks are the main reasons Yahoo been mired in a financial funk throughout a five-year stretch, which saw the company go through three different CEOs who were powerless in engineering a turnaround. Yahoo’s board has been reviewing whether to sell all or parts of the company ever since they fired Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz as CEO almost two months ago.
If Yahoo remains elf-sufficient, Livestand may become a key piece of Yahoo’s newest comeback attempt.
It represents Yahoo’s first significant step regarding the building products primarily aimed at mobile devices prior to adapting them for desktop computers.
Before the free magazine has drawn upon Yahoo’s own content, Livestand picks material from ABC, Forbes magazine, parenting magazine and an assortment of publications dedicated to sports and hobbies. Publishers are going to be offered a chance in selling subscriptions by means of Livestand next year.
According to Yahoo’s chief product officer, Blake Irving Livestand is like a re-imagining of what Yahoo can be.
The magazine got first introduced nine months following the time that Yahoo offered its first sample of Livestand. At that point, Yahoo said it hoped the magazine would be available in iPad’s app store by June.