Terry Semel at Web 2.0

Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel kicked off the show today.

• On Google.“As a portal, it would probably be rated number four.” Semel made much of the fact that Google is largely dependent on paid search/contextual ads, while Yahoo! additionally brings in brand advertising dough, as well as subscription revenue.
  
• On New Revenue Streams. “We will find more clever ways, in addition to branded advertising, to monetize those pageviews [on content]. There’s no doubt in my mind that that will happen.”
  
• On User-Generated Content. “Yahoo! more and more sees itself as an open platform to enable other people to publish. We’ll see a lot of things like that going forward.” Most interestingly, Semel suggested the company would encourage people to publish their own content — even on Yahoo! itself — by sharing advertising revenue with them. “[We want to] encourage and open up Yahoo! to enable people to do things like Flickr and to post their photos and give them all of the options in the world of what to do with their photos….” This includes, he said, people having the option to put advertising links on their photos, so they could, for example, “get paid for their trip to Italy.”
• On Platforms. Semel said Yahoo! is committed to making its content available across the Web, on mobile devices (now) and IPTV in the future.
  
• On the Future. “As we go forward, it’s all about one thing. Deeper engement. More time spent. More satisfactory experiences for both users and advertisers.”