Tag Archives: Yahoo

Why I love Yahoo. And their stock’s not bad either!

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Image representing Yahoo! as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Two phones with mobile internet capability dis...

Two phones with mobile internet capability displayed (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the recent death of Stock Exchange pioneer Muriel Siebert, who was the first woman to buy a seat on the NYSE,  it seems a perfect moment to talk about Yahoo. (YHOO)

There was a time circa 2000, when Yahoo was flying high along with other Internet start ups with their glittering IPOs and go go spending. But when the boom went bust in 2001, many of those start ups and IPOs went belly up. Anyone remember Inktomi? How about Pets.com? I know…bad memories.

But Yahoo continued to drift along. We still needed Yahoo because it provide email, a search engine,  a cool, customizable home page (still my home page) and lots of other features like flickr for photo uploading. But in the post Dot Com days,  Yahoo lost their edge, their panache and their leadership edge and drifted along for years under various CEOs.

And then along came Mary. Or actually Marissa. As in Marissa Mayer, the product guru of Google. She came on board and has been steadily remodeling the company with a new focus on strategic acquisitions, marketing, search and new products. In July, Yahoo beat Google in web traffic!  And guess what, the stock has been rising steadily.  It may not be meteoric but Yahoo feels new and fresh and current just like its new logo and font.

I’m long on Yahoo. I think a lot of surprises are ahead. Good ones.  In fact, I’m curious about a possible Apple/Yahoo deal.  I have no evidence more solid than the fact that both have recently chosen lighter, more modern fonts for their sites and products. Could more design “coincidences” be in the works?

I’m glad there’s a woman at the helm at Yahoo. She’s not afraid to shake things up. Just like Muriel Siebert, a pioneer of her era.

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What part of buy LinkedIn don’t you understand?

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Nederlands: Linked In icon

Nederlands: Linked In icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I bought LinkedIn (Nasdaq: LNKD) the first time six months ago and have been buying since and telling everyone I know. Yeah, it’s not as cheap as it used to be but it’s still affordable. I remember  feeling that way about Priceline  (Nasdaq: PCLN) a year ago when I should have bought it and now it’s completely out of reach.  I’m not planning to miss out again. LinkedIn is another stock that has a long way to run.

You can read P/E ratios and all the financial data on Yahoo so I won’t bother wasting my blog on that. What  I want you to understand is why LinkedIn is such a game changer.  It’s become the de facto way that working people connect. Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) is for play time, LinkedIn is for your career.  If you have a LinkedIn profile, you know that everyone is rushing to “endorse” everyone else’s job skills in the hopes that the feeling (and actions) will be mutual. I also know who is checking out my resume, who is looking for workers and who in my network might be able to give me the inside scoop on a given company or employee.

LinkedIn is the first step in being a serious professional on the web. Build your profile, then connect to your contacts. Pretty soon, you’ve got a really valuable  job finding, company searching and contact making universe. And that’s why LinkedIn has been flying high. It’s the Priceline of  the job world.   Don’t wait till it’s at 300 when you could buy it in the low 200s today.  Buy 10 shares if that is all you can afford. If it dips, buy more. If it goes up, consider yourself in the know.

That’s my current hot pick. And Mama’s sticking to it.

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