The Hottest Portal
|
Asiaweek
Pictures.
Taiwan-born Yang, 32, has helped turn a search engine into
the Web's most-visited portal in Asia too.
|
So maybe it is the Wal-Mart of the Web. Yahoo has consistently demonstrated
that maintaining mass appeal is not an art form to be sniffed at.
The U.S.-based portal, which started in 1994 as the Web's first
"navigational aid," has expanded into the Internet's master of mass,
with 22 international properties visited by more than 145 million
people every month. Asia has produced a bumper crop of domestic
portals, but local-language and English versions of Yahoo are consistently
near the top of country rankings of most-trafficked sites. That
popularity adds up. In June, Yahoo's Japanese and South Korean portals
ranked one/two for most page views in the entire Asia Pacific region,
and the English version ranked fifth, according to market data firm
AlexaResearch.
How does Yahoo beat the locals on home turf? Having one of the best-known
brands on the Internet helps. So does offering all the services,
such as stock quotes by pager and e-mail updates, that users expect.
But while keeping up with the latest technology, co-founder and
"chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang believes in keeping the site simple, relatively
graphics-free and therefore fast to download. Being quicker
than the competition is a proven way to stay at the top of the heap.
Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com
|