Marissa Mayer's Morning-Show Mess-Up
Today ShowCEO Marissa Mayer introduced a new Yahoo homepage today – first on Yahoo's official blog, and then, moment's later on NBC's Today Show.
This was huge exposure for Yahoo, Mayer, and Yahoo's new homepage. The Today Show has a huge audience – about 4.7 million people watched it last week.
So that was great.
But here's what's weird.
Yahoo has a partnership with ABC News and its morning show program, Good Morning America.
One source familiar with the inner-workings of that deal emailed us, shocked that Mayer would go on air with a rival to Yahoo's partner.
"I'm watching Marissa unveil the "new Yahoo" homepage on the Today Show when they have this amazing ABC GMA partnership. TONE DEAF. Unreal. Seriously, I can't imagine what she was thinking."
Here's another odd aspect: GMA is even more popular than Today Show. 5.3 million people watched it last week.
We reached out to Yahoo PR about the decision to go with Today Show instead of GMA, but we haven't heard back.
Here's the clip:
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And here's a transcript:
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Even if you haven't heard of Marissa Mayer, you know her work. At Google, she helped revolutionize the web and the way we use it every day. Well, now Mayer's hoping to do the same at Yahoo! as its chief executive, starting with the new initiative she is unveiling here on Today. Marissa, good morning.
MARISSA MAYER:
Good morning.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Great to see you. Let's-- I wanna see what this new design is of the home page in a moment, but let's start talkin' about the company. You came on back in the summer with a big job, high expectations. And really, the mission was to turn around Yahoo!. What is the strategy in a nutshell?
MARISSA MAYER:
Well, I think that we're really focused on the world's daily habits and making them more inspiring and entertaining. And so that means taking the things that Yahoo!'s always been great at, the home page, search, mail, news, finance, sports. There's so many great franchises. Really all (UNINTEL) to refresh and more modern, and also capitalizing on the trend towards mobile.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
It's difficult because this is a highly competitive environment, I don't have to tell you. And if you read the trade press about Yahoo!, you inevitably run across words like, "Struggling," "Beleaguered," or "Silicon Valley's favorite wounded dove," was one I read yesterday. What's been the biggest challenge for you so far?
MARISSA MAYER:
I really think of it in terms of opportunities. I just think that I've had a ton of fun coming into the company. There's a lot of great people there, there's great ideas. And our users have been incredibly loyal. We've had some 700 million users a month on the website, 200 million users on mobile each month. And really delivering to them terrific experiences is something that we're really focused on.
GUTHRIE:
Obviously talent is incredibly crucial. You've already done a couple popular things since coming on. You give free food at the cafeteria, smartphone--
MARISSA MAYER:
Yeah.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
--for every employee. Is it hard though to compete for talent when you're going up against the biggies like a Google or a Facebook or an Apple?
MARISSA MAYER:
Well, I think what really inspires people is the ability to make an impact. And there's an-- great opportunity to impact a lot of users, impact-- Yahoo! as a company for the positive. And that's something that's really inspired a lot of terrific company to sign on.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
You are-- the youngest C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 company in America. Is that a help, is it a hindrance, do you find it to be totally irrelevant to what you're trying to do every day?
MARISSA MAYER:
I don't spend a lotta time thinking about it. I spend a lotta t-- more time thinking about our users and what we need to do in order to really delight them.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Well, a lot of people, of course, know that you took on this big job of being C.E.O. of Yahoo! but you had another big job, which is of course having-- a little baby who just was born in September. How's he doing?
MARISSA MAYER:
He's great. Four and a half months old.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
And, you know-- you took a short maternity leave, just a couple of weeks. Was that hard to pull off in retrospect, to juggle all those things? Most people don't have to run a company at the same time.
MARISSA MAYER:
Well, I've been a mom now for about four and a half months and I've been C.E.O. for seven months. And I would say that I wouldn't have missed a minute of either experience. They've both been great. Does take a lot of focus. You need to make sure that you're really prioritizing that. There's not a room-- lot of room for anything else.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Yeah.
MARISSA MAYER:
But, you know, overall I've been having a terrific time with both being a mother and being a C.E.O.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Have you been surprised the degree to which this high-profile gig comes with attention everything you do? I mean, people look at-- at you as a role model as well, are looking at you as an example. Has that been difficult to deal with?
MARISSA MAYER:
Again, I haven't just spent a lot of time looking at it or even thinking about it. I've really been focused on the products, what we need to do. And there's so many great people at Yahoo! and there's many great users that we wanna serve well that I really put my energy there.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Okay. We are going to demonstrate this new product, but-- we're gonna first take a break. I believe you're gonna have your big announcement, we're gonna do a little show and tell right after this.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Back at 7:44, and as promised, Yahoo! C.E.O. Marissa Mayer revealing the big change that's come to its website this morning. All right, we're gonna do a little show and tell.
MARISSA MAYER:
Sure--
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Yeah, it looks different but not so different that I don't recognize it.
MARISSA MAYER:
Well, we wanted it to be familiar, but we also wanted it to embrace some of the modern paradigms of the web. So--
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
What are the biggest changes you wanna show--
MARISSA MAYER:
Well, one, we have these nice, big, bold images here, the ability to actually quickly go through all kinds of different editorial content up here on the top. But then we also have, one of the things I really like, which is this very personalized news feed down below. It's infinite, so you can just keep scrolling forever.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
It goes on forever and-- basically, yeah, all right.
MARISSA MAYER:
And it's personalized--
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
The unending newsfeed.
MARISSA MAYER:
And it's personalized to you. So, for example, obviously I like Yahoo!, so do a lot of my friends. So you can see here, this is an article about the fact that we just had this launch this morning, and some of my f-- and you can actually see-- that my friends like Yahoo!.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
So what you've clicked on will go to the top of your newsfeed in a sense?
MARISSA MAYER:
Well, what you clicked on, what your friends liked, what your friends have read are all things that would appear in here. And you can actually switch to, say, "See Local News," "Entertainment News." And then you can also see over here on the right-hand side all kinds of the information people come to Yahoo! every day for, weather, clothes-- sports (UNINTEL).
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
These are some of these utilities. It-- it sounds to me the big innovation is it's more personalized?
MARISSA MAYER:
That's right. It's more personalized and it's more dynamic. People said, "Give me a reason to come back to Yahoo! a few times a day." And now the content's always updating and refreshing, that gives you all the information you want. And a few things that are nicer and a bit of a surprise.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
Okay, great. Well, people can get-- get on it right now, if you go to Yahoo.com, it's rolling out this morning?
MARISSA MAYER:
That's right.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE:
All right, Marissa Mayer, thank you so much. It's great to have you here. If you wanna see the new Yahoo! experience for yourself, you can also head to Today.com. And we'll be back right after this