Why Marissa Mayer Needs More Time

Where: do you get your news? I’ve had much opportunity to analyze this lately as my satellite box committed suicide over the weekend. I didn’t miss it at all, so I guess I’m ready to cut the cord; the last remaining fiber of that cord was my connection to TV news.

But I’ve discovered I get my news from the web. And not from any one news organization’s home page. I get it from three places: Yahoo News Digest, Nuzzel, and Digg Reader. Digg Reader is an obvious choice, as it replaced Google Reader for me when that long-time companion was sent over the Rainbow Bridge by the Google gods. I have my feeds beautifully tuned: tech, health care, mobile, ad tech, and blogs of friends like Jeff Jarvis and Doc Searls — things I need to know for my clients and things I need to see from friends.

Nuzzel also seems obvious, as it’s the recursive site for friends of mine who share and recommend things. That’s where I read about Ellen Pao’s trial, Meerkat, and Uber. Every day I check it to see if something has been recommended by someone that I haven’t already read on Facebook or Twitter (which are also sources of news, but much less reliable). It satisfies my FOMO.

But the most interesting source of my news is Yahoo News Digest, where I go for “mainstream news” outside the tech bubble in which I mostly live. If I want to know what the rest of the world is talking about and thinking about, including March Madness, Putin’s reappearance, and why Romney isn’t running, Yahoo is the place. It occupies a big space in my mind; the space where the rest of the world lives. I also go to Yahoo for its weather app. And I have Yahoo Tech in my Digg Reader.

Marissa Mayer made a big bet on mobile for Yahoo. Her apps are beautiful. They’re useful. Their UI is wonderful. But everyone is getting mad at her because she hasn’t been able to get mobile advertising dollars in sufficient numbers, while Yahoo’s display business is declining. They’ve made up all sorts of reasons why not: she’s late to meetings, she’s difficult to talk to, she’s got no chance of turning an old, rickety ship around.

Wrong. She is early to the game of mobile, that’s all. She got their before brands found it cool. But this year is already seeing a huge shift in ad dollars to mobile, and she will be there with her beautiful apps and her large user base and her new talent pool from her sometimes incomprehensible acquisitions. She need only develop good metrics, and she’ll cross the finish line.

Marissa will win, but it will take her a bit more time. The big boys have to sit back down and allow her to win. Because if she doesn’t, it will turn out to have been their fault.