Entertainment needs to be Entertaining
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 10:01AM 
(rant on) Yahoo! Entertainment is reinventing itself again. You can read about it here, here, here and here. In my opinion, this effort will be a disappointment.
Way back at the dawn of time when I ran Yahoo Entertainment I had a mantra. Online entertainment has to be entertaining. Online entertainment has to engage you emotionally. Online entertainment has to be fun.
Do you know what is far and away the most successful Y! Entertainment property?
Do you know why?
Y! Games is entertaining. Y! Games is fun. Y! Games engages you emotionally.
Yahoo! Movies is not an entertainment site, it is a news and information service about movies. The movies are the entertainment. Yahoo! TV is not an entertainment site, it is news and information service about TV (it's barely that since the "improved" version was released).
Now Yahoo! is launching little branded worlds around popular culture icons. That is not entertainment. That is news, information and community wrapped around existing entertainment distribution channels. The Nintendo Wii is a device that delivers entertainment. The Yahoo! Wii site is a page about a device that delivers entertainment. These sites will do OK, but they won't be the home run entertainment product that Y! has been searching for. It's news, not entertainment.
ET is entertainment news.
The Office is entertainment
The key is emotional engagement.
(end rant)
Reader Comments (4)
Interesting post Erik*
I've got some Entertainment Ideas, I will pop U an Email!!
Cheers!! Billy ;))
and with games people entertain each other (well, at least when you're not playing against the computer). That's by nature bi-directional and emotional.
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thats the schizophrenic nature of today's yahoo, ain't it? cant decide if it wants to be an entertainment, content-generating company, or a technology company..