03:22 As you get older, you'll notice how long, you know, it takes how many months before you put your, do you sign your checks with the right date? Right on the money. In fact, most of last year I was signing 2014. Right. Right. So what I wanted to bring up is Marissa Meyer's keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show. And did you have a chance to see this? Really? Yeah, really. Okay. Well, I don't think there'd be anything to see. Well, I don't think you're going to hear much about this because I did watch this. As you know, I've been following Marissa Meyer. I've been a fan of hers, of what she's been doing. That can be, but go on. Yeah. I think she is going to nail it with Yahoo. And I believe that anyone who is in the so-called tech news reporting, anyone who is in, essentially anyone who is in the USA Today market,
04:21 Or even what AOL thinks they are, they need to be afraid because Yahoo is going to do it. Alright, well a couple of things before you play the clips. I just have one, no, no, it's more an analysis. I do have one clip just for yucks, but go ahead. You might be onto something because I've always been convinced she's a poor choice for the job, and I had to assume Although I never wrote about this, but I had to assume she had some massive idea or pitch that got her the job. And so what you're talking about may actually be what it is. Absolutely. Are you on the ADSL today? No, I'm on the same old good stuff. Why is it breaking up? I sound like crap. No, it's stuttering from time to time. It's okay.
05:14 Uh, yeah, no, uh, I think that is exactly what's going on. She, her pitch, I found to be... and by the way, this is everything that we, we stand for everything opposite for what she is doing. Just so you, this is, it's not like, oh boy, I want to work with her. Uh, and let me start off by saying I loved her outfit. Oh, well now I gotta go at least look at that. Get a picture because she had this knee-high three-quarter sleeve Oscar de la Renta number on that was perfect. It matched the Yahoo color. Now I'm not a fan of dark stockings. I think stockings by themselves shouldn't happen. But here is an actual woman. She's not a model, but she's playing the CEO role like you would expect a great woman to do. I'm extremely impressed.
06:03 And she's really setting out to do the USA today of the web. What AOL was, you know, when we were still using dial-up. And I think she's going to give a lot of big arrogant players a run for their money, John. It's really possible. She had, you know, Katie Couric came up to explain. So the main things they're launching is Yahoo Food, which is smart. Because that market is so ready to be captured. There's all the celebrity chefs, the cable channels make so much sense. And she's integrating the advertising into it, not with crappy ass banners, but really letting craft take over entire sections. It's what was inevitable. Changing this display ad format of, this is what a banner is, all of that has been thrown out the window. I think smartly so.
06:56 completely redoing news. They have Katie Couric and of course what's the guy from The Times, Pogue. And Pogue, although he's highly irritating and is not... He's totally irritating. But he's irritating to us. But what he's saying is people want technology news but they want to know how to, you know, they do want to see what Kim Kardashian thinks is the best iPhone. He didn't say that per se, but it's just they just want to know how to put the new printer cartridges into their printer. They want really simple answers, not what the elitist Silicon Valley, San Francisco and also New York technology press thinks the audience is. And I think they're spot on with that, really spot on, which is why you're not going to hear anyone lamenting this keynote or how on target they are. Then they bring out
07:49 Katie Couric. I've always thought Katie Couric was great and I guess she kind of messed up there and it kind of, you know, everything kind of went away. She's also a screamer. Well, what was interesting, and here's the thing that I really did not like, so this entire keynote was scripted. So I have no idea who Marissa Meyer is. I don't think I've ever met her. Maybe I saw her in the distance one time and like, whatever. I've never met her and I'm in the business. But because it was completely scripted and Marissa Meyer cannot read from a prompter, she tries to improvise and you know smoke was flowing from underneath the dress. I mean, cannot do it. Two things happen. One, she comes across as a moronic robot who has trouble breathing.
08:41 Well, we're really excited about here Yahoo! I'm telling you, it's so... She might not be used to working a big room. Well, she's got to learn and she's got to learn to just be herself. Quit the reading, but then when Katie Couric comes on... She's kind of snooty as herself, it's always seemed to me. I have no idea. This is part of the problem. You need some personality when you're doing this stuff and you need to be a little bit yourself. Particularly when you bring Katie Couric up, who is a prompter pro. She reached the prompter. Oh yeah, and a bubbly person. She's a telegenic personality. Yes, but Marissa is telegenic too. No, she's, yeah, she's photogenic too. She's telegenic, photogenic, and probably pretty in person, which is the big three. Yeah. But, but yeah. Let me write that down. Telegenic, photogenic, and in person. It's the big three, everybody. It is. Very nice. Okay.
09:37 So Katie Couric comes up and then... And the funny thing about the big three, not everybody is the big three. Most people are one or two or one or two of them. Oh no, it's very hard to have the big three, I agree. And she's doing little jokes off the prompter, she's doing some shtick. She's, I think, I don't, I didn't clip it, but she said, I'm so old that back in the day harass was two words. Yeah, okay, that was funny. And so she's doing a little bit of shtick, but she's so good at reading the prompter and being casual. And she just completely nails it. And then you put her next to Marissa. And this is the clip I made. Marissa, just a brief introduction or a follow up because Katie's already done like 10, 15 minutes of great material. Then so you can hear how she just boom, boom, boom, she's nailing, she's selling the message. And then how Marissa comes back and how poor
10:29 How poor her presentation... Clearly I'm setting us up for a pitch for the Curie Dvorak Consulting Group because Marissa needs a lot of help. So let's just listen to this. Noisy, wonderful world we live in and that's why I could not be more excited to be part of the Yahoo team. Katie could you tell us a little bit? Yes, I'm ready. Now did you just hear this? She forgot to leave a little pause there. She jumped the prompter. She dumped the prompter but then she also goes, yeah and then she blew it. But she blew it twice. Listen to the sound. First she didn't allow for the, she was obviously too much
11:10 She's self-conscious and she wasn't paying attention. She wasn't really actually working in the room at all. No, she wasn't even listening. She's just reading along until it says Marissa speak. And then she goes, oh yes, like a seal. We live in. And that's why I could not be more excited to be part of the Yahoo team. Katie, could you tell us a little bit? Yes, I'm going to. Could you tell us a bit more about some of what you're hoping to do at Yahoo? What are you trying to do, Yahoo? What are you trying to do? I think one of the most exciting things for me personally about the opportunity at Yahoo is it really is a blank slate. As many of you know, I really enjoy interviewing. So I'm very excited. And listen to the very important what she's about to say. There is some real nugget in here. Prospective interviewing newsmakers, politicians, sports figures, philanthropists.
12:10 all kinds of different people, obviously tech leaders, social entrepreneurs, authors, and really anyone who we believe has an important and interesting story to tell. And since we live, as Marissa has talked about, in such a fragmented media world, the extraordinary global reach of Yahoo... This is very important what she's saying. While everyone is moving behind the firewall, in their desperate attempt to make money, which of course restricts the audience of an interviewee. which is a big problem because if your PR company wants to get as much reach for you as possible, yet you're... To be on the biggest megaphone that you can find. Yeah, you don't want to be behind the paywall on the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. You want to be out in front in the global reach of Yahoo! And she's inviting every single one of these people, this Katie Couric. Very smart. It's tremendously exciting, not only for me, but for potential interview subjects.
13:09 And we're also in the process, Marissa, of reimagining... That was an ad lib, by the way. We're also in the process, Marissa. That was an ad lib. That's how you do Prompter, Marissa. Pay attention. I think how we can take both original and curated content and deliver it in a much more thorough and useful way, particularly on mobile devices. So all those things are very exciting and I can't wait to get started. I can't wait either and I'm excited to see your first interviews. Thank you. Alright, thanks for having me. I can't wait either. Sounds like Alex Jones. So good to see you. Good to see you too. Thanks everybody. Now listen, now listen, now listen. BOOM! We got produced! Now bring back the energy of Marissa Meyer. Let's hear it for Marissa! As Katie said, the news landscape has become fragmented. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find exactly what you're looking for. And then she brings out that 12 year old kid she bought something from.
14:07 Some the Summly kid. I'll write that software package. And he was reading from the prompter. By the way, Pogue is also doing something smart. He's going to review Kickstarter projects. Hello, how's the... It's almost like Ron Bloom is running Yahoo. I'm telling you, it is this... It is so exactly... Except now it's time for this. Now it is time for this. And the native advertising is going to be 50% of their content. Because the content Or the ads, the ad network is really the distribution mechanism. So it's all going to be advertisers making content, and by the way, it won't suck, I think it's probably gonna be good.
14:47 Yeah, it'll suck. It'll suck for us because, look John, if when you turn... Who's doing that? Yeah, the only thing and the only reason, and I'll stop because it's not that important, but if you turn on the television, you look at cable and you look at Bravo and look at E and you look at just all the reality stuff and even what History Channel or A&E has become, it's what people want. It's what the 80% of the people want. And instead of being elitist and guffawing, and particularly the technology press will be guffawing at this a lot. In fact, I saw this week in Google, they actually showed some of the Yahoo technology site and were, oh, that's so stupid, so lame, which is like the stupidest thing you can do. That's stupider than being stupid. But okay.
15:36 This is going to be very very successful because it is exactly that low level of common denominator. No, it's what people want. You always drop into this. Yeah, but it's what... This is years ago going on about how great reality shows were. Yes, if you want to make money that way. Now, of course, we are not interested in that so we're not we're not going to do this. And it just proves to me again that we're going to be poor for a very long time. I can't bring myself to do this crap. But they're on the right track. It's one of those things, you're not going to hear a lot of people talk about it because they're deathly afraid. And this is exactly... I don't think that's the reason. They're probably just ignoring it. No, no, no. Okay, fine.