Yahoo 2005 Annual Report Download - page 4

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While we believe outstanding technology will
continue to be the backbone of a high-quality
search experience, we are also seeking ways to
make search even more valuable through new
services with a distinctly personal element.
Products such as My Web 2.0 (our new social
search engine) and the beta of Yahoo! Answers
(a question-and-answer service) personalize
search by allowing our users to tap into their
communities of family, friends, and other relevant
groups for search results, answers to questions,
recommendations, reviews, and ratings. Our
acquisitions of Flickr and del.icio.us build on this
vision, bringing us leading technologies for
organizing and sharing content and connecting
individuals with the people and communities
they value most.
Communications Yahoo! Mail hit a significant
milestone in 2005, becoming the largest global
web-based email provider according to several
leading third party sources. Mail users have
responded enthusiastically to our new mail
beta, which features a completely redesigned,
intuitive user interface combined with the
speed and responsiveness of a desktop
application. Yahoo! Messenger (IM) with Voice
has expanded its Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP) capabilities, now providing our VoIP
customers with high-quality voice calling
including PC-to-PC, PC-to-Phone and
Phone-to-PC, to complete calls to anywhere
in the world.
Connected Life In our increasingly connected
world, users want seamless integration of their
Internet experiences, with access to their
personalized content and their favorite Yahoo!
services, on any device and in any location.
Our recently announced Yahoo! Go services
enable a fully integrated and personalized
experience on mobile devices, PC-enabled
televisions and the PC desktop, making it easy
for users to access multiple Yahoo! services
including IM, Mail, Search, Photos, Address Book,
and content including news, sports, finance
and games. Yahoo! now has relationships with
more than 50 wireless operators and device
manufacturers in 26 countries including major
new relationships with Cingular, Motorola and
Nokia in 2005.
Content We are continually expanding our vast
array of licensed, original, and user-generated
content and pioneering new ways to make the
information we provide more useful and relevant.
Last year, we launched our much-anticipated
Yahoo! Music Unlimited service. Our expanded
music service now offers fans the music they want,
in multiple formats—personalized radio,
subscriptions, and downloads—complemented with
an extensive library of videos, news and
biographical information on their favorite recording
artists. Yahoo! Music is just one example of how
we’re leveraging our core assets to empower users
to share, discover and personalize their
experiences in a truly unique way.
We’ve also done more to personalize our
industry leading news, sports, and finance sites,
supplementing content from hundreds of
respected sources with thousands of available
RSS Feeds, and enhancing the content we
collect with perspectives from our own
columnists. We’ve added engaging original
content as well, including the topical and
profound Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone within
Yahoo! News. All of us at Yahoo! are very proud
of Kevin, who recently received the Daniel Pearl
Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism.
User Engagement
Our many new product introductions and
enhancements brought millions of new users to
Yahoo! in 2005. Importantly, our users are
consuming more services and spending more
time on Yahoo!, demonstrating the utility and the
relevance of our offerings.
Our number of unique users at the end of 2005
was approximately 21% higher than the previous
year, on a comparable basis. Including the
estimated audience of our strategic partners
Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba in China, the global
reach of the Yahoo! brand approached an
amazing half a billion users on a monthly basis at
the end of 2005.
In addition to growing overall users, we also
increased the average number of properties
visited by each user by almost 25%. This growth
clearly quantifies our accomplishments: we’re
creating relevant products and services that