Yahoo News

History

The site was created by Yahoo software engineer Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox News, Al Jazeera, ABC News, USA Today, CNN and BBC News.

In 2000, Yahoo News launched pages tracking the content on the site that was most viewed and most shared by email. The "most emailed" page in particular was noted as an innovation in online news aggregation. Yahoo News allows users to comment on articles. Between late 2006 and early 2010, comments were disabled in part due to moderation challenges.

By 2011, Yahoo had expanded its focus to include original content, as part of its plans to become a major media organization. Veteran journalists (including Walter Shapiro and Virginia Heffernan) were hired, while the website had a correspondent in the White House press corps for the first time in February 2012. An Amazon-owned marketing data collection company (Alexa Internet) claimed Yahoo News one of the world's top news sites, at this point. Plans were made to add a Twitter feed. In November 2013, Yahoo hired former Today Show and CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric as Global Anchor of Yahoo News. She left in 2017.

On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced that Verizon Media would be acquired by Apollo Global Management for roughly $5 billion, and would simply be known as Yahoo following the closure of the deal, with Verizon retaining a minor 10% stake in the new group. The deal was closed on September 1, 2021.

As part of an effort to increase reader trust, in September 2022, Yahoo News (which aggregates articles from many other sources) acquired The Factual, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to rate the credibility of individual articles. In April 2024, Yahoo acquired the recently defunct news app Artifact, integrating its technology into an upgraded version of Yahoo News.

Yahoo Celebrity

Yahoo Celebrity (as omg!) debuted on June 12, 2007, with little fanfare, with the original press release being published on Yahoo's corporate blog. Upon launch, MediaWeek reported that Yahoo was hoping to skew more toward a female demographic with omg!, and that Unilever, Pepsi, and Axiata (Celcom & XL) would be the sole official sponsors of the website. Due to heavy publicity on Yahoo's front page and with its partnerships, readership took off, with four million readers logging on to omg! in the first 19 days alone. By autumn 2007, omg! registered over eight million readers a month, and became the second most-read gossip website in the United States, ahead of People and behind TMZ.com.

In December 2012, Yahoo reached a deal with CBS Television Distribution to cross-promote its Entertainment Tonight spin-off The Insider with omg!, re-branding the show as omg! Insider. In January 2014, it was announced that CBS Television Distribution was to revert the name change back to The Insider while omg! would become Yahoo Celebrity.

Mobile application

Yahoo developed an application that collects the most-read news stories from different categories for iOS and Android. The app was one of the winners of 2014 Apple Design Awards.

Ranking

As of January 2019, Yahoo News ranked sixth among global news sites, ahead of Fox News and behind CNN, according to Alexa.

References

References

1. (July 13, 2008). "Yahoo! Inc. - Company Timeline". [[Wayback Machine]].
2. LiCalzi O'Connell, Pamela. (January 29, 2001). "New Economy; Yahoo Charts the Spread of the News by E-Mail, and What It Finds Out Is Itself Becoming News.". New York Times.
3. Tartakoff, Joseph. (March 3, 2010). "Yahoo News Brings News Commenting Back". PaidContent.
4. Stableford, Dylan. (February 1, 2012). "Yahoo News hires Olivier Knox as its first White House correspondent". Yahoo! News.
5. Byers, Dylan. (February 2, 2012). "Yahoo steals NY Times' Virginia Heffernan". [[Politico]].
6. "Top Sites by Category: News". Alexa.
7. Rapaport, Lisa. (May 16, 2013). "Yahoo CEO Mayer Says Streaming News Will Display Tweets". Bloomberg.
8. Gold, Hadas. (November 25, 2013). "Yahoo News makes Couric move official". Politico.
9. [https://www.recode.net/2017/7/28/16059528/katie-couric-ends-yahoo-interview-show-depart-oath-marissa-mayer Katie Couric is ending her Yahoo interview show and departing Oath] {{webarchive. link. (August 11, 2017 ; ''[[Recode]]''; Kara Swisher; July 28, 2017.)
10. Lee, Edmund; Hirsch, Lauren (May 2, 2021). "[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/business/verizon-yahoo-aol-sale.html Verizon Near Deal to Sell Yahoo and AOL]". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331
11. [https://www.axios.com/2022/09/06/yahoo-factual-credibility-ratings Exclusive: Yahoo buys The Factual to add news credibility ratings]
12. Ashworth, Boone. "Artifact's DNA Lives on in Yahoo's Revamped AI-Powered News App".
13. Goldman, Sibyl. (June 11, 2007). "Yahoo! has a new celebrity site? omg!". Yahoo!.
14. Hansell, Saul. (September 11, 2007). "OMG! Yahoo Has Copycat Gossip". The New York Times.
15. Andreeva, Nellie. (October 23, 2012). "'The Insider' Signs Deal With Yahoo's Omg!, WIll Be Renamed 'Omg! Insider'". [[Deadline Hollywood]].
16. (January 3, 2014). "Yahoo Will Drop 'omg!' Brand from Celebrity News Site".
17. Rose, Mike. (June 3, 2014). "Threes, Monument Valley and more pick up Apple Design Awards". [[Gamasutra]].
18. "News". [[Alexa Internet.