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Will Yahoo! ramp up online video efforts?

May 28, 2009 — 11:45am ET | By Pete Wylie

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Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz's appearance at the All Things Digital Conference in San Francisco yesterday has raised new questions about Yahoo!'s online video strategy. Bartz said the company is very interested in social and video technology, though Satish Menon, VP of consumer platforms who oversees Yahoo!'s video division, is reportedly leaving the company, and 20 to 25 employees got laid off from the video division earlier this month.

Bartz said the online video space is an exciting opportunity, given online video advertising is projected to quadruple by 2011. Will Yahoo! make another big online video acquisition, like it did when it bought Maven Networks for $160 million in 2008?

Yahoo! has done nothing of note with that acquisition. The company will have to alter its video strategy dramatically to continue to compete with the likes of YouTube and Hulu, sites it continues to lose market share to in online video. Yahoo! announced a revamped online video strategy in March, shortly after Bartz took the helm, but the company hasn't made any other announcements about its plans in online video recently.

For more:
- see the NewTeeVee report on Menon's departure here
- see an argument for Yahoo! taking on video again at SeekingAlpha here
- see this MediaPost article here