Yahoo Is to Widen Its Lifestyle Reach With a Food Site
Yahoo Inc. is expected today to launch a food and cooking Web site, with 5,000 searchable recipes, instructional cooking videos and city-based restaurant dining guides and reviews.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company hopes Yahoo Food's professional and occasionally quirky content -- an original Web series called "Cheap and Easy" will show how to make a meal in five minutes for $5 -- will make it a destination for food lovers, who are an active group online. Rather than build a site from scratch, the company is relying on content from partners like Food & Wine magazine and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., along with features from other Yahoo properties such as Yahoo Local and Yahoo Answers.
The site, food.yahoo.com, is Yahoo's latest attempt to carve out a niche in lifestyle categories by customizing its existing content and services around new themes. The Yahoo Media Group, which is launching the site, opened a similar property for technology enthusiasts, Yahoo Tech, earlier this year.
"There is lots of momentum at Yahoo behind the lifestyles categories," says Scott Moore, head of news and information for the Yahoo Media Group. He said topics like food, beauty and home decor are underrepresented online when compared with areas like news and finance.
At a time when Yahoo faces competition for online advertising dollars, the company is betting its food site will attract advertisers. (Kraft Foods Inc. will be advertising on the site.) Mr. Moore estimates that consumer packaged-goods companies, prime potential advertisers for the site, will spend more than $900 million in online advertising in 2007.
The field already is crowded with competitors such as the Food Network's Web site, which receives more than six million unique monthly visitors, according to Web-tracking service Nielsen/NetRatings, and CondeNet Inc.'s Epicurious.com, whose features like food and wine dictionaries and videos on subjects such as how to frost a cake make it popular among foodies. CondeNet is the Internet arm of Conde Nast Publications.
Yahoo Food plans to compete by pulling together content from across the Web. Instructional video clips, like Martha Stewart demonstrating how to carve a turkey, will appear alongside meal-planning guides as well as professional and user-submitted recipes, ranging from chocolate cavity-maker cupcakes to beef and bean chimichangas.
Separately, the company also plans to relaunch Yahoo Shopping, at shopping.yahoo.com, this week. The redesigned site will feature a new bargain center, allowing customers to search exclusively for items associated with coupons or free shipping deals, as well as new navigation shortcuts and more product reviews.
雅虎将推出食品网站
预计雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)将于周四推出一个食品及烹饪网站，有5,000种可供搜索的食谱、烹饪指导视频以及各城市餐馆饮食指引和评论。
雅虎希望Yahoo Food专业、有时有些奇特的内容将成为美食爱好者的目的地，这类人是网上活跃分子。雅虎原创的一个名为Cheap and Easy的网络系列内容将教人们如何花5美元在5分钟里做好一顿饭。雅虎并未从零开始建立一个新的网站，而是依靠Food & Wine杂志、Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc.等合作伙伴提供的内容以及Yahoo Local和Yahoo Answers等雅虎旗下网站的特色内容。
food.yahoo.com网站是雅虎为开拓生活时尚领域的专业市场而采取的最新举措，主要是通过围绕新的主题使现有内容和服务满足客户的个性化需求。
眼下，雅虎在网上广告收入方面正面临竞争，该公司预计其食品网站将吸引广告商的兴趣。（卡夫食品(Kraft Foods Inc.)将在该网站上做广告）。Yahoo Media Group新闻和信息部门主管Scott Moore预计，该网站主要的潜在广告商──消费包装食品公司2007年将在网上广告方面支出逾9亿美元。
这个领域的竞争已经非常激烈。Yahoo Food打算通过将网络上的各种内容集合在一起来参与竞争。
Jessica E. Vascellaro
