Congratulations Jerry Yang: What's next?

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang may have managed to stop the bleeding at Yahoo.

Yahoo's third-quarter results beat analyst estimates, and Yahoo executives seemed upbeat about the company's future in a conference call Tuesday afternoon.

Shares of Yahoo rose more than 10 percent in after-hours trade after the company reported that revenue rose 12 percent year over year to $1.77 billion, while net profit was slightly lower than a year ago.

So, now what?

First, they need to make more money off of online advertising. They stumbled years ago and let Google run with the ball. And the gap has only been getting bigger. They need to make sure their new advertising platform is at least as good as or better than Google's, and then sign up more advertisers and Web site publishers.

And they need to get back to innovation. There was a time Yahoo was busting out with terrific new products. What happened to that? Yang, himself a technologist, needs to remember that first and foremost Yahoo is a technology company, not a media company.

Yahoo also needs to decide whether it wants to be a media company that does original programming or not. They've been dabbling in original content for years with mixed results. If they are not going to really go for it and do it right, they should scrap it and not be distracted.

Yang said the company has three core objectives it plans to accomplish over the next few years: ... Read more