Comparing the positions of Jerry Yang (today) versus Steve Jobs (a decade ago) is poignant. Then… Jobs took control (again) of a rotting Apple. Now… it’s an iWorld and Jerry is back at the reins of a limping Yahoo without the results that Jobs has been able to pull off.

Initially Yang’s supporters cited Job’s 1997 return to Apple as a precedent for Yang’s future success. Not so much now – as Yahoo! still appears rudderless, ad dollars fail to match the market and none of the many acquisitions pay out.

Jerry Yang is not the solution for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is now too vast with too much potential advertising revenue to collapse. Who has both the guts and credentials to pull it out of its death match with Google? Who has the vision to transform its user experience into a compelling commerce/content experience unlike anything else online. Who can get “A” talent with a phone call?

Steve Jobs. He built iTunes to sell iPods. He built the iPhone to re-define the browsing experience. He’ll need to control content (not just rely on publishers) to take this entire iVision to the next level. Starting from scratch or in a deal with Disney, is possible. Rebuilding Yahoo! may be much quicker, especially given Jobs’ ability to cut through debris and command the attention of new talent.

Some analyst can run the numbers, but this is the love match for 2008.

It is that time of year that is most politically correctly and succinctly called THE HOLIDAYS. Lists of the past year’s best/worst and predictions of the future abound.

The lists and predictions are unavoidable and the politically correct thing has gotten tiresome along with the current fashion for an ironic, emotionally detached attitude. If you aren’t emotionally connected to the world, why are you writing about it? More pointedly, why should anyone read your writing?

The only alternative seems to be the self-obsession of the Twitter set. Twitter is fine for adolescents or junkies, but otherwise just pathetic.

Sad, really that with so much writing going on, myself included – that so little of it really delivers a thoughtful analysis of the times we live in. But then, the same could be true of newspapers in their heyday (when NYC had 13). Quantity and Quality seldom go together.

Perhaps that is something important for us all to aspire to as we continue to write in the year ahead.

From this vantage point it looks like 2008 is going to be a tough one. It is a US election year: critical, stressful and tiring. At best the economy isn’t where we’d like it, at worst it is a disaster edging precariously close to Depression. We are at war. Seriously disturbed individuals are shooting people in malls, churches and of course schools. And still there is no answer for the mess that is Yahoo!

Buckle your seat belts, it’s 2008.

Wait, hold on, we have a couple of weeks. Let’s take time to reflect on 2007. Take time to acknowledge the people who helped us get through this year. They will be the ones who help us find a path to get through the tumult of the year ahead.

To everyone who works with me: it is an honor and privilege to share your lives. Your energy drives me and your work should be seen by everyone: www.sharpe-partners.com/portfolio

To our Clients: thank you for trusting us with your business, letting us be partners and allowing us to enjoy your success.

Much thanks to everyone who listened to, contributed to, or debunked ideas. You made them better or helped make sure they died quiet deaths.

To everyone who brought new ideas and attitudes to “the table”. Your courage will be needed everyday of the year to come. Keep it up.

The list could go on, but it won’t. Enough has been said. Thanks to all and Happy New Year.

So I went to mahalo.com with every expectation of being disappointed and then inspired to write something snarky. Wrong again.

If you haven’t heard about Mahalo the “first human powered search engine,” founded by Jason Calacanis you’ve been paying too much attention to the Facebook belly flop and not enough to new stuff happening. It’s definitely the new stuff happening.

Search engines (pace Google) haven’t been really working for me for a while. They deliver too much stuff with too much variation in quality. I’d just resigned myself to sifting through the pages or inversely, seeing the same less than really relevant links every time.

Mahalo is changing that. I did my favorite test, a search on the word whippet – as in dog. Not only did Mahalo deliver up the goods, they gave me links on health and wellness I’d never seen before. These links would have been really useful to me 2 weeks ago, when one of our whippets was fighting pneumonia. (He’s fine now, thanks)

So I got the Mahalo value proposition within the first 2 minutes. It delivers better quality results- because humans read, judge and reflect and algorithms calculate. The difference is incalculable.

This weekend it was announced that talks had broken down between the Screen Writers Guild and the major media companies that buy their product. At issue is the writers’ stake/take of profits the media companies get from distributing the programs/movies online.

From the outside this feels like a fair and, more importantly, negotiable request. Take whatever the producers are making now, posit a growth rate and discount for the cost the producers absorb for distribution – maintaining sites, tools for download et. al. Take into consideration that online distribution is in its infancy. Shake hands and get back to work.

An over-simplified, but not an implausible framework for which reasonable individuals frame a negotiation or talk – perhaps for weeks, but nevertheless talk.

Why the total silence? The strike has lasted well past the point that this is good for either side. 24 is canceled indefinitely, Heros is in hiatus and countless greenlit film productions stalled. Now the grandstanding value is in the negative numbers.

There’s the theory that the producers are unwilling to give up anything. Old school, extraordinarily unrealistic and such a suicidal position it rates a HIGHLY UNLIKELY.

Or they could be arguing over the “potential growth rate.” Makes sense but then they would be arguing.

How about the producers won’t disclose their current revenue, let alone future forecasts? No opening number, means no place to start the talks. Plausible, but why?

A) They don’t exactly know – new and flimsy monetization models befuddle their accounting systems
B) The number has been over stated. The boasts that at least ad agencies such as Starcom (find link) have made that the “TV networks” are making up TV ad losses online are just words.
C) They don’t want the world to know that at this experimental stage they are really just experimenting – spending their money; they don’t want the writers to learn what works online.
D) All of the above

I’m taking D. Now let the talks begin.

Everyone has a theory. Here is mine.

The events of the last several weeks are symptomatic of something fundamentally problematic at Facebook.

Mr. Zuckerberg just isn’t that smart. He didn’t come up with the idea of Facebook and writing this code wasn’t that hard. He did see a market for it. But that puts him in the company of many, many brand managers and advertising executives not Brin and Page.

It’s pretty clear he doesn’t know what to do. Nor does he know how to hire people that do.

It is very possible he has learned his lesson and will seek appropriate help. It is also equally possible that blinded by all those dollars and too many yes-men, he won’t.

I’m putting the odds at even. The money will buy him the time to make lots of mistakes and learn from them. It will not make him an inventor, a visionary or a real leader – he’s going to have to hire those. Sure to be tougher on the ego than on the bank account; and we all know which of those is more vulnerable.

Right now as online ad sales rise to new heights and social networking and video sites see double digit monthly visitor growth, the pre-eminence of the Web site as social/commerce/advertising hub appears unassailable. Would-be web entrepreneurs amass eyeballs that can be transformed into impressions and the Holy Grail of advertising dollars.

The metaphor is simple- web sites as destinations with the visitors traveling around, picking favorites but always seeking outward and onward. After all, that is why the software that facilitates this activity is called a BROWSER.

There is however another force at play on the Internet. Diametrically opposite to browsing and all the monetization models it supports. Powered by widgets, RSS feeds and aggregator sites such as digg.com and del.icio.us, they eradicate the need to browse by providing a stream of information to the desktop or in the browser tool bar.

Users configure them as filters to manage the seemingly infinite information the web offers.

Meaning? The value of this whole browsing thing may be overstated. People are busy, people know what they want and, just like in the real world, the fun of searching for it can get a little old. Why not just stay at home and let it come to you?

The geniuses at Google recognize this. Just as they are building out Web Apps, they are creating more Gadgets and increasingly robust tool bars. They have publicly stated that they see both of these tendencies, browsing and staying at home, as peacefully co-existing.

I agree, but with a caveat. People will gradually shift to spending a larger portion of time “at home” supported by better tools and content overload. Exploration will decrease, impacting advertisers, marketers and publishers; requiring new monetization models. It will, when the furor over Facebook dies down, require attention.

From AOL to the smallest blog, the need will arise to deal with a web with diminishing returns of visitors and to develop a model to monetize the desktop.