Internet giant Yahoo has announced details of its plan to launch 100 brand-specific entertainment websites throughout 2007.
Each site will center around a pop culture topic like a TV show (The Office, Lost) a video game (Halo 3, Sims) or a specific entertainment entity. A branded site for the Nintendo Wii already exists. Each branded site will include content from other Yahoo properties – photos from Flickr and Yahoo Photos, shared links from del.icio.us, news items, posts from message boards and threads from Yahoo Answers.
The initiative has been named Brand Universe. According to The New York Times' interview with Vince Broady, Yahoo's head of games, entertainment and youth (nice title, dude), Yahoo will build websites around popular brands whether the brand owner is on board or not. If companies complain, Yahoo will work with them to reach an agreement. Other than that, it doesn't look like there will be any effort made to cross-promote any existing (non-Yahoo) brand websites.
Yahoo has a wide reach when it comes to local content as well. On a movie site, for example, Yahoo could pull in local theater listings and showtimes, maps to various theaters and local newspaper movie reviews. On sites centered around hardware like the TiVo or PS3, Yahoo could offer classified listings posted by people your area who are offering the hardware for sale.
Liz Gannes at GigaOM has some interesting analysis of the company's plan to built out its service using "little-to-no content." Mike Arrington of TechCrunch makes a similar observation.
I agree that the initiative at least shows Yahoo's understanding of where its strength lies: aggregation. By pooling available content within nicely-branded topical sites, it spins new cloth out of surplus thread.
Brand Universe will probably work (by that, I mean "make money"), but memories of Yahoo's days as an original content house are quickly fading.
