[yali network asks] [suzanne philion, seniormanager, pr & policycommunications at yahoo! [yahoo's policy of"technology first"] ["role of technology inadvancing citizen engagement"panel] [at the washingtonfellowship for young africanleaders]
How To Create Yahoo! Mail, [macon phillips:] thefirst is for suzanne, whois the senior manager for communications at yahoo. studies indicate that africa'sinternet penetration is approximately 15 percent. how does that impact or was it adriving force behind yahoo's focus on technology first? [suzanne philion,senior manager, pr & policycommunications at yahoo!]
we know that the majorityor a growing majority of people around the world areconnecting with content through their mobile device,whether that's a phone,a tablet, et cetera. and when you look at our numbersfrom the yahoo platform perspective, we have a total of 800 millionusers globally. and so we just announcedrecently that more thanhalf of those people – so 450 million people – arejoining usthrough mobile devices. so clearly we're seeing that, asare other companies up here onthe stage and all around the world, ifyou're missing that trend,
you shouldn't even be speakingin the technology space, right? and i think in africa the latestfigure thati was putting my fingers on was over 700 million mobiledevices on the continent. that's incredible. and so ithink you can also lookat those 700 million mobile devices, and the humans who are holdingthem, right, and whoare attached to them, as a business opportunity, and as a means to start thatconversation and further thatconversation with corporations. so there's a way to get at thatcitizen-engagement piece: furthering communities,furthering democracy,empowering you guys. but by drawing in, perhaps, theinvestment that's needed,
when you think about it is abusiness opportunity. and we look at this as a globaltrend, right?it's very important in africa. it's very important all over theworld. and as we're a global company,we're trying to follow where and how people are connecting, building products and servicesthat match what those people'sdaily habits are, which is how we think of it. the majority of people are goingto their devicesto do a couple of dozen things, is what we see and how my ceotalks about it. so it's e-mail, it's checking out sports scores,it's checking the weather, it's checking the stocks, it'ssharing photoswith your friends and family.
so making sure that we arebuilding the products thatactually respond to what people are doingevery day. and i think that is absolutelyshaping,number one, who we're hiring. you’re going to see —we’ve already triedto create an amazing mobile engineeringteam specifically, and building up that talent, andthen in terms of how we think about businessopportunities around the world. [mp:] thank you.
