Yahoo Planning to create "Brand Universe"

"SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 30 — Yahoo said Tuesday that it planned to build individual Web sites around 100 entertainment “brands” this year that would pull together content from Yahoo’s sprawling array of online properties. The effort, called Brand Universe, is intended to create online destinations that will draw large audiences around individual movies, television shows, bands, celebrities, games and other types of entertainment."

This is an interesting move for yahoo, they currently hold one of the largest interenet audiences and have recently revamped their staff and this initiative("Brand Universe") is currently on the agenda. Building websites for other companies(i.e. brands) will potentially give their existing websites a boost in media technology, and increase the overall audiences of both yahoo and the brand it is promoting. Yahoo plans on paying for this project through advertising and both Yahoo and partner companies will see large profits if this is a sucess; because this is a massive project with almost 100 willing participants. However this entire project is completely unlicensed. Yahoo will essentially pick the brands they like most and make the brand a new website. The chairman of the "Brand Universe" acknowledges the fact that there could be potential tensions with brands who want to make their own new websites. Nevertheless, he will not ask for any permission to create the websites, he will simply stop an operation if a brand owner does not want his services.

"Mr. Broady acknowledged that there could be tensions with some content owners who were trying to create online destinations of their own. The company said it did not plan to ask permission from the owners before creating the sites, but would not proceed if the owners objected. "

I believe this "Brand Universe" is a little out of the ordinary and is worth noting because very few industries(maybe none besides internet technology) would you find one corporation doing business with another corportation in which the task involves using the latter corporation's branding. This is truly a licensing anomaly and it will be very interesting to keep track of Yahoo's progessions or digressions on its "Brand Universe" project.
by Giovanni Silva