So, Bear Stearns, the investment banking and hedge goliath who can’t seem to get sub-prime mortgages right – whose two hedge funds declared bankruptcy in the midst of some of the steepest drops in the stock market memory — is now declaring itself a guru in social marketing. To be fair, Bear Stearns is a large entity, with competing interests and different individuals, but the comparison was too delicious to avoid.

Nevertheless, as Mike Arrington reports and Bear Stearns hath declared: “Yahoo Must Get Its Social Networking Shit Together.”

What follows is an argument that Yahoo should “get into” the social networking scene by buying Facebook, which follows with some interesting math valuing Facebook at around 5-6 billion sollars.

Now, the glib response (and being no stranger to glib responses, I will give one … now) would be that Yahoo already has Flickr, MyBlogLog, Yahoo 360, Del.icio.us, and 32 other social networking, or socially-related networking technologies (well, perhaps less than 32). They should just get their shit together and knit what they already have into a social networking strategy. Even better: Just remake Yahoo into one giant social networking site.

The problem is — and what makes this a glib response — that it doesn’t recognize a couple things.

First of all, at a place like Yahoo there is probably an enormous amount of corporate inertia to do risky things. Taking what seems like disparate entities with their own departments, and getting them to “come together” under a single umbrella would probably take more guts than any one person — such as their CEO, Jerry Yang, has. Yes, I’m sorry to flog the “Jerry Yang is teh suck” message, but I still can’t believe any one is excited about a vision that is predicated on such vagaries as “speed, clarity and discipline“. That’s like saying my vision is predicated upon being “awesome”, or being “excellent”. But I digress.

Getting Yahoo to actually create a coherent social networking strategy is needed, sure. But actually getting it done is an entirely different matter.

Secondly, it doesn’t recognize a fundamental difference between people who use Facebook and people who use Yahoo — and I’m not talking about demographics (necessarily). Rather, people who use Facebook *know* about social networking, or are curious enough about it to want to know about it. Facebook *IS* a social networking site, and to remind ourselves of one thing — social networking is more than just “members”, which Yahoo already has a lot of already. Social networking is members having a sense of ownership of their identity on a particular service, as well as actively reading, commenting on, updating, and above all interacting with other members.

The folks who use Yahoo right now are from a greater and more diverse cross section of web users, some of whom don’t necessarily “get” social networking, particularly as I have described it above, and others who don’t even want that from Yahoo. I’m talking about people who are using it exclusively for things like news, email, or even classifieds.

Even if you retool everything so that it becomes like Facebook, the problem is that you would need to make it more than okay and acceptable to the Yahoo faithful (if such a word could be applied to them). They would need to embrace it and *love* it, and to affect that kind change in attitude quickly is more than difficult. Its impossible.

So, let’s get back to the Bear Stearns remark, because it actually may have some merit when taken from a user-point of view. Yes, there is money in the Facebook brand and all its tools. But by purchasing Facebook “in toto”, it would also be purchasing its 30 million plus users, who could be cross-pollinated amongst its other social networking properties. By buying Facebook’s users, not only would it give Yahoo instant credibility, it would also be buying *users* would are used to and amenable to, social networking activities.  It would make it *easier* for them to implement an integrated social networking strategy because they would have bought an install base upon which to base it on, and build upon.

Now, the fact that it hasn’t *yet* done so, even after purchases of entities like Geocities (way, way, way back, pre bubble 1.0) all the way up to MyBlogLog makes me less inclined that its able to an integrated anything.  Which leads me back to my original position.

Should Yahoo buy Facebook?  I think it would be a great fit for Yahoo — and it would be even greater yet, if it had the will to do something with it and its other social media properties, and create something out of Yahoo! that is greater than any of its socially-related parts.  In an age where Google seems to be spreading its tentacles farther, wider, and deeper (and more offline) than ever before, Yahoo! needs to live up to its online legacy so that it represents something more than a mishmash of seemingly unrelated web (never mind “social”) properies.

Hot off the heels of Jerry Yang’s announcement as CEO, it seems like Yahoo! has dominated the tech blog cycles as of late.  (If two large stories could be considered “domination”, that is)  A rumoured 25% swap to acquire MySpace?  And now, a confirmed deal to purchase Rivals.com for a rumoured $100 million dollars.

I’m not going to debate the price paid out for Rivals.com — after all, unlike its other ‘new media’ properties and acquisitions, Rivals has already been profitable for the past year or so, generating (using my fancy back of the napkin math) about $18M in subscription revenue per year.

That’s pretty good.

But before I give Yahoo! a double-handed pat on the back (rarely done and hard to execute, I should add), one does wonder where this seemingly smart content acquisition will fit into the overall Yahoo plan.

You know — the Peanut Butter one.

As a bit of a refresher, in November of 2006, an internal memo was widely circulated throughout the technosphere about what Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo! Senior VP thought about the current state of affairs.  Some thought it was refreshingly candid (yours truly included), as he introduced an analogy that will probably stick with him for years — calling Yahoo!’s strategy something like peanut butter, because it was being stretched far too thin amongst a variety of disparate properties. 

Hence, the “Peanut Butter” Manifesto.

Well, amongst the widely publicized acquisitions in recent months, we have Flickr, Del.icio.us, and MyBloglogs … all social media / network plays to a greater or lesser degree.  All still floating, more or less, on their own, with a superficial integration within Yahoo! proper (although Flickr is making slow strides with a unified login system amongst other things).

Now we have Rivals.com, which isn’t a social network *per se* as its really a content platform for college sports.  Sure, its a smart move as it dove tails nicely within Yahoo!’s own sports network — but as I asked a few paragraphs ago:

Where’s the peanut butter?

How does it fit within Yahoo!’s grand strategy and vision for the future?  Or is it merely a revenue generating cog within the lumbering and discombobulated hulk that Yahoo! has become?  Or is it even a sign that Yahoo! is moving towards a more content focused, subscription oriented model?

And where do the rumours of the MySpace acquisition (for $12billion dollars), complete with a parternship with Rupert Murdoch, come into play? 

Well, lots of speculation, but I simply have no idea at this point.  But from the looks of it, one does wonder if Yahoo! has plans to morph into a social network content new media play with a freemium model thrown in for good measure.

Hell.  If Jerry Yang is in the house I’d love to know what he thinks about this.

Wait — I think he said something about striving for excellence or monetizing an audience or something … ? ;)

While I am not a Yahoo! watcher by any means, the change in the guard at Yahoo! is clearly something that’s reverberating throughout the technosphere, so heck — I’ll give my unqualified $0.02 as well. You know, Terry Semel may or may not have been bad for Yahoo. Sue Decker may or may not have been a bit of a failure as it applies to Panama’s launch.

But what I do know is that Jerry Yang, the new CEO of Yahoo!, is clearly the Master of Vacuously Bland Corporate Marketingspeak.

Take this paragraph, for example, on his new vision:

What is that vision? A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline. A Yahoo! that increases its focus on differentiating its products and investing in creativity and innovation. A Yahoo! that better monetizes its audience. A Yahoo! whose great talent is galvanized to address its challenges. And a Yahoo! that is better focused on what’s important to its users, customers, and employees.

This has got to be the most vague, useless, and idiotic vision sentiment that I have ever had read. Its full of unspecific and uninspiring platitudes, the exact *opposite* of the what Yahoo! needs in its fight to get out of being a perennial second place finisher to Google.

I mean, its nice to think that Mr. Yang wants Yahoo to be fast, clear, disciplined, differentiated, focused and galvanized. But so what? Aren’t most companies wanting to be fast, clear, disciplined, differentiated, focused, and galvanized?

And if they weren’t *already* that way, what were they before?

Slow, vague, lazy, unfocused, and lethargic?

Come on.

Some people have said that Mr. Yang is no Steve Jobs. That’s not a fair comparison, because I think there is no one who comes even *close* to what Steve Jobs has done for Apple.

Rather, I think what everyone is actually craving for is someone who has the singular vision and will to pull Yahoo! into something that is bigger than the sum of its parts — to create something that is worthy of the its legacy as one of the first real pioneers of the Internet.

Of course, being fast, focused, galvanized and — well, all that other stuff — is important, that’s all tactical. Vision statements (or sentiments) are bigger than that. To put it into the parlance of Getting Things Done — its 50,000 feet level stuff. Its stuff that’s meant to put fire in your belly, inspire everyone to bigger and better things, and define your very reason for being.

Heck, one quick and dirty way of creating Yahoo!’s vision statment — just be the opposite of Google.

How about a web entity that is utterly devoted to being enabling the best of every human interaction on the Internet? This could encompass every aspect of its media aspirations, but could also provide a way to chart its way to social networks and web2.0 applications, from everything to Flickr to MyBlogLog, to, one day, perhaps, Facebook.

Keeping a focus on making sure that every day operations are done properly important — but at this point, Yahoo! is in dire need of someone with the guts to have a singular vision to pull all of its desperate components together into something that is bigger than any one of them apart. Someone who is at the same time both inspiring, but ruthless enough to have the cajones to make changes that are necessary.

Is Jerry Yang that kind of guy?

While I’d like to think that he is, its precisely his kind of blog post which make me think otherwise. But hey — the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

For now.

[While I consider shorting Yahoo ... ;) ]