Yahoo is trying to drum up support for its revamped MyYahoo customizable homepage any way it can - a new marketing campaign complete with television and Internet video ads, new branding, a new logo - and now CEO Marissa Mayer is even pitching in.
Across Twitter on Thursday dozens of people pledged they would switch their homepage to MyYahoo if Mayer retweeted them.
In an effort to get more users - and in surprise to those who offered the deal - Mayer actually began retweeting the individuals. As of mid-day ET, Mayer had retweeted 10 different accounts that promised to make the switch in return for a RT.
Here's an example of a tweet was retweeted by Mayer:
If @marissamayer retweets this, I'll make Yahoo my homepage.
— Dominique Soenens (@Dsoenens) September 19, 2013
Then another user had a quick piece of advice for the Yahoo CEO:
@Dsoenens @marissamayer this doesn't scale M. Are you going to do this if 1 million people ask? :-)
— Ray Scott (@rayascott) September 19, 2013
The new MyYahoo page features a slight redesign, along with the ability for users to customize their home screen to show a variety of options, from news and sports scores, to mail, weather and stocks. It even has a nifty tab that automatically imports a users Google homepage settings into Yahoo.
Well, that's one way to get people to use your service.
Senior Writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing for Network World and NetworkWorld.com. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.