With the acquisition of online sports site Rivals.com, I think Yahoo! (YHOO) has made a smart move and may be giving us a look at how they plan on going forward.
First, I think the acquisition itself is a good one. At Motley Fool they seem to think that may only be a "trivia stumper" in the next few years, but I think they miss it on this one.
One recent example of Sports Illustrated purchasing FanNation was also thought to be bought for no other reason than to get the technology that came with it. Yet a month after the site was relaunched, it already is receiving 4 million unique visitors monthly.
If Yahoo can take Rivals.com and push it out similar to Sports Illustrated, it could become a nice long term performer for them.
Now I think the reason people think this is not much to talk about is they are thinking in terms of some type of huge deal that Yahoo will make similar to Microsoft (MSFT) buying aQuantative, or something similar like that.
While no one can be sure, the buying of Rival.com may be the company saying they're going to buy companies at this level that have good potential to build out over a long period of time.
I know that Yahoo is under pressure from shareholders and analysts to make some big deal, but they really do have to be careful in taking these types of steps. If they do make some big deal, it does have to be a good fit, not just something to temporarily satisfy those that want to see a big action of some type to ease their fears or satisfy their thirst for action.
Yahoo isn't in as bad of shape as a lot of people are being told. They are still very strong in display advertising and the leader in local advertising. They need to get their purpose and message straight, and than plow ahead based upon that purpose and message.
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