There Will Finally Be a "Yahoo For Men"
For decades now, the internet has been dominated by the interests of women. You can't load a tab or click a hyperlink without running into diagrams of vaginas, perfume ads, estrogen videos, and whatnot. What's a man to do? This former Yahoo! exec is going to fill the void.
James Heckman is the CEO of Scout.com, a website by and for males (not actually affiliated with Yahoo!). If someone asked you to come up with the worst possible idea for an editorial website using only three words, you'd do well with "Yahoo for men." But Heckman is actually building that, in earnest. Here's how he rationalizes his life decisions in a new AdWeek profile:
I don't feel it's an overreach to say we're building the Yahoo for men. When I was at Yahoo, I discovered that the big-scale male demographic sites, for the most part, were not befitting of major premium brands because men tend to gravitate to the lowest common denominator when it comes to concepts. So, looking at the media and content for women, there's lots of high-quality premium safe content for brands to associate with. But for men, there's a only handful at scale. That's where we want to play.
There's lots of high-quality premium safe content for brands to associate with.
There's lots of high-quality premium safe content for brands to associate with.
There's lots of high-quality premium safe content for brands to associate with.
If you're sick of all the frilly lady content on Yahoo!, rambling about pregnancy and breasts, Scout could be your new home.
Heckman of course looks like that, and says Scout should focus on important, underrepresented content spaces/brand playgrounds like hunting and fishing. To cement his status as Grand Editorial Moron, Heckman offered AdWeek this insight:
We have a hyper-focus on college football, college basketball, NFL, hunting— nobody will do hunting—we're doing hunting, fishing, military, Nascar, golf. Think about it. The NFL doesn't even exist in Los Angeles. College sports don't exist in New York.
It is so, so easy to succeed if you look like James Heckman.