Originally posted on the WIT blog. By Kelli Lane.

An elite group of young ladies from the YMCA came to visit Y! WIT here in Burbank. Many of the girls were Seniors in High School who are working out their futures with careful planning. The Y! WIT team, led by Yolanda Person-Collins, spent time with the ladies in a true mentor fashion; conveying the reality of the hardships of life alongside the excitement for their future. Many women from Yahoo! spoke, some with hard-knock lives and others successful with no degree to speak of, showing the girls that each person has their own path. The WIT team reinforced the unique path idea by assisting them with personality tests. The Meyer’s Briggs test showed them in which areas they may be best suited for a career. All in all, the girls responded well to the ideas. Three Seniors in High School cited Christine Del Muro as an inspiration to follow their dreams. Many girls that age admit to feeling lost. We hope the little time we had with them could promote confidence to reach out to older women and seek wisdom and advice.


The Girls

Rather than read from us how it went from our end, we asked Lexy Folkes, an aspiring writer from the program to tell us about her experience.

"It was the day after I graduated high school and my YMCA Adviser asked me to go to Yahoo! Women’s Career Day. Get up at 7 and drive a car full of girls? No thanks. I was finally bribed and persuaded but it was well past worth it when I stepped through the doors of the Yahoo building and was dazzled by all the high tech lights. Five minutes later and I’m being greeted by a room full of inspirational women. I catch wind that there is free coffee and I almost cried. I return to the room, free latte in hand, and hear testimonials from women who play key roles in the functioning of the Yahoo! business. The tour had a full showing of the Yahoo campus, which is surely modeled like a giant child’s playground. The entire show was met with another deliciously free meal and more words from the Yahoo! representatives. Questions ensued with valuable pieces of advice dealt left and right. It wasn’t until the whole shebang was through that I came to fully appreciate the entire experience. I gravitated towards the woman who was the representative for the field I wish to pursue: writing, journalism and the arts. Her advice was invaluable and I took her challenges seriously. I’ve been presented with an opportunity to use my skills and exhibit my talents for Yahoo! and it is through the willing, collaborative parts of the Yahoo women that presented this chance. The bribing and free coffee was a plus but the knowledge and guidance was far more appreciable."


Girls and WIT

Lexy, it was our pleasure. We look forward to updates about your life in the future. And to all the girls in the program who attended, WIT hopes to hear more about you in the future. We were the ones who were "dazzled" by your brilliant futures!

Sometimes being friendly pays off! Watch what happens when a purple, talking mailbox shows up on a street corner. The Yahoo! Mailbox surprised New Yorkers on a sunny afternoon in Brooklyn and Manhattan and made a bunch of new friends along the way. Thanks to all my NY friends, it was great talking to you and can’t wait to meet the locals in Chicago. Follow me to find out where I’m off to this summer at facebook.com/yahoomail.

From campus trailer to global trailblazer

The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, were Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University when they began building their guide to the web in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long, they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, so they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born. 

Jerry and David soon found that they weren't alone in wanting a single place to find useful websites. Soon hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond their Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100,000 unique visitors.

What's in a name, anyway?

The site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," but received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Jerry and David insist they selected it because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

On May 12th Yahoos rolled into work on two wheels to celebrate Bike to Work Day!  We cheered a parade of road bikes, city bikes, mountain bikes, folding bikes, and even cargo bikes.  Bright colors were a popular fashion choice this morning (neon green, anyone?), with a solid showing of lycra jerseys and bike shorts in Yahoo! purple.

Cyclists heading to our Sunnyvale and Santa Clara offices stopped by Yahoo!’s two Energizer Stations, where Yahoo! Green Team volunteers greeted them, applauded their people-powered commutes, and rewarded them with a hearty breakfast spread.  Yahoos rode anywhere from 3 miles to 53 miles to get to work, and we’re proud of all of them!  Everyone was thrilled with the perfect weather, especially our brave first-time bike commuters.

Yahoo cyclists at our Sunnyvale headquarters enjoy showers with clean towels, saunas, toiletries, hair dryers, and irons to stay looking crisp after a ride into work.   Bikes are safely stored in bike lockers or open air racks, and we get monthly “house-calls” from a mobile Bike Doctor.  Yahoos also love to ride during lunch on local roads or on the nearby Bay Trail, and to keep up with the Yahoo Cycling Team’s latest achievements.

Bike to Work Day is a great way to highlight a fun, healthy, and low-impact commute.  And days like this remind us that we are lucky to be headquartered in an area where biking is always a pleasure, and riding with fellow Yahoos can makes the day even better.

With robust coverage including original articles and blogs, photo galleries, videos, and a digital guestbook enabling well-wishers worldwide to offer their advice to the couple, Yahoo! became the place the world turned to for programming surrounding the Royal Wedding.

Audience figures show that Yahoo!’s overall traffic surpassed expectations and broke records, driving more traffic and video streams to its coverage of the wedding than any previous event. Preliminary internal data shows that Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on Friday. Additionally Yahoo! delivered Royal Wedding content at a record-breaking 50,000 requests per second on Friday, seven times the average daily peak of approximately 7,500, and video traffic was 21 percent higher than the previous record. Interest in the Royal Wedding was so high that Yahoo! broke bandwidth records before Kate Middleton even stepped out of the car at Westminster Abbey.

According to Yahoo!’s internal data, Yahoo!’s Royal Wedding site (royalwedding.yahoo.com), hosted on Yahoo! Shine, the leading site for women’s lifestyle content , generated 65 million unique pageviews on April 29 and April 30, with 6.6 million unique visitors the day of the wedding and 8.6 millions unique visitors the day after. Engagement with the site was high, with users spending a total of 112 million minutes over those two days combined.

Yahoo!’s homepage recorded 32 million clicks to Royal Wedding coverage on April 29, a new one-day record for a single news event, and 52 million clicks from April 29 through May 1, a three-day record for a single news event.

Yahoo! Shine as a whole set traffic records on Thursday, April 28, then broke them again on Friday and Saturday, generating 80 million combined pageviews over the two days, with 8.7 million unique visitors on Friday and 9.4 million unique visitors on Saturday. Users spent a total of 141.7 million minutes on Shine over the two days.

Yahoo!’s total Royal Wedding video audience figures eclipsed the previous record – Michael Jackson’s funeral – by 21 percent especially impressive given that this event happened during non-peak hours.

Most clicked stories:

Yahoo!’s original content on the Royal Wedding performed incredibly well, providing users instant access to everything they wanted to know with Yahoo!’s unique voice and interesting analysis. A team of industry-leading writers and editors wrote and featured fascinating stories that really clicked with users on Yahoo!’s homepage. Pippa Middleton, Kate’s younger sister and maid of honor, quickly became the breakout star of the wedding, and led coverage with the top two most-clicked stories. Yahoo!’s top five Royal Wedding stories included:

    All eyes turn to Kate’s sister (6.7 million clicks)
    Kate’s sister wears surprising white dress (6.1 million clicks)
    Who is the frowning girl in the royal kiss photo? (5.3 million clicks)
    Kate debuts stunning evening dress (5.1 million clicks)
    Kate Middleton’s dress wows spectators (4.6 million clicks)

The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook:
The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook provided users the opportunity to offer their marital advice and best wishes to Prince William and Kate Middleton, then share those wishes with users’ social networks. The guestbook received more than 300,000 comments from users in 194 countries. The most common advice, across all the regions, centered on three themes: be good to each other, communicate openly and never go to bed angry.

Yahoo! searches during the Royal Wedding:

Audiences have been visiting Yahoo! for daily updates since Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement was announced, seeking the most interesting stories or answers to a wide range of questions about all aspects of the Royal Wedding.

On the day of the wedding, amidst all the pomp and circumstance, people turned to Yahoo! for answers to their many questions — including figuring out what “pomp and circumstance” was. Some of the questions people asked on Yahoo! included:

    What does Pippa mean?
    What does Prince William do?
    What is a fascinator?
    What religion is Prince William?
    Did Kate Middleton meet Princess Diana?
    What is a duchess? What is a royal duke?
    Was Diana a commoner?
    Who was invited to the wedding? Who wasn’t invited to the wedding?

The day-of searches on Yahoo! centered mostly around Kate: her shoes, dress, tiara, and the lace on her dress. Interest in Prince Harry and Pippa Middleton also surged on the wedding day. All week leading up to the ceremony, Prince Harry searches on Yahoo! surpassed those of groom Prince William. Aside from the royal wedding party, Yahoo! saw Americans’ interest focus on Sarah Burton, designer of the now-famous wedding gown, the hats worn to the wedding (searches for “royal wedding hats” spiked 4291percent on the day of the wedding), and the ladies sporting the fanciest hats: Princess Beatrice spiked 2333 percent on the day of the wedding and Princess Eugenie spiked 1474 percent.  Hat designer Phillip Treacy spiked as well.

In the days following the wedding, the attention turned from Kate and according to searches on Yahoo!, Pippa Middleton became the star of the show.  Searches on Yahoo! for Pippa were 11 percent higher than for Kate (looking at searches for April 29 and 30th). Searches for “Pippa Middleton” were also significantly higher than “Prince William” and “Prince Harry.” Specifically, people wanted to know about her age, weight and height, and see her dress. Another lady casting a shadow on Princess Kate was Princess Grace — searches for “Princess Grace Wedding Dress” spiked 5680 percent the day of the wedding on Yahoo!, as commentators drew comparisons to Kate’s dress.

As expected, users wanted to see photos. On Yahoo!, searches for “royal wedding pictures” and “royal wedding photos” spiked more than 5263 percent.

Flickr from Yahoo!:

Through The British Monarchy’s official photostream on Flickr from Yahoo!, one of the world’s best places to post and share photos, the royal family has given people across the globe an inside look into the Royal Wedding over the past few months, from wedding invitations, wedding cake designs and the official wedding pictures taken by the happy couple’s photographer. In total, there have been more than 45 million views of the British Monarchy photostream and pictures on Flickr.  The top five photos viewed on The British Monarchy’s official photostream include:

    The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Bride and Groom with attendants) – 1.08 million views
    The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Royal Wedding Group) – 1.07 million views
    The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Bride and Groom) – 810,000 views
    The Royal Wedding Cake – 447,000 views
    The Service (Prince William and Catherine Middleton leaving Westminster Abbey following the ceremony) – 440,000 views

Women In Tech had lunch with three extraordinary Yahoo! leaders: Cheryl Ainoa, Fay Hellal and Yvette Martinez-Rea. Guests enjoyed Portos and some amazing insight.

The speakers answered audience questions such as:

    * “How do you deal with difficult people?”
    * “What are the benefits of having an MBA?”
    * “As a mother, how do you practice work-life balance?”
    * “How do we nurture a woman’s ambition?”

Here’s what our speakers recommended:

    * Know your manager’s, manager’s goals and help your boss to achieve those goal
    * Know your boundaries at home and at work
    * Know your priorities for excellence
    * Manage your guilt, set appropriate expectations
    * Set clear objectives when dealing with difficult people
    * And last, "Redefine difficult." Remember people process information differently

Key Insights on career development:

   1. Create a board of directors for your life compiled of the following types of board members from varied professions: a person two levels higher (mentor level), a peer, and a person two levels lower (mentee)
   2. Think about the expectations placed on your boss
   3. To better understand work politics read the book: It’s All Politics

Dealing with difficult people: There is a difference between a difficult superior and a difficult client or peer.

   1. Peers/clients: Find ways to influence peers towards a common goal-- do not dictate the path.
   2. Bosses: Take a step back and figure out the root issue, then apply that to your next encounter.
   3. Take the Meyers Briggs Test to find out more about personality types: here (the test costs money)

Nurturing Ambition/MBA FAQs

   1. MBA's can be helpful to show the mosaic picture, using other’s experiences in the business world, we can learn a lot.
   2. The more you see the “big picture” the more you will know how you can make an impact.
   3. Give yourself permission to learn.
   4. Learn how to “manage your guilt” as an ambitious person.
   5. Give yourself permission to get less than an “A” on the unimportant parts of life: (Make your time with your kids “A+” time, and time spent on after hour work calls "F")