• San Francisco Chronicle , Monday, January 11, 2010 2:27 PM

Along with a costly and widely panned rebranding campaign, Yahoo is betting its future success on a novel mixture of computer and social sciences. In the last year, Yahoo Labs has reinforced its ranks of social scientists, adding credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world, writes The San Francisco Chronicle.

The recruitment effort reflects a growing realization at Yahoo that computer science alone can't answer all the questions of the modern Web business. But, according to the paper, Yahoo isn't the only company investing more heavily in the social sciences. "As the novelty of the Internet gives way, Yahoo and other 21st century media businesses are discovering they must understand what motivates humans to click and stick on certain features, ads and applications -- and dismiss others out of hand."

Read the whole story at San Francisco Chronicle »