Webinars are Stuck in the Yahoo Era

One of the best parts of the Yext Building was our community theater where we could host events for customers, partners, and anyone else

People RSVP’d, there was a interactive presentation and audience experience. It did require a team of professionals to run the AV and guest registration.

My entire career, I’ve agonized over presentation details. I had breakfast with one of the masters, Jeffrey Katzenberg a few weeks ago. He shared a thought with me: The world’s greatest presenters realized that the aura and environment of the media matter just as much as the content itself.

Walt Disney obsessed about the music in his shows and movies. It wasn’t just about the picture, it was about the sound. All the senses mattered to Iisney: he insisted that the smell of popcorn immediately swarm any visitor to Disney which today remains true.

Jeffrey told me he spent much of his time in Northern California studying the latest technology so he could make video-realistic graphical dinosaurs and other creatures. The medium mattered as much as the content. More, even!

The medium is changing rapidly. Today we live in the era of Mr Beast. Kids are on YouTube, and founders are expected to be the social face of their brands.

We live in this new Creator era, yet, the tools you have at your disposal to host your Webinar were designed for the Yahoo here.

Take a look at this zoom webinar page. It asks you to confirm your email here. It looks like it was designed in 2006.

Even the WORD webinar sounds like it was made in 1998… who actually wants to attend a WEBINAR? Yuck!

Once you get through the clunky registration, you’re in a one-way monolog type environment where a speaker is talking TO you. There’s no interaction or energy. Just a bunch of zombies out there.

Finally, today’s streaming and webinars are complicated and often require professional setup. You need to practically be an IT administrator to safely host a large scale webinar. This defies the point of the internet, which is to democratize things so anyone can do it.

Every single consumer internet service - from YouTube to X with its Live spaces to Instagram Live has stayed current with state-of-the-art live broadcasting media. Why does B2B need to be remain stuck in the Yahoo era?

The most ironic fact of this at all is that the large consumer platforms are free, yet the Webinar platforms charge thousands, so they could certain afford to modernize them:

B2B Webinars better move fast to upgrade from the Yahoo-Era to the Creator Era, because we’re quickly exiting and entering the Agentic-Era.