Speaking at a Yahoo! conference today at the Tate Modern in London, 18 months after she joined the internet giant, Bartz said Yahoo! should not be ruled out as an innovative company.
Growth areas for Yahoo! will include location-based services, which already exists in social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Bartz did not however refute rumours that Yahoo! is looking at acquiring Foursquare, saying local services were of importance to Yahoo! and it was always interested in new acquisitions.
She said: "There are things we could invest or stumble on," before provocatively adding "you could say Facebook was stumbled on if you look at the lawsuit".
Last year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was sued by fellow Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who claimed that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook while working for their social networking site ConnectU. The case was settled out of court.
Outlining the vision for Yahoo! for the next year, Bartz said the internet giant will focus on tailoring its homepage to suit individual consumer behaviour, as well as embedding real-time information on its site.
Bartz said: "Our vision is to be the internet of one. We should be able to tailor what users like by viewing what they are doing on the internet. We want to have pages tailored for users."
Yahoo! will drive home messages around homepages and its search function through the second phase of its $100m 'It's You!' advertising campaign this spring, developed by ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners.
The spring campaign will follow Ogilvy's campaign from , which Bartz concedes she didn't like, as it hadn't performed as well as expected.
Earlier this month to $1.597bn and, while display advertising revenue was up 20%, its search revenue was down by 14%.
Bartz said the business predicts it will gain share this quarter, even though the company has yet to integrate its search services, which account for 50% of its business, with Microsoft. The integration is expected to be completed this year in the US and next year in the UK.
The 20% growth in Yahoo!'s display revenue can be attributed to the resurgence of brand advertising, Rich Riley, Yahoo's managing director for EMEA, said.
He added: "Advertising is making a rebound. During the recession it was direct response business advertising, and now brand advertisers such as automotive, retail and consumer goods are coming back."
for the next three seasons. The deal will put five-minute highlight packages of every match on Yahoo.co.uk.
Referring to short-form clips as 'video snacks', Bartz said online video would also be another big growth area for Yahoo! this year.
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