Yahoo! Can't Live on Hope Alone

There are signs of hope, but Yahoo!(YHOO Quote - Cramer on YHOO - Stock Picks) isn't out of the woods yet.

Shares of the Internet giant had rallied more than 6% Wednesday after the company announced third-quarter results that topped Wall Street's top and bottom line expecations.

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang also unveiled an ambitious new plan for the company as he neared the end of a high-profile 100-day review of the company's strategy announced in July.

Still, putting Yang's plan into action will be more difficult than merely outlining a bold vision. And while Yahoo! deserves credit for finally delivering on its prior promises this quarter, investors should continue to take a wait-and-see attitude toward the stock until the company can show more proof that the plan is actually working.

That's particularly true given the fast-changing and highly competitive marketplace where Yahoo! operates.

But the quarter did bring some strong developments. The most positive was a reacceleration in the company's bread-and-butter online display advertising business, which grew almost 20% year over year. The impressive growth followed five quarters of decelerating revenue growth.

It also lends credence to management's efforts to reignite growth even as more ad space becomes available online, thanks to the rapid rise of social networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.'s(NWS Quote - Cramer on NWS - Stock Picks) MySpace.

"As we shared with you a year ago, social networking and a proliferation of publishing tools has fragmented user attention and this trend continues," Yahoo! President Sue Decker said Tuesday during the company's conference call for investors. "While this presented some short-term challenges for Yahoo! in the past, we are already starting to see signs of progress from our recent efforts to address this market shift and we see significant long-term opportunities that Yahoo! can uniquely address."

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