Thursday, March 17, 2005
Welcome Changes at Yahoo!
According to Yahoo News, the company will introduce a service called Yahoo! 360. The article describes the new service as blending "several of its Web site's popular features with two of the Internet's fastest growing activities — blogging and social networking."
Whether this new feature will be an update of Yahoo! Groups or an adjunct to it, the article doesn't quite make clear. (I have a feeling it's the latter.) But in any case, and as I said earlier, it's about damn time. With this launch Yahoo! will take a page from Google's marketing model: initial users of the new service will be by invitation only. "Early participants," says the in-house article, "will be able to invite others." No word yet of any objections to the name from the makers of the Xbox 360. I guess the two things - Yahoo!'s service and Microsoft's console - are far enough apart that there's no conflict (or, rather, no reasonable opportunity to sue).
Funny there's no mention of this new feature in Yahoo!'s blog. There's also no mention that I could find of the new My Web feature, which can be found by going to Yahoo!'s new My Search and signing in to your Yahoo! account. The salient feature of My Web is the capability to create online bookmarks on the fly - and share them. This is similar to other social networking bookmark sites, such as del.icio.us - though as far as I could tell in my short time trying it, My Web doesn't support tags, which it really should. Everything on the Web today should support tags. All aboard the Cluetrain. . . .
For staying current of all things Yahoo!, a good bet is Yahoo! Next and Yahoo! Research Labs. Looks like Yahoo! is up to some interesting stuff lately.
Whether this new feature will be an update of Yahoo! Groups or an adjunct to it, the article doesn't quite make clear. (I have a feeling it's the latter.) But in any case, and as I said earlier, it's about damn time. With this launch Yahoo! will take a page from Google's marketing model: initial users of the new service will be by invitation only. "Early participants," says the in-house article, "will be able to invite others." No word yet of any objections to the name from the makers of the Xbox 360. I guess the two things - Yahoo!'s service and Microsoft's console - are far enough apart that there's no conflict (or, rather, no reasonable opportunity to sue).
Funny there's no mention of this new feature in Yahoo!'s blog. There's also no mention that I could find of the new My Web feature, which can be found by going to Yahoo!'s new My Search and signing in to your Yahoo! account. The salient feature of My Web is the capability to create online bookmarks on the fly - and share them. This is similar to other social networking bookmark sites, such as del.icio.us - though as far as I could tell in my short time trying it, My Web doesn't support tags, which it really should. Everything on the Web today should support tags. All aboard the Cluetrain. . . .
For staying current of all things Yahoo!, a good bet is Yahoo! Next and Yahoo! Research Labs. Looks like Yahoo! is up to some interesting stuff lately.
