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Yahoo! Tunes into Blogging and Social Networking
aarthi_r writes "The social networking wars have finally begun, with Yahoo! coming out with it's very own Yahoo! 360, which combines blogging, social networking, music, mobile connectivity, local searches (for restaurants and businesses) as well as photo-sharing. With stiff competition from the early starters like Orkut it will be interesting to see if Yahoo! will succeed." If you want to log in, don't hold your breath- they aren't opening until the end of the month.
This is why Yahoo is going to have one helluva year this year. They're taking all the good ideas Google ever had and generating their own implementations of them. That's not to say the reverse hasn't happened, or that Yahoo has no original ideas. Yahoo, before the end of summer or perhaps earlier, will match Google toe to toe on all of the following:
Web Developer Kit; APIs to query Yahoo directly
AdSense-like program through Overture, which now bears the Yahoo name
Social network and blogging service as per today's article
Fully independent, spider-based search system
To name a few. Plus, I'm finding Yahoo's spider to be much more responsive to changes than Google, and Yahoo's search results seem timelier lately. MSN is even starting to take some of my attention from Google. It would have been unfathomable for me 1 year ago to say this, but I think Yahoo may tear Google a new one this year, unless Google makes some changes, fast.
I Want To Believe
Ah, maybe this will explain the sharp increase in bots from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others hitting my Blog constantly over the past couple of months. The interesting thing is that the bots somehow have been preferentially scanning my blog over our lab site which is also hosted on my same workstation.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I've tried out Friendster and Orkut, but couldn't find any compelling reason to keep using them. The only social networking tools I find at all useful are ones based primarily on a specific interest, like Audioscrobbler, or ones that groups have built or, sometimes, that seem to have built themselves out of the raw network using ordinary communication tools like Usenet and bulletin boards.
Trying to artificially develop a network of people whose only interest is that they're members of the same network... I don't know, it just seems silly.
thefacebook.com has totally taken over this market for most american college kids. as they continue to expand, they're putting a big dent in the viability of these services. I don't think anyone would bother being on orkut + thefacebook when their college educated friends are already networked together. [there is a bit of a class element to this as well.]
Well, when Orkut can solve their teething problems and get their servers up to the load that is coming from S. America and the Middle East, then perhaps they will start allowing more people. I was in one of the first groups of folks to start using Orkut, and at the time it was useful, but it rapidly started going down hill due to all the traffic, noise and garbage which is making it largely useless. I actually have not visited in quite a while.
Moderation is the only thing that has prevented Slashdot from completely going to hell and unless Orkut implements the same type of moderation system, they will become totally hopeless.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Since Yahoo and Google appear to be encroaching on each others territory now, I guess the only remaining thing to do is to name the duopoly between Yahoo and Google. Windows/Intel has always been called Wintel, for instance.
I prefer Yahoogle, but Goohoo isn't bad either.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Orkut is pretty much dead. It is without question the least-reliable, worst-maintained, most-ignored beta that Google has ever released. The interface doesn't even have anything to suggest it's a Google property other than the "in association with Google" tag at the bottom, which is non-evil-speak for "a Google employee wrote this, so we own it."
Orkut is a very poor Friendster clone that has had server problems from day one. The only reason why it gets any press is because of the small-print "association with Google."
For more information, click here.
Orkut worked fine for me for a few months, but I've not been able to log in with anything but IE for the last 6 months.
Not that I miss it much.
Everybody I know now uses Myspace, mainly because they include actual bands as nodes and have an interface to upload and post mp3s, along with photos, blogging support, event announcements etc. It's a good way to promote and network music/art projects. (and there are a lot of hot chicks on there too!) I haven't logged into Orkut or Friendster in months.
http://www.imeem.com/ /. story about the bounty for adding file sharing to Gaim the theory was that sharing with friends is more likely to be legal than sharing with every user on the internet. Well these guys must've been way ahead of the curve on that one, the file sharing is just good enough to make it interesting to the p2p crowd. I see that some of the employees came from Napster. They also make a big thing about encrypting all the content in the network to protect you - unlike every other IM app.
It's an application that's still in Beta - basicallly takes all the communications stuff we use - IM, mail, blogs, groups, forums, galleries file sharing etc etc and rolls it into one all in one application. Remember that
It should score huge Kudos points here because the developers say that they wrote te whole thing in C# and they're running the servers on Mono.
The only social networking service I have found that actually seems worthwhile is LiveJournal - and that's because it's used by my friends to keep me up to date with what's going on with them.
It's of no interest to me to know that RandomBob is two degrees of separation away from me, unless I can then get some idea of who RandomBob is - and being able to go and read his journal and see what kind of person he is.
I've made a few friends in a variety of places, learnt all sorts of things and keep in touch with old friends - it's basically replaced email as the main communication method that my circle of friends uses.
My Journal