Slashdot Mirror
On Yahoo!'s Acquisitions
Barry Norton writes "The Guardian has quite an insightful article about recent Yahoo acquisitions Delicious and Flickr. They quote Joshua Schachter, Delicious' creator: 'We're excited to be working with the Yahoo search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin, Flickr!' And why Yahoo's interest? The article opines: 'It takes a lot of the hard work out of searching the web. The very clever thing about social software is that it puts the burden on to the user, not the provider.'"
It takes a lot of the hard work out of searching the web. The very clever thing about social software is that it puts the burden on to the user, not the provider.
If this is how Yahoo sees it, they're missing the point. Yahoo (and other web-portals) can use Social Networks to learn more about their users. For instance, a certain social circle may all be members of a bowling league, so maybe show bowling ball advertisers to people that have a direct connection with the bowling league circle. The connection I see is more in delivering more appropriate content to users, not saving money on search.
No Sigs!
So how long until Yahoo changes their name from Del.icio.us to "Yahoo Social Bookmarking Service", just like they changed Konfabulator to "Yahoo Widget Engine", Oddpost to "Yahoo Mail" and Launch.com to "Yahoo Music"...?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What you see there is the Public Relations Friendly(tm) version of the advertising plan you speak of...
When making a statement about such an acquisition, you don't say "The very clever thing about social software is that we can sell advertising at higher rates because we can tailor the ads to the market and promise more responsive viewing."
It's not that they are missing the point, it's that it doesn't sound very good to come out and say something that sounds so self-centered.
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
I'd wager it won't take very long, unless they intergrate the social network into their already existing Yahoo! Groups ...
They bought the companies... I think it's a lot more straightforward/honest to change the name.
Yahoo! is not a holding company or anything, they are in a brand war with Google, they need to get their name out there, it's just good business.
===
I don't want to make any inferences, so I will just ask... do you think that it is at all questionable that Yahoo buys these companies and changes the name?
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
With all of the services Google has been offering, YAHOO has to catch up if they hope to stay on top. Google started simple and grew. YAHOO exploded, and has never really grown. Personally, I like what YAHOO has to offer, but I spend much more time on Google.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Don't forget Konfabulator! They bought that as well.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Sure, social networks can mine users data and habits, that's a big deal. But I'm sure Yahoo gets that. But don't underestimate having an army of users doing your work for you. I've worked for companies that would have killed to have users doing their work for them in this way. In fact, it's almost a sure thing to say that future 'content providers' will employ more of this along with AI and not have many companies employees - if any - touching any of the input data. As a programmer, sounds good to me..
Is! exciting! news!
Why is it that when Google makes a purchase, it is lauded as a brilliant idea... ... and when Yahoo makes a purchase, it is bashed and made to be a horrible thing?
===
Can someone explain this to me, and in a way that doesn't involve singular instances... a broad spectrum view of why so many people are so keen on Google and so unkeen on Yahoo...
I'd really like to know!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Interesting graph comparison of the major search engines.
? entry=google_versus_yahoo
It shows Yahoo pulling ahead of Google in 2005, and the
search engine battle itself is peaking in hype and media interest.
Yahoo's emergence into first place could be a function of their social software acquisitions.
http://www.realmeme.com:8080/roller/page/realmeme
Google started search? No.
Google started free email? No.
Google started newsgroups? No.
Google started analytics? No.
Google started online advertising? No.
Google started satelite maps? No.
Google started blogging? No.
Google started toolbars? No.
The only innovative thing Google has done is convince the masses a corporation is unable to do evil. And that's only innovative because nobody else has succeeded at it before.
Now if someone could just get across to Yahoo that the acquisition and crushing of All Seeing Eye over not getting their way in a lawsuit with XFire is pissing off alot of gamers, perhaps people would gain a bit of insight as to why Yahoo is generally loathed only slightly less than AOL.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
Indeed, Google didn't invent any of those things, but they sure made them better. Substantially better, in some cases. Google is known for having a lot of scientists on staff, and they likely do a lot of original CS research to make things better, but they also must have a lot of really good HCI people who know how to design interfaces, and a lot of really good engineers who know how to actually build usable software.
They keep adding more and more stuff into the Yahoo page
but it justs looks too busy.
Google - damn - the logo, the search box, some small print.
Sweet Perfection!
Google could do something to clean up those page designs.
And drop any useless graphics and go easy on the advertisements.
Especially moving GIF, Flash, talking video ads with sound, etc.
Ads that complex are just annoying, not encouraging business.
Algorithms and 'communities' used to deliver content based on previous and current interests are completely
perverse if you think about it. What defines human intelligence? It is the capacity to grow, to change. All of us move from one thing to another in our lives. We are not cast in stone. Generally the more intelligent you are the faster you will move through lifes chocolate box. Politically you'll be a fascist at 14 where the simple rules of power seem appealing, but by your 20s you'll have discovered other people, community and responsibility and start to take on socialist ideologies. In your late 30s you'll learn to temper ideologies with realism and become more of a conservative liberal. Perhaps by retirement your fear of progress and change will take you full cycle back to the stagnant naivety of right wing thinking again. Throughout this life you will have interests in cars, then not. Maybe your passion for football will wane and a love of fishing will take over, only to be replaced by a love of flying or motorsports. Your teenage apathy for diet might blossom into a curiosity for food and fine wines. Even seemingly immutable characteristics have the capacity to change. Atheists become believers and vice versa, you might even change your sexuality. The thinking behind much of the current attempts to direct content at people based on their profile is damaging. You simply become more of yourself. So these are actually inhibiting and stifling technologies. To circumvent them I find it useful to develop multiple online personalities, or to occasionally correct my profile by taking an interest in far right politics for a week, or suddenly becoming a fan of art movies, or looking at property in the south. This has huge payoffs, not least of which I get to know the views of my enemies and occasionally I genuinely take on new ideas and interests that were far outside of my scope. Only this way do I stop profiling from effectively connecting my arse to my mouth and exploding me in a feedback loop of drowning in my own shit. As Einstein said "Life is a bicycle, to stay on it you must keep moving" Profiling and hanging out in cliques stops you from doing so. I dare to say, even this very Slashdot website is one such example.
As long as Google continues to make sure it's web services are the best versions (the best webmail, the best ad utilities, the best search, etc.), then people will continue to use them. Even if Google never innovated anything else, but just continued to maintain their current product line, I suspect that they would be a profitable company as long as people are using the Web. But is Google really not an innovator? I think they are. They are currently into micro-innovation: they come up with lots of little, well-implemented ideas to make existing ideas better. We've had webmail for years, but I never liked it. I stuck with my POP3 desktop clients. It wasn't until I used GMail that I found webmail good enough to use over the likes of Thunderbird. Google's webmail makeover wasn't macro-innovation; it was still a webmail service, providing essentially the same functionality as hundreds of others. But it was micro-innovation: a bunch of minor tweaks and improvements to make the webmail experience a lot better than it was before.
You keep using that word, innovative. I do not think it means what you think it means.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
And just like with Flickr, when the Yahoo business weasels force everyone to get a Yahoo login, it's going to piss of a heck of a lot of people. How's that for suporting the "community" that they just paid a big chunk of good money for?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.