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Yahoo Changes User Profiles, To Massive Outrage
Wiseleo writes "Yahoo decided to massively screw up their entire userbase by changing all user profiles to blank. No warning, no automated way to get data back, and other unwanted changes. The blog has such choice quotes as 'We know this has been a rough transition for some of you and, and are committed to helping you use, understand, and (hopefully) enjoy your new profile,' and, 'We also know lots of you worked hard on your old profiles and want your data. If you feel like you're missing data, we've saved a copy of your old profile (and alias) and our Customer Care team can retrieve this information. You won't, however, be able to revert back to your old profile format, but you will be able to get any data that you think is missing. To do this, please go here to contact Customer Care.' There were 850 comments posted, all negative, on the first day. There are hundreds more today. There is even more outrage on the Yahoo Messenger blog."
While it is true that many users are using the services for free, Yahoo also has a significant number of paying users, if I recall correctly; I see nothing to suggest that these changes didn't affect them as well.
Unfortunately, many companies with online services that have free and paid versions tend to forget about the paying customers when planning these sorts of things.
Looks like you'd be playing whack-a-mole: Yahoo's new profile style appears to mimic MySpace and Facebook.
Seriously, couldn't this space on /. be taken up by something that matters on the intarweb?
According to Alexa, Yahoo! is the most popular site on the internet. I'd say that that's more than enough to make a website matter, personally.
Goo goo g'joob.
I worked at Yahoo for five years. I have no idea who's left (most folks I knew have also since left), but this is a clear sign of losing focus on the user. First there was the draconian booting of everyone off the old version of My Yahoo! & now this.
Why do people get to make decisions like this & keep their jobs?
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
The only thing that seems to have visibly changed is http://profiles.yahoo.com/ - this died a quiet death years ago anyway, nobody actually used it for anything serious. It was always nothing more than a place to stick a couple of pictures and a few fields for the odd comment or two. http://360.yahoo.com/ is far more popular and provides services akin to actual 'social networking' - it makes for a better 'profile' anyway.
Either way this new system is a step up from what it used to be, though yes, a tad annoying in the sense that they just blanked everything out, but I probably would have done the same, It was just an incoherent disjointed mess. The user experience was horrid right from the beginning.
Possibly bad form to reply to myself, but meh... I went through the process of restarting one of my ancient profiles just now - I suspect Yahoo have made a few changes since the story hit the tubes. Not everything is blanked out, in fact most details were resurrected just fine. All my pictures and contacts are still there, though I had to go through a couple of simple mouse clicks to make it happen.
The only people who will be really annoyed by this are those that are bitching about the loss of all their split personalities (aliases) - well not exactly, they can keep the multiple names, just that Yahoo is going to point back to a single profile and link all the aliases to that one profile. This will clean up all the crazies who roll out a new persona with every new boy/girlfriend, bad hair day, full moon, EMO issue, and so on and so forth.
Probably just a housekeeping strategy internally at yahoo - it'd save them a few bucks on hard drive space at the very least. I guess for anyone who really wants a bunch of different profiles, they can always create another account. They are free after all.
Hey, can just an FYI, 12,000 people work at yahoo. We like our jobs. Kthxbai
But that's only among the subset of browsers with their toolbar installed. If we look at Netcraft's take on the subject, Google is 14 of the top 16 Most-Visited, (Yahoo! #23) Hitwise also counts Google the best. Among my friends, nobody under thirty still uses Yahoo! except those who're still clinging to their fifteen year-old mail accounts, which again, Google does better.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Interesting, how the entire concept behind this particular opinion by Stallman has COMPLETELY gone over your head guy. I suspect his other theories and opinions do so as well.
Here it is, nice and simple: by using someone else's hardware and software to do your computing and store your data, you risk losing access to and control over said hardware and software resources, as well as your data.
Now, please don't try to make me list all the possible scenarios, or explain it to you any further - I have no patience for it.
Stallman is absolutely right on this.
SARAVA!
Unfortunately, I didn't want a social networking site. I liked yahoo. I used it for specific things, and social networking is not one of them. I didn't join yahoo360 because it didn't include any new "features" that I wanted over classic yahoo. Now, it looks like everything is going to yahoo360..
Yes, but being an ass implies that one is deliberately acting in an asinine manner (as in, "what an asshole.")
OK, I'll grant you that it's probably thus for Americans (since you've merged "arse" with "ass"), but, for me, a person who is an ass is someone who acts idiotically, as though they had no more brain than an ass (equus asinus, whence both the words "ass" and "asinine"). Someone who deliberately behaves in a stupidly objectionable way is an arsehole, bastard, prick, or any number of other obscenities.