Yahoo may pursue mobile browser
Sunday, 27. November 2005, 23:48:24
Is Yahoo planning to develop a mobile browser? eWeek seems to think so. Take a look at this snip from a much longer article (snips below)
Could there be a Yahoo Browser in the works?
"That's a very big question. Obviously, most of our users are coming through the browser today, but that will change as the mobile devices get smarter," Horowitz said.
"More people are beginning to access Yahoo through mobile phones and set top boxes," he added. "We're paying attention to everything that's happening in the browser world, especially around Firefox and IE … I can't speak to specific product plans but we're looking at everything."
[Here's more on Yahoo's plans to support social blogging.]
Yahoo: From Dot-Com Survivor to Web 2.0 Powerhouse
November 23, 2005
By Ryan Naraine, eWeek
Through a series of clever acquisitions and in-house creations, Yahoo Inc. has transformed itself from a dot-com survivor into a Web 2.0 powerhouse driven by blogs, podcasts and other forms of user-generated social media.
The 10-year-old company is staying true to its search engine roots, but with the aggressive embrace of new technologies—from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to contextual tagging—Yahoo has created a niche for itself in the world of external content aggregation.
[snip]
For starters, just look at Yahoo's brand new My Web 2.0 beta, a social bookmarking tool that uses RSS and tagging to sort and shuttle content between socially-connected users.
Accessible via the Yahoo Toolbar, the service lets surfers save and tag Web pages for sharing with others.
"The next big breakthrough will be social search," Horowitz declared. "We're investing heavily in this."
With My Web 2.0, Horowitz believes Yahoo can "democratize the process" of ranking search relevance, a subtle tweak at rival Google's acclaimed PageRank technology.
"Why should the privilege of ranking the Internet be limited to just Webmasters? Why not let users determine that for themselves. Why not determine search relevance on a per-case and per-community basis?"
The idea is simple. Let the user bookmark and sort pages by title, URL, tags, keywords, name, date or popularity. Once a bookmark is saved, it becomes available for others within the user's social circle, a concept that creates a massive base of eyeballs pushing content to each other.
Flickr—photo-sharing on steroids
Another big coup for Yahoo was the acquisition of Flickr, a photo-sharing service built around a tight-knit community of users.
Flickr lets users upload digital images from camera phones and computers and set up photo albums for sharing with the community via blogs and RSS.
Flickr helped popularize the idea of using tags to trigger random associations of images and the result is a slick, wildly popular tool used by millions.
Since the acquisition, Yahoo has already meshed Flickr with its Yahoo 360 social network and a new blog search tool launched within the Yahoo News property.
Interestingly, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake now heads up the My Web 2.0 social search product, a clear indication of Yahoo's plans for aggressive cross-integration of multiple products.
Horowitz looks at Flickr and sees endless possibilities and, although he is careful to avoid discussing future product plans, there are hints that the Flickr technology can be extended to power things like user-generated audio and video uploads.
[snip]
Yahoo 360 and the RSS revolution
Yahoo 360 sets up a circle of social connections where users can mix, match and distribute content to each other from a single space.
At the core of Yahoo 360 is the blogging service, which helps to power yet another spoke in the Web 2.0 wheel—the MyYahoo RSS aggregator.
Scott Gatz, senior director of personalization products at Yahoo, says embrace of RSS across multiple Yahoo properties was among the most important strategic decisions made by senior executives.
Gatz, who is responsible for all things RSS at Yahoo, has seen the content syndication technology move into the mainstream, giving Yahoo new and intriguing ways to let users create personalized media that can be accessed in multiple ways, whether on the Web or on mobile devices.
[snip]
"User-created content fits in a huge way. There's an immense amount of content becoming available on Web and the majority is user-generated," Gatz explained.
"They're creating blogs, uploading digital photos, creating podcasts, posting on message boards. Ultimately, there's a nonstop conversation happening on the web with groups of people sharing their interests. The idea is to make it real simple for this conversation to happen," he said.
[snip]
Future tools and applications
Could video blogging and video uploads be on the cards next? For competitive reasons, Gatz and Horowitz declined to discuss future product plans but when the company looks at the Flickr community concept, it's not a stretch to imagine a simplified video sharing service on the horizon.
[snip]
The Yahoo Mail product is also undergoing a major makeover using technology acquired from Oddpost. Yahoo Mail now becomes a browser-based Outlook clone with a slick user interface.
Then there is Konfabulator, another clever acquisition that led to the launch of Yahoo Widgets.
Konfabulator makes a JavaScript run-time engine that allows users to create "Widgets" that perform simple tasks. Widgets can be used as browser-less gateways into Yahoo's network of content, including those generated by millions of users.
Could there be a Yahoo Browser in the works?
"That's a very big question. Obviously, most of our users are coming through the browser today, but that will change as the mobile devices get smarter," Horowitz said.
"More people are beginning to access Yahoo through mobile phones and set top boxes," he added. "We're paying attention to everything that's happening in the browser world, especially around Firefox and IE … I can't speak to specific product plans but we're looking at everything."
[Here's more on Yahoo's plans to support social blogging.]
Yahoo: From Dot-Com Survivor to Web 2.0 Powerhouse
November 23, 2005
By Ryan Naraine, eWeek
Through a series of clever acquisitions and in-house creations, Yahoo Inc. has transformed itself from a dot-com survivor into a Web 2.0 powerhouse driven by blogs, podcasts and other forms of user-generated social media.
The 10-year-old company is staying true to its search engine roots, but with the aggressive embrace of new technologies—from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to contextual tagging—Yahoo has created a niche for itself in the world of external content aggregation.
[snip]
For starters, just look at Yahoo's brand new My Web 2.0 beta, a social bookmarking tool that uses RSS and tagging to sort and shuttle content between socially-connected users.
Accessible via the Yahoo Toolbar, the service lets surfers save and tag Web pages for sharing with others.
"The next big breakthrough will be social search," Horowitz declared. "We're investing heavily in this."
With My Web 2.0, Horowitz believes Yahoo can "democratize the process" of ranking search relevance, a subtle tweak at rival Google's acclaimed PageRank technology.
"Why should the privilege of ranking the Internet be limited to just Webmasters? Why not let users determine that for themselves. Why not determine search relevance on a per-case and per-community basis?"
The idea is simple. Let the user bookmark and sort pages by title, URL, tags, keywords, name, date or popularity. Once a bookmark is saved, it becomes available for others within the user's social circle, a concept that creates a massive base of eyeballs pushing content to each other.
Flickr—photo-sharing on steroids
Another big coup for Yahoo was the acquisition of Flickr, a photo-sharing service built around a tight-knit community of users.
Flickr lets users upload digital images from camera phones and computers and set up photo albums for sharing with the community via blogs and RSS.
Flickr helped popularize the idea of using tags to trigger random associations of images and the result is a slick, wildly popular tool used by millions.
Since the acquisition, Yahoo has already meshed Flickr with its Yahoo 360 social network and a new blog search tool launched within the Yahoo News property.
Interestingly, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake now heads up the My Web 2.0 social search product, a clear indication of Yahoo's plans for aggressive cross-integration of multiple products.
Horowitz looks at Flickr and sees endless possibilities and, although he is careful to avoid discussing future product plans, there are hints that the Flickr technology can be extended to power things like user-generated audio and video uploads.
[snip]
Yahoo 360 and the RSS revolution
Yahoo 360 sets up a circle of social connections where users can mix, match and distribute content to each other from a single space.
At the core of Yahoo 360 is the blogging service, which helps to power yet another spoke in the Web 2.0 wheel—the MyYahoo RSS aggregator.
Scott Gatz, senior director of personalization products at Yahoo, says embrace of RSS across multiple Yahoo properties was among the most important strategic decisions made by senior executives.
Gatz, who is responsible for all things RSS at Yahoo, has seen the content syndication technology move into the mainstream, giving Yahoo new and intriguing ways to let users create personalized media that can be accessed in multiple ways, whether on the Web or on mobile devices.
[snip]
"User-created content fits in a huge way. There's an immense amount of content becoming available on Web and the majority is user-generated," Gatz explained.
"They're creating blogs, uploading digital photos, creating podcasts, posting on message boards. Ultimately, there's a nonstop conversation happening on the web with groups of people sharing their interests. The idea is to make it real simple for this conversation to happen," he said.
[snip]
Future tools and applications
Could video blogging and video uploads be on the cards next? For competitive reasons, Gatz and Horowitz declined to discuss future product plans but when the company looks at the Flickr community concept, it's not a stretch to imagine a simplified video sharing service on the horizon.
[snip]
The Yahoo Mail product is also undergoing a major makeover using technology acquired from Oddpost. Yahoo Mail now becomes a browser-based Outlook clone with a slick user interface.
Then there is Konfabulator, another clever acquisition that led to the launch of Yahoo Widgets.
Konfabulator makes a JavaScript run-time engine that allows users to create "Widgets" that perform simple tasks. Widgets can be used as browser-less gateways into Yahoo's network of content, including those generated by millions of users.
WIDGETIZE