Yahoo has redesigned its homepage, on the same day it announced improved profits (thanks in large part to the painful cost cutting of the past few quarters). Quite directly, Yahoo says “This new launch represents the most significant change to our homepage since the company’s inception.”
That’s quite a statement. I’ve spent some time on the page, and I’m not sure it lives up to that billing. The big deal, in short, is Yahoo’s promotion of other sites that are not in Yahoo’s immediate family – Facebook, Myspace, and eBay made the permanent list of integrated suggestions – you can get your updates on a customized Yahoo page (no Twitter, sorry) – and the first splash I got suggested – quite randomly – This Old House and a few others.
The parts of the home page that are not customized are overwhelmingly LCD (lowest common denominator) – very celebrity focused, for example. What to do? That’s what binds us all, I guess.
I do think this is MyYahoo reborn and updated for the way the web works, but it can’t be so random in its suggestions (kinda like Twitter is in its suggested users). In short, it has to go all the way – it has to become the ultimate aggregator for the “rest of the web” if it’s going to work – and that means that the mass of Web users have to understand what that means. Given that most folks have no idea what an RSS reader is, and even more folks have no idea what TweetDeck is – this is going to be a challenge.However, Yahoo has a lot of data on what users are doing, and can tune those suggestions over time to create a good experience, should it chose to lean in there. But I like the direction. It strikes me as the right way to go.
We should be viewing this as just a routine product rev, not as anything special. In fact, if they WEREN’T making routine product improvements then I’d be extremely concerned. As it happens, I am only VERY concerned because they’re making such a big deal about it. When is Yahoo! going to do something profound again? Like grow search share or actually launch a NEW product?
not that I really care that much, but if I personally had to use it, the biggest annoyance would be the ads on say, the facebook widget that are almost as big as the facebook widget. (saw it on a screenshot somwhere else)
I had no idea but I like it. I guess that $299.00 listing fee that Yahoo has paid off in their bottom line!
Not having Twitter on board is for the launch is either a huge oversight – or part of a strategy to try to cage the bird.
Being a one-stop Internet collecting point for the masses, like Yahoo is trying to do, is not easy. (I know) I’m thinking of the line Rick Nelson wrote/ sang in “Garden Party”, “You have to please yourself”.
You can easily customize and add (or delete) any button to the left nav. That includes Twitter.
Downside is that there is no Twitter handshaking with their API at all, so you can’t pull in your feed. Thus, making it fairly useless to add right now.
You can delete Ebay, add NY Times, easily swap the order of buttons, etc.
Pretty interesting strategy. Guessing Y! will initially see a small dip in their own sub-domain traffic, but only for a short while.
As it happens, I am only VERY concerned because they’re making such a big deal about it. When is Yahoo! going to do something profound again
I think so…..
New Kindle fire