Category: YahooPersonals

SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL — May 17 — Yahoo 360 is Yahoo’s “blogging local reviews social network friend finder” community which has yet to really take off in the States like Orkut did in Brazil.  I have about thirty-something invites left so if you want to join email me at lorenbake@yahoo.com.  It's a fun intermingled way of keeping a personal blog (or journal).  Intertwining local news and reviews with others’ opinions in your network is a powerful touch and Yahoo is definately doing a good job of integrating 360 into it's Local Search, Music and Groups.  “As a blog, Yahoo 360 lags behind the capabilities of Blogger, Multiply and Friendster blogs. Friendster has the best blog program among the four services but the URL it offers to its users is ridiculously long. Mobile phone blogging is such a pain to set up in Yahoo 360 — it’s centered on US telecom firms — and I eventually gave up.”  FULL ARTICLE @ SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL

Mark Brooks: Yahoo always seems to do two things very well.  Firstly, it's services are always nice n simple.  No feature creep.  Just the services I need, laid out in a super-usable fashion.  Secondly, Yahoo is reliable and relatively fast.

TELEGRAPH — Apr 10 — Friendster was the first big hit. But when your mom gets her own Friendster profile, you know it’s time to move on. Enter Myspace, Habbohotel, Linkedin, Jewster, Orkut and Tickle. Danah Boyd, a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate (online communities) says such sites connected her to like-minded people when she was an isolated teen.  Judith Meskill, editor of the Social Software Weblog recently met someone she had been corresponding with online. “I showed up and, plop, in the middle of the grassy knoll was a guy sitting in a wheelchair and flailing like he had no motor control. He was wearing a football helmet, with a bent straw that he would use to punch out words on a Ouija-board-size keyboard. He was laughing; it was amazing. We were both laughing. I never knew it (from chatting with him online).”  Says Tickle.com CEO James Currier: “People are reaching out for richer interaction. In your real life, you probably only interact with 100 people. On the Internet, you find ones most like you and that have same interests as you.”  Flickr.com combines blogging, social networking and photo sharing. On Last.fm, users create a profile with a list of songs, and the Web site connects users with similar musical tastes. “Of course it’s addictive,” Boyd says of these social Web sites. “It plays into human nature.”

The full article was originally published at Nashua Telegraph, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Flickr was just bought by Yahoo.  Fotolog.net is a popular competitor.

SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL — Mar 29 — So far, Yahoo 360 is quite nice. It seems to be the missing link connecting Yahoo Groups, photos, and centering them around blogging. There’s one uniform Yahoo login across Yahoo Groups, Mail and chat. Yahoo has also used 360 to showcase Yahoo Local User Reviews. If you’re checking out your friends’ profiles or maybe looking for some people with similar interest in your town, if they’ve commented on local businesses such as bars or restaurants it is shown in their 360 account. Those 360 users who listen to tunes on Yahoo Music can also share their favorites with Yahoo 360 members.  Also, favorite sports teams from Yahoo Sports, RSS feed subscriptions from My Yahoo and listings from Yahoo Pets community – you have various ways to find people who share your interests.  FULL ARTICLE @ SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL

Mark Brooks: You can count on Yahoo to be two things; very simple and straightforward to use (no fluff or feature creep), and very reliable.

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo is acquiring photo-sharing company, Flickr, that lets people share digital images, expanding its portfolio of self-publishing and "social networking" services. The company’s slogan is, "This isn’t your grandfather’s photo-sharing site." FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO Mark Brooks: Multiply is a competitor to Flickr

WEBPRONEWS — Mar 16 — A new consumer-focused social networking offering from Yahoo will soon be launched in beta, according to information on the Yahoo website.  Called Yahoo 360°, the new service will include a wide range of offerings including blogs and photo sharing. The most interesting aspect of the offering looks to be the way in which all the elements are tightly integrated into a broad social network service where you will be able to easily share and exchange information, chats, files, etc, with family and friends. 

The full article was originally published at WebProNews, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: I heard Yahoo were working on a social networking type service under the name Mingle last year.  Their brain child is coming to life at the end of this month…by invitation only. 

PRWEB — Mar 9 — weAttract released a report today identifying seven opportunities and seven threats facing online dating sites. Advice…FOR THE INDUSTRY 1. Open member feedback forum   2. Join in June meeting for agreement of guidelines   3. Share critical mass info. FOR CONSUMERS 1. Ask tough questions   2. Give feedback   3. Do other things besides online dating

Mark Brooks: weAttract is the company behind Yahoo Personals personality profiling.  A number of serious issues are brought up in this report.  A little controversial.  Your comments please…