YAHOO -- Yahoo! launched its beta version of Yahoo! 360 today and it's a tight integration of push-style social networking across the Yahoo! properties that uses a Multiply model to take weblogs and Irishblogs to another level on the back of the Yahoo! brand. That's because your 360 view is what you ask for from friends and acquaintances. You can also post blog items, upload pictures, write reviews, vote on music and cross-link to your address book. The service leverages much of the Yahoo! network, bolted onto a simple set of editing tools that lack the sophistication of Typepad Pro or Wordpress. However, it's a blend of technologies that will enhance the credibitility of recommendations viewed on the Yahoo! network, basically increasing the level of traffic to Yahoo! sites.
The first views of Yahoo! 360 are quite impressive: fast to upload stuff but limited in power features. It took me less than five minutes to configure my 360 blog. (Note to self: get a tiny URL redirect.)
Disclosure: I am involved in the Yahoo! 360 programme as http://360.yahoo.com/bgoldbach. I pay to use Yahoo! mail services, have ordered music through Yahoo! Launchcast and depend on several Yahoo! groups for my knowledge management.
Yahoo! has built ways to leverage your trusted contacts. For example, you can narrow reviews of venues, products and services by those done by people in your network. If jmcc (a power blogger in my network) recommends something, it ranks higher in the reviews than someone else.
Yahoo! could take this concept into shopping reviews, hotel recommendations and dating because it is so easy to adapt by its 165 million registered users. The front pages of Yahoo, its news and its search records 345 million unique visitors a month. This is a well-funded company with a $49 billion market cap. While much of the chattering is about Google, Yahoo! turned a 62 percent increase in revenue last quarter, bringing 2004 total revenue to $3.6 billion.
Consider this: Yahoo! makes more money and has more patents, services, and users than Google. Now it has bolted on a service that is basically self-evangelising.
Charlene Li --"First look at Yahoo! 360"
Tribe.net for Ireland.
Recommended Reading: Om Malik -- "How Yahoo got its mojo back"
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