RSSYahoo launches new profiles aimed at making site more social
By Tim Conneally | Published October 17, 2008, 5:00 PM
Yahoo has renewed its approach to making its site more social, rolling out a beta of its updated open profile system. The feature will enable Yahoo to better track and target ads to its users.
Yahoo has continually lagged behind the other "big four" search engines in the social networking space. Google owns Orkut and controls ads on MySpace, Microsoft has its own Windows Live Spaces and a minor stake in Facebook, and AOL owns Bebo.
While Yahoo attempted to establish its own social network in 2005 with 360, at about this time last year the company announced it was abandoning the project in favor of an open "Inbox 2.0" concept. Yahoo 360 users will reportedly be migrated over to this new profile system as well.
To set up a profile, Yahoo users simply sign onto profiles.yahoo.com with their Yahoo ID. Since it's still in beta, the profile system is not yet integrated with Yahoo's other services. In setting up a profile, however, it does automatically offer the user's Yahoo mail contact list to invite others.
User profiles provide crucial information that allows for highly personalized advertising, likewise, so do searches. By pairing the two, Yahoo will be able to deliver the kind of targetable advertisements that are earning companies like Google more than previously expected.
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt recently said, "As marketing budgets are squeezed, targeted measurable ads are becoming more valuable to advertisers, and as consumer budgets are squeezed, people use the web for comparison shopping to hunt for bargains online and in stores."
Yahoo's profiles can be populated with user data on: work, schools, personal interests, and relationship status, as well as the basics: age, sex, and location. Like all social networks, Yahoo users can establish connections with others, write comments, and share a news feed of their activity on Yahoo services like Flickr and Yahoo! Music.
I am thoroughly disgusted that Yahoo suddenly decided to update profiles without so much as a warning.
They claimed that no information would be lost, but as they took out the 'News' section, everything posted there vanished into oblivion. The pictures for ALL of my profiles are also gone, and many of them were irreplaceable (from sites that no longer exist or located by chance in the first place).
Having profiles viewable by default only to approved persons is ridiculously annoying. And, though this most likely isn't a widespread problem, I used to find out how to contact one of my friends by their profiles. This person has TONS of accounts, but they could most likely be contacted through the account with the most recently updated profile. Needless to say, that's no longer an option.
Not to mention the profiles (mine or others) I used to view periodically out of nostalgia, specifically ones that either my friends or I no longer used.
Some of what I mentioned would probably make more sense if I said that I RPed through Yahoo...XP
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|"To err is Yahoo-ian." (Diane Normandin)
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|This is what Yahoo has been working on for the last 2 years? This is what replaces the old profiles and the now dead Yahoo 360? Wow! Am I disapointed.
I'll stick to OohYa Chat and the OohYa profiles at http://www.oohya.net, I think I'm done with Yahoo.
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|I'm actually one of those who like the new layout that yahoo profiles has. It has much more info on it than the bland profiles that they had previously. And it seemed that not many people bothered to create one anyway, little long look at someone's profile before messaging them.
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|The update mess with the profiles really shows that Yahoo has jumped the shark. Whats really messed up, is they totally wiped out peoples profiles. I didn't have much info on my profile, but allot of people put the works into theres. Oops..
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|judging by the response on the Yahoo's own blog on the change to profiles, the result has been a resounding dud.
users don't like the new look, the new "features", the loss of data from their existing profile, the lack of proper integration with yahoo messenger ...the list goes on and on.
Yahoo did not consult users or give us a choice they just dumped the new profile page on us.
Letting users in on the plans and allowing for user input may have avoided some of the grumpiness a lot of yahoo users feel today!!
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|Double post...o.o;
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