Yahoo's Brand Universe Launches

Yahoo’s brand-centric sites, announced in November 2006 and dubbed “Brand Universe”, have started to go live. These sites each revolve around a single popular brand – like this one on the Nintendo Wii – and have almost no original content. Instead, Yahoo is taking content from Flickr, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers and other Yahoo properties, along with some slick graphics, and hoping for page views.

Yahoo says to expect 100 or so brand-based sites by the end of the year, and will include sites for popular movies, TV shows, bands, celebrities, games, etc. The next sites to be launched will include the Sims, Halo, Lost, the Office, Transformers, and Harry Potter, says GigaOm.

Yahoo doesn’t seem too concerned with monetization of these pages yet, and they aren’t working directly with the brands themselves. Chances are both of those policies may change in the near future.