The big guys are really starting to focus on personalized home pages, where Yahoo dominates and Google is coming on strong (by adding a link from the Google.com home page). Google says their personalized home page has been their fastest growing product over the last few fiscal quarters. Pageflakes and Netvibes are two notable startups in this space.
Tonight Yahoo is announcing a few enhancements to the recently relaunched My Yahoo: a new calendar module, a My Netflix module that uses the Netflix API and an update to the Yahoo Bookmarks module.
The calendar module has read/write functionality (as it should). My Netflix lets users see what movies have recently been released on DVD, the movies in your queue and movies you have at home. The main addition to the bookmarks module is the ability to add new bookmarks directly from the module.
The new features will be rolled out on Thursday. Screen shots are below. The first one shows the calendar and netflix modules.
The screen shots are screaming “slow” – I’ve probably hit the Yahoo domain less than 20 times since 1998 (not counting basic test pings). I haven’t really found an incentive to switch, and I doubt this will be it.
i think they could put stuff on yahoo 4 peole will start coming on yahoo and there have more poeple on yahoo i have sign in yahoo 5 or 7 time not this year but all thougt my life but i lov yahoo i get to chat with my friends
Yahoo has to do something to compete with iGoogle.
I thing making VOD as a widget is a great competitive
strategy for both Yahoo and NetFlix.
NetFlix VOD business model had been ridicule by the analysts but
Netflix has done a great job by aligning themselves with a great online medias .
This will be sweet deal for consumers as well. I can’t wait.
Sign me UP!
Nothing to do with this post, but I just visited techcrunch on two different computers – a mac and a pc, and both of them came up with a “Drivecleaner” popup when I arrived at the site warning me that i need to install it immediately to clean up my site.
Has anyone else had this? Is techcrunch allowing them to advertise?
These are the people I’m talking about: http://www.syma...-062217-0726-99
I’ve seen that thing come up from sites like MySpace once before months ago, but TechCrunch?
collis;
Nothing on FF or IE…
Damn thats weird, I was on FF on both computers. Maybe its a coincidence and they’ve both taken some spyware which happened to come up when i came to techcrunch
Bleh, dodgy companies, wikipedia had some interesting info on them http://en.wikip...g/wiki/WinFixer
Oh well, hope it is just my computers anyway
I’ll have to try My Yahoo. I have always hated it. But it looks coolin these screenshots. I’ll have a go later today.
I’m always a netvibes fan.
I can’t let Yahoo & Google win this time. I’m picking small startup page…
Do you hated went companies steal little of you idea and force you to use google or yahoo powered.
Wow, isn’t competition great! Yahoo provides such a high quality design to the crowd which is much needed these days.
That Netflix widget is pretty cool. NetVibes should add that to their arsenal. Maybe Yahoo! & Netflix had to work out some sort of partnership though.
Yahoo with great new features. Wow. How ’bout an old feature like a close or minimize button for that huge ADVERTISEMENT pane. Notice it’s the only pane without one. That’s why I could care less. Netvibes & G-Mail for me bub.
Michael,
Does this mean My Yahoo will totally be revamped? No more corny themes except for one unified theme such as the screen shots?
Yahoo sucks balls now.
Cant Microsoft just buy them out and get some real competition firing.
If not – Google, just buy Yahoo! – then at least 1 company can do everything.
Alternatively – Microsoft, just buy Google.
Is it just me or has the entire Yahoo homepage and now the My Yahoo page morphed into a bad AOL experience? Yahoo is a great copier of innovation, but to copy a piece of *#!@ like AOL? I think I see a hint of Excite in there as well.
Holy crap! A *NETFLIX* widget? A *CALENDAR* widget? Wow! Does the innovation at Yahoo ever….start ?
collis, I’m on FF on linux and seen the Drivecleaner popup twice. if it’s limited could in be bad dns lookup somewhere?
I feel somehow sorry for Pageflakes and Netvibes, yahoo and especially google will crush them.
who cares about yahoo?
The screenshots do look cool. 25% of search volume or something? not bad maybe they got some potential to get that up.
AFAIK, Netflix does not have an API. Does anyone know if this MYY integration uses some Netflix API that’s in the works?
I like netvibes – that’s the one I prefer. It has the best features for my needs. I found this one interesting……
Check out Gumby’s Universe – http://www.netvibes.com/gumby
I used Yahoo! for 10 years, since before I knew ANYTHING about anything. And I loved it. But they’re not getting me back until they get rid of stupid ad that destroys a quarter of the usable space on the page.
Really? You thought, “I’ll compete with Google, Netvibes, Pageflakes, et al by adding a huge immovable block of animated advertising.” Good luck with that. Even after you block the ads with Adblock, the damn thing is still there mute, dominating, infuriating. Sad.
I had the MyYahoo homepage beta for approximately 7 minutes. It was so kludgy and slow that I immediately switched back to the old style…
my-yahoo looks much better (and comfortable to eyes) if you have a big (20″ or greater LCD monitor). This is too slow as compared to Netvibes. Netflix widget is cool. I hope the calendar one is flexible enough to manage events from the my-yahoo page itself (Unlike iGoogle which throws a new page to add events).
I think its a useful product / being a web designer – I would rather just build my old page in 40 minutes with no ads, that loads in 4 secs …
Agreed with the comment about the ad on the page. Holy Crap, for a product prefaced with the word “My” in front of it, they sure are using up a lot screen real estate with something completely unrelated to my interests.
This is really the type of behavior where Google kicks Yahoo’s ass. Google gives me my Google Homepage, Google Reader, and Google Calendar all as loss leaders without advertising because they know that by giving me those tools, my 99% of my online attention is directed towards the Google brand, and that makes me a whole hell of lot more likely to use Google Search and click on ads, or use Adsense over whatever it is that Yahoo’s calling their ad program today.
Yahoo does a lot of cool stuff (the new navigation model in properties such as Yahoo Sports is really cool), but their overly invasive advertising model is starting to hurt them in my opinion. It still drives me nuts that the entire Yahoo Mail experience, even after beta upgrade, is still designed to drive unnecessary pageviews and advertising revenue rather than focusing on an optimal user experience.
Yahoo! is blowing it right now on several fronts.
Their new webmail is pretty, but so slow it’s unusable (not as bad as Outlook ‘07, though). Tried it, switched back.
Their MyYahoo! beta stuffs in that big ad window and tarts up the side columns (in a 3-column view) so that the center column becomes difficult to read. And it is not compatible quite a few existing modules. Tried it, switched back.
Meanwhile Google and NetVibes are getting better all the time. Pretty soon…. Try one, not switch back to Yahoo!
takes (for me, even on DSL) a long time to load—-but HOW do you resize the columns so Doonesbury isn’t cut off?
Nothing new there. I have seen better before. I stick with Pageflakes – they are still the fastest when it comes to releasing cool new stuff. Check out my public pages: http://www.page...webchia/9106549
Sascha
no pageflakes disclosure?
Hey, so what the hell did they do to the Maps? The beta version they had was a really easy to use, functional thing. This new version sucks as hell.
It was easy to, put in a location, get directions, find things around a location. That is all broken now.
Hey, nevermind. Looks like it defaulted me to the dialup version.
Whew.
I wonder when AOL will update its colour scheme to match
New Stuff ? Personalised Homepage ?
Yahoo needs a better search engine if they intend to win this battle
I have never seen the attraction of a personalised home page. I use my email account for my work computer, and a search engine for my home computer.
Other than that I have a favourites list for the most used resources.
Perhaps I am just dull.
Yahoo sucks balls
What? Netflix has an API?
The screen shots are screaming “slow” . As the yahoo add more element into the pages. Yahoo now get back…