Here Comes Yahoo Live, I Mean Yahoo Life
Michael Arrington
33 comments »
Yahoo didn’t just announce their new open mobile platform today at CES. They also got the heavyweights - Jerry Yang and David Filo - up on stage to give more details on the project they’re calling Yahoo Life! (previously dubbed “Inbox 2.0“). [Update: A Yahoo spokesperson clarifies that although Yang kept talking about "Life!" onstage, the project is not actually called that. It is not called anything. So we'll call it Yahoo Life! to distinguish it from the current version of Yahoo Mail.]
Everyone wants to be more like Facebook these days, and Yahoo is no exception. Google’s strategy is Open Social, a set of open APIs that allow third parties to embed stuff on other third parties. The cornerstone of Open Social for Google is Gmail, where all the action happens for a user (and to a lesser extent Orkut and iGoogle). Yahoo’s going in much the same direction, it seems, by making Yahoo Mail the center of their new social networking strategy.
The new product is only a proof of concept at this point, Yang said. The goal is to unite services like mail, search, etc. under a social framework, with Yahoo Mail serving as the central hub. Your email and Im contacts serve as your contacts and fill out the social graph. Their closeness to you is based on how frequently you communicate with them.
An example, via Dan Farber:
He gave an example of planning a dinner for CES. You can drag the thread into a map and it will bring up the profiles of those on the mail, note preferences (for food in this case) and suggest restaurants in the area. You can also take an email message, pop up the profiles of those on the message, takes an address from email and show it a map.
And third party applications aren’t being left out. The image above clearly shows integration with MySpace, for example. This is where Yahoo’s ambitions around Zimbra, which it acquired late in 2007 for $350 million, become more clear. The new platform for developers is based in part on Zimbra’s technology.
The first pieces of this strategy were being put in place as far back as late 2006, when Yahoo began rolling out integration of Yahoo Mail and instant messaging. Messages can now seamlessly transfer back and forth between IM and email, something no other web mail application does. It’s clear that even then Yahoo was thinking long term about the future of the mail interface.
It’s unfortunate that Yahoo, which has had a muddled past at best with regard to social networking, is referring to the product as “Life.” It’s too close to Microsoft’s Live strategy of bucketing online services under a new brand. It’s gone nowhere but sideways over the last couple of years, and shows that repackaging and marketing do little to drive user adoption in today’s Internet.
But the name aside, and despite my previous criticism, Yahoo Life looks like an intelligent social architecture for Yahoo. Assuming all this social networking stuff isn’t just a fad (it isn’t), then it makes sense for Yahoo to focus their resources in this fight. Of course, developers will now have yet another platform to build to, beyond the Facebook and Google ones that exist today.
All images are courtesy of Dan Farber.
Looks like Yahoo! is really stepping up and giving Google a run for their money, though I would of liked the name ‘Inbox 2.0′ a little bitter.
We possessed so much API, web services, etc. but we still using them separately to make our life easier but when a company and not a little one understand that we need to merge them, it’s just fantastic ! I’m really impatient to see what it looks.
Instead of coming up with stuffs that we don’t need, why not try fixing the Yahoo Mail spam filtering! My yahoo email address of 9 years attracts tons of spam daily, even the obvious ones manage to get into the inbox.
Mike,
Yahoo has had a miserable journey with the SN’s, it hasn’t gone well with MASH which they introduced last year, now with there upcoming LIFE, yes very close to be called Live would it mean getting closer to MS :).
Yahoo would have to reinvent the wheel, which it started in mid 90’s it has been struggling hard to get on to terms and with Jerry leading the pact, i see some hope in getting things moving.
Yahoo has been powering the mail, messaging, but they are a big let down in search, SN and mashing it up, FlickR is there only survival strategy and good run for money, until and unless they have had to acquire FB in early stage, which they are repenting now.
Yahoo, with ZIMBRA in there kitty, they need to focus well on to getting more LIFE to office,search and Mashup’s which Google boys are chasing well.
I love Yahoo but i would love to sleep with Google
Well…y! Life seems to be a good idea for the only reason that most of our social network/contact resides either in
a. mobile (i.e. contact book), or
b. email app (i.e. address book)
Hope Y! Life doesn’t get “(s)mashed” the way, mash was !
-sinha.
http://www.pluggd.in
Do I have to make another social page for myself? What we need is a translator that will pull my facebook or myspace page into open social, life 2.0, etc cause I don’t have time to keep re-inventing myself……I know….wah…..
Nice move from Yahoo. Surprisingly fresh new year’s start, I guess.
For the better good.
http://pa.gd
Is Microsoft going to acquire Yahoo soon? Is there any strategic correlation between Yahoo Life and Microsoft’s Live?
The screen shot looks dull. By the way I like Mash.
Here is my take:
http://www.centernetworks.com/.....yahoo-life
Yahoo needs to acquire AOL/AIM and at least 1 of my predictions is already coming true; we are going forward with applications that are time savers and not time wasters.
Interesting life of Yahoo…
Oh wow, they took MSN Spaces and figured a way to inplant that into their business model. When will search engines quit copying each other, they lack originality.
The sad thing is, all the examples in the “proof of concept” seem so useless to me. It may be cool but it’s nothing you’d ever really use in real life. The fact that they couldn’t think of even one truly useful thing to do with this technology makes me wonder about its significance.
A new brand of Yahoo is realy too close to Microsoft’s Live strategy and
it’s unfortunate.
Social networking - what a joke!!!! YAHOO continues to make modifications which continue to reduce my use of their site. I guess in our form over function society they have to keep up…
Each time they move closer to social the more I move away. Yahoo has a good, solid set of tools. Increase usability and functionality before you focus on the social aspects.
Yahoo is making the same mistakes over and over and over again. They cannot be everything to everyone. Pick a path and stick to it.
Amazing to think they are the number one company in terms of eyeballs on the internet, yet they continually change focus and drive away from their customers.
Michael, I think this product is fantastic. I never use Facebook but millions of users like me live in Yahoo! mail. Why? We started using it in 1995 or 96 and we hate to change our email address, familiarity etc.
Anyway I use Flickr and all of my contacts are in Yahoo! so this is a great product for me.
Also Yahoo! is a trusted brand.
I am definitely looking forward to this product.
this is a smart play. yahoo mail is definitely the key. it drove the success of yahoo front page and by extension several yahoo channels.
Nice resolution on that image… Did you take the photo with a cellphone then edit it in MS Paint?
Looks like Yahoo is inching closer to have a one stop Single Social Interface that gives me a one stop place to manage my social Internet.
I really think they are onto what will be the next generation of Social Internet Adoption. The next wave of social network users have already embraced and adopted Internet and Email as a essential tool. They don’t fully understand social networks and need a simple interface to interact with the social world.
I enjoy Google and their platform for doing this, however it is something I have to assemble and build from all the Google parts, it doesn’t have a single interface ready to go with a pretty name like Yahoo Life!
Nice work Yahoo!
It’s a life engine!
Hopefully they will figure out how to do SEF URLS.
i use yahoo mail , yahoo messenger , i love to blog i have tried many sites nothing compares to the yahoo360 where on the page is your blogging capabilities so you can get your thought out there i cant stand flicker i liked it when it was yhoo pics and photo stream i hope alot of 360 will be intregrated since that why i am on the pc
I am really wondering what is happening with Y360..I’ve heard they are making a transition for the better and I also heard they are closing the site down..it has many glitches and can be very frustrating..can someone please tell me what exactly is going to happen to this site..I happen to love this site and pray they do not get rid of it..it is a nice place for social networking
Could someone give us some CLEAR and DEFINE answers to what the future holds for Y360