Yahoo begins the rollout of its new user profile today, which marks the first tangible product release for the social part of the Yahoo Open Strategy, or YOS. The profile is one of the anchors (mail is the other) to Yahoo’s strategy of turning the site into one big social network.
It’s been a long haul for the company, which first talked about the new strategy almost a year ago. More details, and a few conceptual screenshots, were announced at CES in January. A newcomer to Yahoo, VP Communities Jim Stoneham (he joined six weeks ago), is leading the team that’s creating new social features.
So here’s exactly what Yahoo is launching today: a new look for the user profile, and the ability to create “connections,” which are mutual friendships. That’s it for the front end. Yahoo has also created what they’re calling a “vitality system to share updates” on the back end, which is an engine to run activity stream-like content for future releases. See below for an example of the new profile. The rollout begins now, but some users won’t see it for a few hours. However, if you get someone who has it to add you as a connection, you’ll be in right away.
Over the next few months, they say, Yahoo properties will begin to integrate with the new profile. So if you answer a question at Yahoo Answers, for example, the activity will show up in your feed update. Eventually the front page of Yahoo Mail will show what your friends are up to as well. And one thing I really like – emails from your connections will be highlighted, so you can read them first.
If you have a Yahoo account, you can see your profile at profiles.yahoo.com/[username] (mine is here, but it hasn’t changed over to the new one yet).
The other half of Yahoo’s YOS strategy centers on an open strategy, particularly around search – see our update from April where some of those features were discussed and released.
I respect the people that can work so fervently on development for a so called ‘has been’ company that has plummeted in stock and brand value.
Maybe they know something we don’t.
looks a bit like the new facebook profiles …
Seems like a step in the right direction. Combine that with all the APIs they have. Not bad.
What’s their angle? Isn’t this Myspace, Facebook etc.
I see what they are trying to do – but worthless never the less.
LinkedIn and Facebook is a better solution.
Go Yahoo! Nice to see some new stuff coming down the pipe
Boo to the naysayers; change is good people, change is good
I second the thought. I would rather keep my profile data on Yahoo than useless Myspace or Facebook.
You are so right change is good, as long as it’s the right change, news flash; these profiles and Barack Obama aren’t the right change. So go on out there cast a vote for racism and socialism, and suck up to yahoo if it makes you feel good.
Poor Yahoo, they dont realize they are dead already
The only way for them is selling the search business to M$, which is still waiting for Yahoo’s stock to hit the 2 dollars a share hehe
a lost cause…
http://gatesand...s.blogspot.com/
Wow, this epitomizes Yahoo’s management problems of late. Here’s how:
Let’s assume that many Yahoo employees were working on this profile for at least 6 months. (Probably 3 years).
Ready to launch, so they roll in a new “VP” who has only been there for 6 weeks, and the new VP makes the announcement. ( It’s not this VP’s fault, he just got stuck there! )
Result — you get a demoralized team with a new “leader” who just got the credit for their work. Meanwhile, the team is burdened with a new suit from, of all places, Kodak (wtf !?!?)
This is the 3rd external “VP Community” hire in a row — Brian Bowman, Mike Speiser, now Eastman Kodak guy. As if there was no one at Yahoo they could give a VP job, especially in this area. Pathetic.
Of course, maybe the built the new profiles in 6 weeks, the new VP is rocking, and the team is fired up. Also, Sue Decker just got a patent on a new search algorithm. Or wait.. is that a new management consultant they brought in as VP of meetings?? Wow, no one wears a suit like that at the Yahoo campus. I hear he was pretty high up at McKenzie…
The empty profile is one seriously fugly page. The default picture looks like an exploding pumpkin head. What a turn-off.
Never take Yahoo since they constantly drift from their projects ..
Never take Yahoo seriously ** ..;)
Never take YOU seriously!
yea yahoo is great! wat u talkin’ bout?
This is a bit late… but better than never! I will use it along with the other social networking sites.
liking it so far, clean and mature.
lets hope it doesnt take the fb turn
I hate when Yahoo messes with profiles/alias’. Now, no matter what alias of mine I try to go to, it pulls up the profile for my main yahoo account. What is the point of aliases if they all point to the same profile.
I swear that’s what is driving me crazy about this revamp, too.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING AN ALIAS TO PROTECT YOUR ONLINE IDENTITY IF ALL YOUR YAHOO ALIASES NOW RE-DIRECT AN OUTSIDE PERSON TO YOUR MAIN “REAL” YAHOO PROFILE?!?
This is truly the STUPIDEST thing I’ve seen yet — and trust me, it’s not easy for Yahoo to top its own botched beta bonehead releases. But apparently Yahoo has decided for everyone that they’ll enjoy life more once you reveal more about yourself online.
Not to mention you can’t see another profile’s details unless that person adds you. HELLO, YAHOO! ATTENTION MORONS! Isn’t the whole POINT to a profile page so that you CAN learn something about someone before answering an out of the blue email or IM or a friend request that suddenly appears? And did it ever occur to Yahoo that many of their customers are NOT high school or college age kids, and that a profile does NOT need to be this all-inclusive “social networking hub” just because Yahoo is jealous of MySpace and Facebook’s revenue reports?
And while I’m at it, is everyone in Silicon Valley a nerd that is good at writing code, but has an utterly crappy sense of Art or Graphic Design? Seriously, was Yahoo PURPOSEFULLY trying to create the ugliest profile page that they could?
I swear, I saw a few people post this today at the profiles blog where people are just FURIOUS over this revamp, and now I think it’s true. I think Yahoo is purposefully trying to roll-out half-assed betas and bug filled, crappy looking new things to make the company less attractive for any takeover attempts, such as Microsoft coming round again…
Finally the profile page gets some attention !!
I swear that’s what is driving me crazy about this revamp, too.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING AN ALIAS TO PROTECT YOUR ONLINE IDENTITY IF ALL YOUR YAHOO ALIASES NOW RE-DIRECT AN OUTSIDE PERSON TO YOUR MAIN “REAL” YAHOO PROFILE?!?
This is truly the STUPIDEST thing I’ve seen yet — and trust me, it’s not easy for Yahoo to top its own botched beta bonehead releases. But apparently Yahoo has decided for everyone that they’ll enjoy life more once you reveal more about yourself online.
Not to mention you can’t see another profile’s details unless that person adds you. HELLO, YAHOO! ATTENTION MORONS! Isn’t the whole POINT to a profile page so that you CAN learn something about someone before answering an out of the blue email or IM or a friend request that suddenly appears? And did it ever occur to Yahoo that many of their customers are NOT high school or college age kids, and that a profile does NOT need to be this all-inclusive “social networking hub” just because Yahoo is jealous of MySpace and Facebook’s revenue reports?
And while I’m at it, is everyone in Silicon Valley a nerd that is good at writing code, but has an utterly crappy sense of Art or Graphic Design? Seriously, was Yahoo PURPOSEFULLY trying to create the ugliest profile page that they could?
I swear, I saw a few people post this today at the profiles blog where people are just FURIOUS over this revamp, and now I think it’s true. I think Yahoo is purposefully trying to roll-out half-assed betas and bug filled, crappy looking new things to make the company less attractive for any takeover attempts, such as Microsoft coming round again…
What took them so long?
More to the point, why didn’t they do more with? My new Yahoo profile looks like a stripped down version of Mash that has been pre-populated by information from my 360 page. There is an “About Me” modules and an “Update” module that looks like FriendFeed or Yahoo’s oneConnect app for the iPhone. Nearly all of what you see is a carry over from Mash, but lots of features form Mash aren’t there.
After 8 months of working on this, there is all they could come up with? And still no blog?
@ Dan
“I hate when Yahoo messes with profiles/alias’. Now, no matter what alias of mine I try to go to, it pulls up the profile for my main yahoo account. What is the point of aliases if they all point to the same profile.”
I agree, and the fact that there empty now i have to go back and edit crap.
Couldnt they just bring all info from old pages over or atleast seperate all the aliases thats the damn point of a aliase I know I wont be adding s**t to the new profile I dont want everybody to see everything on me through one profile.
Big Fail Yahoo
Um, where is ALL MY OLD PROFILE INFORMATION
How can anyone say this is positive?
Fabulous. I sign on today, and all my profiles, which were written as writing characters and contained detailed paragraphs I’d worked on for hours, had been erased from the first paragraph down.
Way to go, Yahoo. We can have advertisements for your matchmaking service shoved down our throats whenever we log into chat, but not a little pop up that says,
“Hey, by the way, for those of you who put thought into your profiles, you’ll need to copy and save them, cause we’re going to screw with them again, like we did when we shrunk your picture ridiculously small and replaced it with unused white space!”
@Noel & Dr Steve: Customer Care supposedly still has them, but YOU have to write them and ask for it back! How lame is that?
Add to that I know three people who wrote yahoo about needing their profile info 6 days ago – NO RESPONSE AT ALL.
I remember when the profiles were bland and boring, now they make a change? Personally I think they are very late in game, but lets see whats going to happen.
I don’t think its too late for them, that said they have to bring more (blogs, comments on blogs, apps, the whole thing)… Lets face it Yahoo has some of the most used sites in certian area’s and all those people have a yahoo profile…. I think they could over time crush facebook, and myspace… but they need to bring the functions to Yahoo first….
We’re rooting for Yahoo, there are some great people over there
http://www.BeatlesConcerts.com
Sweet! The return of fake underage stripper profiles! Man, I missed those…
the new profile system is a total dud …all my info lost ..my pic lost …needing re-entering and no way to retrieve or stay with the old system …100% fail Yahoo… this comes on top of the ugly changes to Flickr!! aaaghhh
its pretty encouraging to see positive changes coming from Yahoo despite their grave problems … may be they really know a few things that we don’t … keep it up … yahooooooooO!!!!
http://www.confiz.com
your offshore development partner
yahoo is dead. sooner board cashes $ on closing the sale with MS or AOL or whoever going to buy the dead meat – not working search, completely dead moral, ruined data systems-operations. Unfortunately, but fact.
IF I wanted to join facebook I would have. I have a myspace page and its far enough. I liked the old info I had on my profile, these new ones are pieces of crap.
Ok, now I go into their bot-infested chat rooms and I can’t even see if anyone is a real person by looking at their profile page. They’re all blank now.
Greatttttt….
What was wrong with a simple profile page???
And what language is Mr. Arrington speaking in his post? As a non-techhead, it makes no sense to me at all. Vitality system? Activity stream?
This is just another annoyance from Yahoo…
opps, alot of unhappy users at the yahoo Profiles News Blog
http://www.ypro...-blog/#comments
693 comments, mostly from people who don’t like it.
I love this concept. I also love so many of Yahoo apps: flickr, jumpcut… so many. I just can’t get my head around using Yahoo for mail or having to go to the site everyday. I haven’t been a regular there since 2000. We’ll see
The so called new profile makes me wanna say… “I’m out of here!”
Here is a thought. Why not bring back the good old days when live members could create rooms and invite just their friends and keep out unwanted guest perhaps BOTS out of the room. When you could easily find or join a friend in a room and not be bombarded by SPAMS and from BOTS that made allows members to mistakenly click on to their websites. Yahoo Boardmembers! Listen! Go back to the time when you were on the top list. Do you remember when you can get on to a room and not be bombarbed by filth generated by BOTS? When a privately created room could keep unwanted guest from enterning?
If you really want to keep BOTS out effectively why not add a time limit for entering the characters to a room? Why not close the chat room box if the characters are entered incorrectly to prevent BOTS from reentering characters again? Why not make the characters case sensitive? Why not add different colors and pattern to the characters and the background? Why not require user created chat passcode (not their login password) along with the characters? Why not block their IP? Why not block their domain? Why not block their DNS? Lots of possibilities but you decided to work on fixing parts of Yahoo that is not broke… the Profiles, the Photos, the ability to Create rooms. My friends have long since gone on to other places to chat and I thought I could convince them to come back. Now it seems impossible for when they found out about the Profile issue I received a “I told you so!” rant accompanied by a mockery of condescending spiteful mirth. Thank you Yahoo for enpowering me or perhaps other members to branch out and move on to other areas in the world wide web and not wonder about “what could have been if I had kept my conviction with Yahoo”. Keeping that conviction only got me a reasons of frustration.
Gary
Yahoo is getting almost universally NEGATIVE comments on their own blog about the new profiles. Funny thing is they site THIS blog as being positive. Here’s the direct quote from Melissa, their PR person:
There are lots of articles (with positive comments from actual users) that talk about how much people LIKE the new profiles system
Now I don’t know about you, but while the original blogger seems to think it’s wonderful, the responses are decidedly mixed at best, and I’m sure if anyone bothered to count, there are more negatives than positives. Yahoo is ignoring the feedback they are getting and pushing this on users.
guys…..please…. stop complaining abut Yahoo…. u all are behaving as if Google/Microsoft never screws up anything. please dont forget GMAIL is still beta almost after 5 years…
way to go Yahoo!!!
http://www.livbit.com
Never seen an MS product I liked (not that worked well anyway–hotmail, groups, etc.–yuck). Google’s beta e-mail kicks Y Mails backside (free version anyway), Google groups need more features, but they work okay for what they offer. Agreed Yahoo has the best stuff so far, but they keep screwing it up, taking away functionality and screwing up rollouts like this one. Not surprising they had to do some layoffs. I just hope the genius who botched the rollout went too. Everyone else I feel bad for.
Isn’t this just another Facebook or myspace type of thing?
This is a crock of royal shit!!!! No wonder I dont like yahoo. I like using alias names because I am a survivor of serious abuse and now you wanna go and pull this shit. Looks like yahoo is really a wast of time!!!!! And to think that revealing more about ourselves is better is a major joke! Why can’t you people just get your noses busy on something worth a shit??? Predators lurk on the internet, why the hell do I want to give out more information and lead them directly to me or my family? I am seriously upset about this garbage!!!
I don’t like the fact Yahoo took the slide shows and videos out of the 360 site. The only way to get to a video is through a link. I don’t like the profiles now cause they just look like another site and I don’t need any more sites. And Face Book they took a lot out of too. I liked the old Yahoo.
I’m hopeful that this latest incarnation will help yahoo gain the traction it needs. But with themost visited homepage already, they don’t need the traffic of social networking, they just need to monetize the traffic with e-commerce sales.
Yahoo.com
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