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Yahoo Profiles Evolve into a Social Network

posted on October 17, 2008


The email said…

cody simms (Cody) wants to connect to you on Yahoo! Once connected, you will be able to view cody simms (Cody)’s profile and easily share stuff like updates, interests, and more.

To connect to cody simms (Cody), click here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/accept/…..

Thanks,

The Yahoo! Team

And I clicked……"delete."

My first thought was, "Yahoo doesn’t have a social network, I’m not clicking on that link." You see, while there’d been much talk of Yahoo either building a social network–or buying one–I’d simply forgotten about it. Honestly, most of my recent thoughts about Yahoo have been along the lines of "I wonder who will buy Yahoo now?"

So, my bad. Yahoo has indeed launched a new social network and I’ve added Yahoo employee Cody as my first (perhaps only) friend. If you can’t wait to waste hours of your life on yet another social network, have at it!


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  • http://www.greatpriceshere.com Nicole Price

    Am taking you at your word and giving it a shot!

    Nicole Price’s last blog post..Mobile Accessories

  • Charlotte

    The comments from long-time Yahoo users are pouring in and they are 98% negative: http://www.yprofileblog.com/blog/2008/10/16/welcome-to-the-new-profile s-blog/#comments

    If Yahoo wanted to drive away a huge market for their services — users who want anonymity & privacy — they’ve managed to find the perfect way to do it. The Yahoo role-play community is particularly up in arms because Yahoo gave no notice of the change before wiping out all the information users had placed in their old profiles. It’s another self-inflicted wound and a completely unnecessary one, to boot. Too bad you have little more idea what the existing Yahoo user base found attractive about the old profile system than Yahoo does. Blind leading the blind….

  • http://i-trepreneur.com Internet Entrepreneur

    Don’t really see a point in setting up a profile on Yahoo!. I mean, I see the company’s goals here, but I do not see any user benefits. After all it’s just another Facebook, however tied to a dying Search Engine.

    Internet Entrepreneur’s last blog post..Will the SEO era come to an end in 2 years?

  • http://www.dealgiant.co.uk Saz

    worth a try to see if they have anything orignal…off to yahoo profiles

    Saz’s last blog post..Virgin Mobile Launches Mobile Broadband – Get Generous 3GB USB Virgin USB Sticks Now!

  • http://www.jordankasteler.com/utah-seo-pro-blog/ Utah SEO Pro

    So do they call this Yahoo720?

    Utah SEO Pro’s last blog post..Link Metrics for SEO

  • http://thisismyurl.com Christopher Ross

    I can’t ever really get into Yahoo, I’ve tried but they won’t let me use my own email address and I hate the thought of having to have one of their silly hosted emails for most of their services. My Flikr account is bad enough.

    Christopher Ross’s last blog post..Free Magazine WordPress Theme

  • http://sleepyblogger.com robyn tippins

    Andy,
    I don’t think Cody is everyone’s first friend, just that he likely invited you because you are probably in his address book. Cheers!

    robyn tippins’s last blog post..BlogActionDay – Aging Out of Foster Care

  • http://www.dstudiobali.com/webdesign/busby-seo-test-page/ Busby SEO

    I do not see any user benefits

    Busby SEO’s last blog post..By: shootantio

  • http://www.downloadic.com Downloadic

    I can’t ever really get into Yahoo, too.

  • http://solinkable.com SoLinkable

    meh, Yahoo. Didn’t they just reset all the users profiles on their network? Way to go…

    SoLinkable’s last blog post..Yzerman to lead Canada’s efforts for 2010 Olympics

  • http://kidsallright.com Cody Simms

    Hi Andy,
    Thanks for accepting my connection request. It wasn’t automated; I was inviting you so you could check out the beginnings of our service. To be clear, we aren’t planning to use this as a new social network.

    The new Universal Profile is a step toward helping us realize the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS).

    We’re making all of Yahoo! more social by integrating social features into our Front Page, Mail, Messenger and more. And we’re opening up the APIs to allow developers to access users Profile data, Connection data, and more (all with explicit user permission via OAuth of course). We’re also opening up developer canvases on some of our top properties like the Front Page, Mail, Search (see Searchmonkey already) and more.

    To learn more about Y!OS, check out:
    http://www.kidsallright.com/blog/2008/09/18/yahoo-open-strategy-overvi ew/
    or
    http://www.kidsallright.com/blog/2008/09/18/yos-on-thesocialwebtv/

    You’ll be hearing a lot more about Yahoo! becoming more social and open as we roll these features out across our biggest services and as we open up access to the data via APIs and to the services (Front Page, Mail, Search) themselves via our Application Platform (with OpenSocial support).

    Cheers,
    -c

    Cody Simms
    Y!OS Product Management

    Cody Simms’s last blog post..Girl Talk @ Yahoo! Open Hack Day 2008

  • http://www.shareshack.net david king

    i agree with Internet Entrepreneur, with the likes of social giants facebook. whats the point?

  • Travis E.

    Social network? More like socialist.

    Andy, please let me make this clear – I do not doubt your capabilities as a journalist. However, one of your responsibilities is to try and remain as objective as possible and to see the story from as many angles as possible.

    This reckless move on Yahoo!’s part has jeopardized their ability to retain thousands of socially active chatters (including a very large market of online role-players).

    Robyn Tippins herself, I recognize as a community manager working with Jim Stoneham and Melissa Daniels, the two people who (as far as I can tell) are responsible for this decision.

    As of five minutes ago, Melissa’s blog has just hit 1900 comments. I can still count the number of positive ones using only one hand.

    A 5-minute google search, as I’ve also commented on that blog, quickly returned three nasty headlines and some very juicy quotes about how extremely pissed off Yahoo!’s midnight eviction has made their userbase.

    http://www.yprofileblog.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/16/welcome-to-the-n ew-profiles-blog

    I would highly recommend, for the sake of journalistic objectivity if nothing else, that you take an hour to go over some of these comments.

  • http://www.xeltek.com MGA

    Everybody’s yahoo email is like a back-up account. And from my side, i only set to send my junk emails to yahoo, which i don’t find very convenient to use as my primary email address.

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  • http://www.ipwner.net/ipwner iPwner

    I doubt it will ever become as successful as Facebook or Myspace. Only the original sites will succeed. If Yahoo comes up with something unique that will interest everyone and make them want to join then that will bring them a lot of users. Then they would be able to compete with Facebook. But I doubt that would ever happen.

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