What Twitter is good for

By Charlene Li

Twitter has been hailed as "a total waste of time" to "the next generation IM". The site allows users to easily and frequently update what they are doing, through a Web browser, IM, or text message. It's been quite the buzz among early adopters -- Hitwise has some data on Twitter's growth. Robert Scoble calls it "blogging mated with IM" and is a frequent user. I've set up an account too, but I find it darn hard to remember to Twitter (I've set it up to nudge me every 24 hours, but I usually ignore it, my bad). And Mat Balez has a great post on why he thinks Twitter will be dead before the end of the year.

Here's our take: Twitter is going to be overused, overload people, who will then get turned off. There is just simply too much noise and not enough valuable "signal" to be worthwhile. I run into a case of TMI - too much information -- in that I don't really need to know that you're heading to the bathroom, etc.

Yet, I think there is real potential for a service like Twitter in several areas: 1) for small, trusted groups to keep up to date with each other; 2) publishing information easily; and 3) as an aggregator of information. Here are some more details:

1) Keeping in touch with people that matter. This is a service that my mother would love -- she always wants to know what I'm doing. The same thing applies to the workplace where team members can provide regular updates on their activities. This would be especially helpful on a project where fast communication can be a real advantage. For example, Disney has used blogs to track engineering activities - what if they could use a Twitter interface to do quick updates? There are several other enterprise ideas (collected by Kim Bayne) including a feedback channel for customer service, marketing ticker for press, and monitoring of system status. Crucial to this is the ability to segment your Twitter life into different areas -- my co-workers don't really need to know what I did over the weekend with my kids, and vice versa. Permissions make this a hairy nut to crack, but I think it's essential to make the Twitter pages more relevant to each of my social circles.
2) Easy publication. Up to now, user-generated content took a lot of work. But with Twitter, the idea is to make it so easy that you do it all the time -- you only have 140 characters in which to do this. But this is still hard, so some of the more promising innovations include TwiTunes that adds the current track you're listening to in iTunes to Twitter. My favorite is autotwit, which allows you to schedule future posts. But I can see a time when I could simply have Twitter updated from my Outlook Calendar. Permission controls again, will be essential.
3) Information aggregation and mashups. I can get Twitter Weather, as well as Tube Twitter which gives updates for specific London Underground lines. There are also mashups like Twittermaps.com, which uses specific tagging in Twitter to map your locations -- you write a post "L:94404" or any other geocodable location and you show up on a map. Cool, but not that useful. Even more interesting is Dealtagger.com, which allows any deals that you tag on the service to also show up on Twitter.

Intrigued? I certainly am. I still take the current Twitter-mania with a huge grain of salt, mostly because in its current state Twitter is going appeal only to a small subset of people who enjoy publicly sharing what they are doing. But watch out -- I think that like IM, blogging, and social networking, services like Twitter will evolve with new features and functionality to actually become useful communication and information tools.

Want more examples? Check out the Twitter Wiki for the latest. And please, let us know how you see a service like Twitter evolving.

Tags: Groundswell, Forrester, twitter

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Piracy and fair use in the eye of the beholder

By Josh Bernoff

Reading Steve Rubel's post on how to stop people stealing blog designs was interesting, but with music and movies getting ripped off left and right why is it at the top of the list to protect blog designs? Obviously because it hits close to home --this is our stuff you're stealing now, not corporate stuff.

This called to mind an experience I had a few years back with peer-to-peer company LimeWire in which an executive there told me the company made its money selling the professional version of its peer-to-peer client. Since LimeWire was widely used to share (steal?) copyrighted music, I had to ask "does anyone use peer-to-peer to steal LimeWire's professional version." The LimeWire guy was shocked, shocked!, at the idea that people would steal code -- the fruit of their labors.

The same sort of irony came to the fore when YouTube threatened TechCrunch over its articles about tools that allows people to download videos from YouTube.

This leads me to the following definitions:

Fair use is when I use your content.

Piracy is when you use my content.

Tags: PR, piracy, fair use, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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Dissecting Yahoo's reorg

The anticipated Yahoo! reorg hit tonight -- the press release with all of the details is up on Yahoo!'s site, as well as stories in the WSJ and CNET. Here's a quick summary and my take of the announcement.

Yahoo! will be reorged into three groups:

1) Audience Group, focused on audience building. Note that this is not about content creation, but instead, "focused on building the largest and most valuable audiences and relationships on and off the Yahoo! network". Kudos to Yahoo! for understanding that this is not about creating more and more content destinations a la Yahoo! Food, but creating new experiences, especially with social media. Despite Yahoo!'s acquisitions of Web 2.0 darlings like Flickr and del.icio.us, Yahoo!'s social media initiatives remain mostly isolated, siloed products like Yahoo! Answers. The key to their success: spreading the social media mindset far and wide into all of the dark corners of Yahoo!.

One other key thing to note: Yahoo! recognizes that the audience relationships are key both "on and off the Yahoo! network". I think this is a huge recognition that the world does not revolve around the the yahoo.com domain and is moving into the mobile and devices space. I'm also looking forward to seeing the expansion of Yahoo! Widgets beyond desktop widgets and into more Web-based widgets a la Google Gadgets for Web pages.

Of all the groups, I think this is the one that will make or break Yahoo!'s strategy. In the end, the race is not to be the best search engine technology-wise, or to have the most advertisers. It's about being relevant to your audience, no matter where they go or what they do. This has always been Yahoo!'s core strength and I'm glad to see they are putting it front and center where it belongs. Now, they have this small detail of hiring an executive to lead this group....

2) Advertisers & Publishers Group. In what is being seen as a CEO-grooming move, current Yahoo! CFO Susan Decker will be shifting over to the revenue generating side of the business. A key challenge: regaining momentum lost with the delay in launching the new search advertising platform. But even more important will be the integration of Yahoo!'s leading brand advertising solutions with search -- a potentially powerful and potent advertising offering that ties bridges the consideration gap between brand awareness and purchase.

3) Technology Group. This group centralizes technology development under CTO Farzad Nazem. This means that core platform infrastructure -- like social media, search, communication, and very importantly, profile/identity management will be under one unified roof. In the past, there appeared to be individual product teams developing these core technologies in isolation of each other. The most glaring example is identity. I actually have TWO profiles on Yahoo! -- one that's associated with my Yahoo! account and another that's part of my Yahoo! 360 page. The new centralized technology group will certainly help rationalize such inconsistencies, but a key challenge will be maintaining that consistency while giving enough room to allow developers to innovate broadly -- and quickly.

One last thing of note: the press release contained a coherent mission statement for Yahoo! -- "to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world's knowledge." I really like this because it puts "people" at the center of Yahoo!'s strategy. Compare this to Google's mission "to organize the world's information" and you get an idea of how each company's battle plan. I have been a long-time Yahoo! user and this past year saw my slow defection from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail and Yahoo! Calendar to Google Calendar. I still use Yahoo! Maps for local searches, but am finding my loyalty shifting there as well to Google Maps simply because of the availability of the Google search box in my browser. It breaks my heart, because I do have this emotional attachment to Yahoo! and would love to give them a chance to win back more of my online experiences.

So kudos to Yahoo! for taking the bold, tough move -- I'm looking forward to seeing what transpires in the next few months. I'd love to hear what you think of the reorg -- and what you think Yahoo!'s biggest challenges going forward will be. How could Yahoo! win *your* loyalty?


Technorati Tags: yahoo, reorg, google

Google + YouTube: What it means

So here’s the next big rumor – that Google will buy YouTube for $1.6 billionM. The WSJ article, the TechCrunch post had some of the early takes, but rather than add to the furor of whether the rumor is true or not, I’m going to focus on why Google and YouTube would be interested in working together.

Here’s my quick take on the rumored acquisition:

Why would Google buy YouTube? To start, 35 million users in the US and 100 million daily video views. But it’s not just the sheer numbers that grabs Google’s attention. YouTube is a gem because it figured out what Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and all of the other video players in the marketplace couldn’t – that it’s not about the video. It’s really about the community that’s around the video.

Take a look at the screenshot below of the same “Extreme Diet Coke And Mentos Experiment” video on YouTube and Google Video. You’ll notice that YouTube has many things you can do with the video – rate it, save it to favorites, comment on it, share it, see other related videos, and view the user’s playlists, etc. I think you get the idea.

Then take a look at the Google screenshot. Let’s see… you can add a comment (that’s new). There are a few other additional features like browsing related videos or via tags. But clearly, the focus is on the big, dominant video player.

YouTube is winning the hearts of the audience because video search simply doesn’t work. You have to instead rely on the opinions, ratings, and playlist compilations of others to discover good video. 

Why would YouTube want to be bought by Google? My colleagues, Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, discussed earlier this week in their blogs that earlier this week that YouTube faces substantial risk with lawsuits coming from music and video copyright holders, and how they could potentially address those concerns – namely by developing technologies to identify copyrighted materials against a body of work provided by the copyright holders. But who is in a better position to develop that technology – 60 burnt out people at YouTube or the legendary technical minds at Google?

Moreover, Josh points out that YouTube faces potential “cease and decease” actions from copyright holders, and risks following in the footsteps of Napster where it could its activities can be seriously compromised. But this morning, Josh and I discussed that a copyright holder would be much more likely to negotiate and partner with Google than a start-up like YouTube. Update: Josh just posted his thoughts on the rumored acquisition as well.

Is YouTube worth $1.6B? You betcha. That’s 4 cents per video stream ($1.6B divided by 100 million daily views * 365 days) and it’s still growing. Another way to think of it is that YouTube has roughly 50 million users (35M in the US according to Nielsen NetRatings, and probably another 15M worldwide) which comes out to $32 per user. It’s high, but it’s also reasonable.

Granted, YouTube is just beginning to monetize its audience, but having access to  Google’s über-ad network gives it a huge leg up. But this is where I hope YouTube stays the course in not cluttering up its unique interface with sponsored text ads, or its video experience with pre- and post-roll video ads.

The real opportunity for YouTube is to create a completely different kind of advertising form, one that is based on community engagement and involvement, rather than the traditional interruptive style of advertising. Take a look at their home page – here’s a screenshot from today. There’s a small text link to a “Follow the Finger” video contest sponsored by Butterfinger (screenshot also included). Advertisers are loathed to develop these special campaigns together – they would much rather slap on existing banners and promotions. But given the size and attractiveness of the YouTube audience, the site can command not only top dollar with exclusiveness, but also demand that advertisers adhere to specific standards that guarantee the best user experience.

If the acquisition goes forward, Google will be pressured to quickly realize a return on its first major investment. My hope is that Google will resist the temptation to turn YouTube into yet another cluttered ad space and allow the company to push advertisers into this new, engaged form of advertising.

Google Finance: Nice charts, but users won’t switch quickly

By Charlene Li

Google Finance launched tonight – I had a sneak peak from Google last week and got a chance to play with it a bit after it went live tonight. I also had a chance to speak with a Yahoo! spokesperson after the Google site launched and was able to get their reaction. Here’s my quick take on the new service and what it means:

There are three new features in Google Finance that stood out for me:

-         Search. No need to know the ticker symbol of a company. I could type in company names like Home Depot and Target, and get the full information page in a wink. On Yahoo! Finance, MSN Money, and Marketwatch.com, I have to know the ticker symbol. And even when I use the lookup, especially for Target, I get a long list of companies with the name “target” in them. Finally, I don’t feel like a dummy when trying to look up companies!

-         Charts. Google took a page from its Maps product and makes the charts interactive – you can drag them back and forth over time to see how prices have changed, without having to wait for the page to refresh. Another nice feature – key new s stories are mapped out on the chart (see the screenshot above).

-         Community advocates on message boards. Google will have as part of every publicly traded company, a message board that is a part of Google Groups. Taking a page from the popular Yahoo! Finance message boards, Google has created a discussion area for every publicly traded company (or so it appears). Inappropriate and spam postings have always been the bane of the Yahoo! boards, so Google’s put in place a few things, most notably the use of employees (yes, employees!) who will police the boards. What strikes me as ironic is that rather than employ technology to solve the problem, Google is using people to monitor the boards, in much the same way they review the content for search ads. Amazingly, there is no ability for users to flag posts for review – if quality is important, why doesn’t Google leverage its users to be the front lines in the fight for quality?

So overall, Google has done a very, very nice job pulling together a financial portal. Oops, did I just say “portal”? Sure looks like Google is pursuing that strategy now, doesn’t it! And rightly so – just take a look at the discussion board about Google and you’ll see person after person saying that they are defecting from their current finance site (mostly Yahoo!) to use Google.

But I frankly think that we won’t be seeing a mass migration of people from other finance sites to Google anytime soon. The most obvious defectors will be Google enthusiasts – they won’t be able to wait to add Google Finance to their personalized home page. But I believe that most mainstream financial site users will stick with their current sources for now, primarily because it’s simply a pain to have to re-enter your detailed portfolio information again! Are nice charts and company look-ups enough to shift people over to Google Finance? And don’t forget that Yahoo! and MSN have invested heavily in producing their own content, and I fully expect that they will improve their search, charts, and boards quickly as well.

But these features are all window dressing. In the end, Google Finance is a definite improvement on existing services, but it didn’t blow me away. It felt like it was incremental improvements rather than something that fundamentally changed the financial site game.

I believe that Yahoo! actually has the opportunity to change the game, but only if it taps into its nascent social computing strategy. For example, it may give users the technology to rank posts on quality or flag inappropriate posts. But also think about the power of tags on posts, or the ability to see rich profiles that enable users to connect with each other based on their similar investment goals. Think of a social network where I could find working moms who have to balance saving for college, retirement -- and are in the midst of building a house.

So kudos to Google for launching a nice new site that ups the ante, but don’t rest on your laurels for long – your competitors will quickly match you feature for feature, and raise you with their larger installed user bases.

Forrester's Social Computing report

By Charlene Li

We just published a new report, "Social Computing: How Networks Erode Institutional Power, And What To Do About It" (available to clients only, but it's getting some good distribution as I'm getting pinged about it left and right). Here's the Executive Summary:

"Easy connections brought about by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists."

Forrester defines social computing as "A social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions." We also believe that three tenets define social computing:

1) innovation will shift from top-down to bottom-up;
2) value will shift from ownership to experience; and
3) power will shift from institutions to communities?

Now, this sounds all simplistic and theoretical, but I think there's a great deal of power in the idea of social computing. With full respect to the definition of Web 2.0, I believe that the concept of social computing is the underpinning of much of the pain that companies are feeling around new technologies like blogging and RSS. But as I often stress, it's not about the technologies but about the new relationships that users will form. Technologies will come and go, but the power built on the relationships created by social computing will endure.

To fully appreciate the value of social computing, companies have to let go of control. That means letting customers control the brand if you're a marketer, and it means enabling new enterprise tools that IT can't easily control to attract and support employees with high social computing needs. In many ways, this is the source of the great distress that I routinely hear from corporate managers.

The goal of the report is to be the foundation piece for a key area of research for Forrester. So if you've had a chance to read the report, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Social search panel with SDForum, Tues. Jan. 10th

By Charlene Li

I'll be moderating a panel at a SDForum Search SIG meeting this Tuesday (yes, tomorrow) on social search. This is a favorite topic of mine as it represents the intersection of two of my research areas, seach and social computing. I think it's also an important battleground in the next phase of search, especially because companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft are eons ahead of Google in terms of personalization and established relationships with consumers.

I hope you'll be able to join me and a very interesting panel as we explore how social search is transforming the user experience. Personally, I've been using all of the services from our panelists -- Del.icio.us, Digg, Kaboodle, and Wink -- and recently purchased a laptop sleeve (after weeks of online shopping) thanks to a tag on Wink. 

Aside: After his CES keynote, I asked Larry Page how Google felt about personalization -- it seems there's a love/hate relationship in the way Google uses registration and cookies -- they know it's necessary to provide a personalized experience but make it pretty cumbersome to do so. Larry gave a typical Google non-answer, but acknowledged that Yahoo! and Microsoft were significant competitors in this area (they have a bit of a head start).

SDForum Search SIG - Search Different: Tagging, Social Bookmarking and Sharing - Jan 10th @ Yahoo - Featuring Del.icio.us, Digg, Kaboodle & Wink

The session will focus on “alternate” search mechanisms that have been developed over the past 12 months such as bookmarking, tagging, rating, sharing and any combination thereof – generally in a social context. These concepts have grown to being at the core of many Web 2.0 companies, and offer a different way of finding or discovering “stuff” online – as a complement or alternative to traditional search engines.

As usual with Search SIG events, we will have a panel moderated by the host of the session, followed by demonstrations from presenting companies. Our host for the event will be Charlene Li, from Forrester Research and will be joined by 4 founders of exciting startups:

• Joshua Schachter - Del.icio.us (recently acquired by Yahoo)
• Kevin Rose - Digg
• Manish Chandra - Kaboodle
• Michael Tanne - Wink

This session will take place on Tue Jan 10th at Yahoo’s HQ (701 First Avenue, Building C, Room 4&5 in Sunnyvale, CA), and will promptly start at 7:15PM (registration from 6:45PM on).

As to the agenda:

6:45-7:15pm - Registration / Food & Drink
7:15–7:20pm - A few words about the Search SIG
7:20-8:20pm - Act I: State of the Art of “Searching Different” through a panel discussion led by our moderator, Charlene Li
8:20-8:30pm - Intermission: Search Networking & Geeking Out
8:30-9:00pm - Act II: Product Demos from Del.icio.us, Digg, Kaboodle and Wink – and Q&A with the audience
9:00-9:15pm - Open Mike Geek: Announcements (30 seconds of fame & fortune)
9:16pm - You Don’t Have To Go Home, But You Can’t Stay Here

Attendance is free for SDForum members, and charge is $15 for non-members – paid at the door. You can register for the event on the SDForum website, where you will also find the latest information about the session.

The session will focus on “alternate” search mechanisms that have been developed over the past 12 months such as bookmarking, tagging, rating, sharing and any combination thereof – generally in a social context. These concepts have grown to being at the core of many Web 2.0 companies, and offer a different way of finding or discovering “stuff” online – as a complement or alternative to traditional search engines.

As usual with Search SIG events, we will have a panel moderated by the host of the session, followed by demonstrations from presenting companies. Our host for the event will be Charlene Li, from Forrester Research and will be joined by 4 founders of exciting startups:

• Joshua Schachter - Del.icio.us (recently acquired by Yahoo)
• Kevin Rose - Digg
• Manish Chandra - Kaboodle
• Michael Tanne - Wink

This session will take place on Tue Jan 10th at Yahoo’s HQ (701 First Avenue, Building C, Room 4&5 in Sunnyvale, CA), and will promptly start at 7:15PM (registration from 6:45PM on).

As to the agenda:

6:45-7:15pm - Registration / Food & Drink
7:15–7:20pm - A few words about the Search SIG
7:20-8:20pm - Act I: State of the Art of “Searching Different” through a panel discussion led by our moderator, Charlene Li
8:20-8:30pm - Intermission: Search Networking & Geeking Out
8:30-9:00pm - Act II: Product Demos from Del.icio.us, Digg, Kaboodle and Wink – and Q&A with the audience
9:00-9:15pm - Open Mike Geek: Announcements (30 seconds of fame & fortune)
9:16pm - You Don’t Have To Go Home, But You Can’t Stay Here

Attendance is free for SDForum members, and charge is $15 for non-members – paid at the door. You can register for the event on the SDForum website, where you will also find the latest information about the session.

CES wrap-up

By Charlene Li

Here’s a quick overview of some of the things I picked up after two days at CES.

-         A Tale Of Two Keynotes. I attended both the Yahoo! and Google keynotes and Friday and the contrast was obvious, starting from the music and ending with the celebrities. I have to say, I really enjoyed seeing Tom Cruise during the Yahoo! speech, but felt that it was fairly canned, especially Ellen DeGeneres’ “monologue” about the technical problems she had. The Yahoo! speakers were well rehearsed, but they were, well, rehearsed. In contrast, Larry Page was far from the most dynamic speaker, frequently checking his paper notes. But there was a down to earth quality of his presentation, and the fact that he took many questions from audience members brought a man of the people quality to the keynote. But by far the best part of the Google keynote was Robin Williams’ co-hosting of the Q&A (I thankfully escaped any ribbing when I asked a question!). You couldn’t have asked for better entertainment than the parody of our own questions.

-         Getting trampled. Just one other observation about the keynotes. Maybe it was the 9am start time, maybe it was the company, but the Yahoo! keynote wasn’t full and while the audience was attentive, it wasn’t energized. I was able to walk in, and have nobody else sitting next to me in the balcony. Contrast to the Google keynote, which was near mayhem outside the theater doors just before the start of the keynote. I showed up 15 minutes early, stood in the wrong line (with ticket holders instead of press) and proceeded to get pushed, shoved, and almost trampled by irate ticket holders who couldn’t get in because they had all shown up past the deadline. And there were about 200 more people without tickets hoping to get in anyway at the last minute. The result: I felt very fortunate to finally get in, but was pretty shaken from the mayhem. I knew that the Google keynote was the hottest ticket at CES, but didn’t anticipate just how aggressive people could be.

-         Convergence? Didn’t see it. This show was supposed to be about “convergence” but darn if I couldn’t find it at the show. I haven’t been to CES since 1995, primarily because my research focus is on media and marketing – you know, the stuff that convergence is supposed to bring to devices. The Yahoo! and Google keynotes gave me the excuse to come to Las Vegas and indulge my gadget-loving side, but there was little convergence happening outside of Yahoo’s announcements. The only other interesting example was TiVo’s current online offerings, available on the Series 2 machines (I just ordered one so I’m eager to try it out). TiVo’s CEO Tom Rogers eagerly discussed with a group of reporters its anticipated high definition product (scheduled to be introduced mid-year) which will take advantage of its broadband connection to provide even more online services. While I anticipate more devices to integrate online services, it will be deals like the one between TiVo and Yahoo! that will be core to making such convergence services work for consumers.

-         My favorite gadget. I heard about this one when a TV crew picked me out while I was noshing my lunch outside the main hall with some Forrester colleagues. Interestingly, they wanted to interview me and not my other (male) colleagues because I was a woman. The device: the Connect Io Intelligent Oven that turns on by the Internet or cell phone (and can keep food cool before it turns on). What, were you expecting me to pick a cell phone or HDTV? As a working mom, I thought this was just the coolest thing – I can throw the frozen pizza in the oven in the morning, ping it to preheat and cook the pizza when I pick up my kids, and have pizza on the table in 5 minutes. Now, I just need an applicance that will wash, peel, and cook the veggies for me too!

-         Pedal power in Las Vegas. I rented a bike to get around (photo proof is below) and it totally made the CES experience enjoyable. (My collegue Josh Bernoff did the same). I was able to get from my hotel on the Strip (Harrah’s) to the convention center in 10 minutes – and that includes abiding by all traffic lights. Racking the bike is easy – there are stands right outside Central Hall (Sands is a bit trickier – the only rack I could find was in the back in the service entrance). And visiting other hotels around town is easy – simply check the back in at the Bell Desk. Las Vegas Cyclery makes it easy by dropping off/picking up the bike from your hotel. Only other recommendations: bring your own helmet and wear reflective clothing.

Yahoo! Go shows how to connect the Internet to devices

Yahoo! announced its new Yahoo! Go suite, which consists of Yahoo! Go Mobile, Yahoo! Go TV, and Yahoo! Go Desktop. I think it’s significant because Yahoo! shows how a traditional Internet content and service provider can link to devices like phones and TVs. Here’s a quick overview and specific highlights:

-         The Yahoo! Go concept: Anything that you can access on Yahoo! through your browser will also be available on your desktop (outside of your browser), on your phone, and on your TV.

-         Yahoo! Go Mobile is a really nice connection between your phone and your Yahoo service. Snap a photo and have it appear on Yahoo! Photos (Finally! An easy way to get photos off of my camera phone). A phone number you enter on Yahoo! Addresses shows up on your phone’s address book. I personally LOVE this idea of a universal contact list, especially as I am prone to losing my cell phone!

-         Yahoo! Go Desktop is a repositioning of Yahoo! Widgets (a.k.a. Konfabulator) to puts individual services directly on the desktop. Yahoo! also announced Dashboard, which is very similar to Google Sidebar and MSN’s Dashboard (available only to MSN ISP customers). One key improvement: the user can see activities from people on their buddy lists, for example, a new post on Yahoo! 360 or Web page tagged via Yahoo! My Web. This is similar to the connectivity within Windows Live which taps into Messenger to show “gleams” of activity by your buddies.

-         Yahoo! Go TV which puts music playlists and Yahoo’s video search on the TV. It’s great especially for showing a slideshow of your Yahoo! Photos on the big screen. I didn’t find this rendition that compelling (nice, just not compelling). But tucked away in the corner of the demonstrations was a concept screen that showed how content like RSS feeds and Yahoo! entertainment content could be integrated on to the television. For example, if you’re watching a football game, go and check your sports feeds. If you’re watching a movie, go and get more information about the star, what other movies they are in, or even purchase the DVD on Yahoo! shopping (see the screenshots I’ve uploaded below -- note that one of the screenshots includes an in-line add for a Howard Stern show.) The compelling idea is that you can customize the television experience with content from the Web.   

A few thoughts on these announcements:

-         Compared to the reported announcements (via WSJ) from Google later today, Yahoo!’s Go announcements have a strong connection to consumer electronics and will have a much bigger impact over time than either Google Video or Google Pack. This is because it sets off a race among phone and device makers to tap into the Yahoo!’s large user base. But it’s also worrying because the investment that service providers have made in their own services is now to tie in users becomes less important if the user can take their services with them from phone to phone, provider to provider. I believe that device manufacturers will be more willing than their provider counterparts to let users choose between Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google mobile solutions – or mix and match as they please.

-         Go Mobile in particular expands Yahoo’s reach beyond the desktop – Yahoo! stated that there are 2 billion mobile phone users around the world, compared to 900 million Internet users). To this point, Yahoo! allows for the first time new sign-ups to a Yahoo! account via Go Mobile.

-         Yahoo!’s promise to keep the platform open will be closely watched. At the conclusion of his speech, Terry Semel said “Personally, I believe that walled gardens are a thing of the past.” But what Yahoo! is doing is in many ways constructing a different kind of walled garden, albeit, one where Yahoo! serves as the gateway to the world of Internet content. For example, Yahoo! Go Mobile will allows users to access non-Yahoo! email accounts, as long as they are POP enabled. But this has to be set up via Yahoo! Mail and in this case, through Yahoo!’s paid Mail Plus service.

To put all of these announcements in perspective, I had an interesting discussion with Cammie Dunaway, Yahoo!’s CMO. She said, “Users don’t have an emotional bond with Google. But they have one with us.” To some degree, I agree with her on this. Google has a strong brand and has built a great deal of trust and goodwill thanks to its great search experience. But I don’t have my have my life on Google – it’s actually on Yahoo!. (Disclosure: My photos are on Yahoo! and Flickr, tags are on del.icio.us, personal email (and domain) are on Yahoo!, and I use Yahoo! Local and Maps regularly.) This could change as Google and Microsoft increase and improve their services, but it will take a lot to tear me away from my established habits. Having Yahoo! now also available on my devices potentially increases that stickiness.

My colleague Josh Bernoff, who is here at CES with me, used a car analogy to illustrate this. Yahoo! is like a tricked out Lincoln Navigator – it has everything you could ever want, from the DVD player and is comfortable to boot. You practically live in that car. Google’s car representation would be the Prius, which is environmental – its users have an emotional attachment to it for a completely different reason.

So here’s my question to you, dear blog readers. Do you have an emotional attachment to Google, or any other portal/search service? To what degree can Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, AOL, et. al. develop that bond with you? Or is it not about emotional attachments and all about utility. Would love to get your perspective, either in comments or directly via email.  

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us, puts tagging on the map

By Charlene Li

Yahoo! announced that it will purchase del.icio.us (posts by Yahoo! and del.icio.us give the details).

For those of you in the know, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service that allows its users to “tag” Web pages with short notes and save them on a centralized service. I’ve been using del.icio.us off and on for the past few months and just this morning set up a linkblog for this blog. Little did I know…

The acquisition by Yahoo! is significant for much the same reason why it bought other social computing darlings, Flickr and Konfabulator – Yahoo! is laying the groundwork for its users to add, personalize, and contribute their content and votes to the Web.

A very significant point is that del.icio.us will be working closely with Yahoo! Search. This is important because tagging will key to creating better search. Today, search relevance is determined by the number of links between pages – the more links you have to a page, the more relevant you are. Tagging is another way of doing this – you can see it in action today on start-up tagging engines like Wink and Raw Sugar. Tags on Web pages provide an additional level of relevancy to that page, and Yahoo! will be in a prime position to leverage it.

But tagging in of itself isn’t enough – it’s also the reputation of the taggers that’s important. And here is where the rest of Yahoo! formidable assets come to play – with 191 million registered users, social networking in the form of Y! 360, and personalized Web experiments with MyWeb, Yahoo! has the suite to actually pull off a really cool social and personalized search service.

The key: making del.icio.us and tagging accessible to users. It took me a while to “get” del.icio.us, (and the URL still isn’t easy for me to type!) The key problem is this is not an interface that my mother – or for that matter, most of my techie friends – understands. (Dave Taylor put together a good primer on “What’s so cool about del.icio.us?” that’s a good intro – check out the last question where Dave asks Jeremy Zawodny if Yahoo! will buy del.icio.us).

For this reason, I’m thrilled that Yahoo! purchased del.icio.us and hopefully, will integrate it into its other services quickly. I’m also optimistic about the impact that social bookmarking and tagging will have on the search industry…look for Microsoft and Google to launch their own variations soon as well. But Yahoo!, with its millions of registered users AND an enthusiastic del.icio.us community (check on the comments on the announcement – they are universally ecstatic), Yahoo! will be setting the pace in this area.

I’m also including a few thoughts from my colleague, Chloe Stromberg, who is an active del.icio.us user and resident social computing guru:

Other media companies are still mulling over their position with social media, meanwhile Yahoo has quickly and assertively snapped up another key player in the social computing space.  This means that 1) the ingredient technologies that make up social media (RSS, tagging, search, etc) will work more seamlessly together; and 2) that social computing is being taken to the masses by a company that knows UI, marketing, and has a trusted relationship with valuable consumers.

For marketers, Yahoo’s decisive acquisitions in the social marketing space mean that social marketing is destined to move out of the experimental stage and become a more stable part of the marketing mix.

Another interesting point here is about timing -- the speed of technology adoption.  Social marketing technologies have their roots in the birth of the Internet (we’ve mentioned Firefly, PointCast, etc).  It may be that after *10 years*, consumers are actually catching on, and really getting some of the principles of what the Internet can do that other communication forms can’t.  This is like 3rd wave social computing, personalization, customization -- and Yahoo has been involved all along.  It’s just, finally, this time, it may be ready for prime time.