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.
…and, it doesnt work with my id at this point, some bug causes it to show in chinese. great!
from the Yahoo! Messenger Blog
Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 has officially launched as our newest version for Windows XP and Vista.
some of the features I worked on:
- Pingbox™: Introducing Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox, a new application that once embedded into your blog, website or social network page, lets visitors IM you anonymously (or they can identify themselves) without needing to download or even sign into Yahoo! Messenger. The good news is you’re anonymous too; visitors to your page never see your Yahoo! ID. Pingbox is great for giving your site/page/profile visitors a quick way to chat with you. I’ll do a full post on Pingbox later but in the meantime, go create your own custom Pingbox.
- Import Contacts wizard: Add friends to your Yahoo! Messenger contact list from address books you have on other online services like Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Orkut…over twenty services in all.
- Yahoo! Updates: Keep up with your friends by checking their updates alongside their names in your contact list. If they Buzz up a story, update their profile on MyBlogLog or change their Avatar, you’ll know about it.
- Call forwarding & new voicemail delivery: Now you can forward incoming calls from Yahoo! Messenger to your mobile or regular phone (Phone Out account required). We’ve reworked voicemail too; new voicemails are delivered as MP3 attachments to the email address you specify.
Today, while I was taking part in a team-building go-kart race (I got second place), Yahoo! announced that it had inked a deal with Google.
The agreement will enable Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google’s AdSense™ for Search and AdSense™ for Content services next to Yahoo!’s internally generated paid search and algorithmic search results.
Yahoo may also run Google-supplied ads on non-search Yahoo web properties, as well as on current members of its partner network. The agreement has a term of up to ten years: a four-year initial term and two, three-year renewals at Yahoo!’s option. It applies to Yahoo!’s operations in the U.S. and Canada only. Advertisers will continue to pay Yahoo! directly for clicks served by Yahoo! from Yahoo!’s Panama and Content Match marketplaces. Advertisers will pay Google directly for each click on Google paid search results appearing on Yahoo! owned and operated network or certain affiliate sites. Google will share a percentage of such revenue with Yahoo!.
In addition, Yahoo! and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users.
As a follow-up to the Microsoft events, the advertising side of this deal was pretty much expected… but this IM thing… wow!
![[Aurora] Before and After](http://gaarf.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/before-aurora.gif)
On the Yahoo! Messenger blog, one can read:
we launched a brand new Yahoo! Messenger website this week. Same URL and products, just a new look and feel including a feature comparison chart across versions, and a new import contacts wizard that lets you add or invite friends to Yahoo! Messenger from your Yahoo! Address Book as well as other email services like Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and many more.
Indeed, after six month of hard work, and a last minute scramble to squash a mystery bug, we have released what has come to be known internally as Aurora, a complete redesign of all 29 localized versions of the messenger.yahoo.com website.
Credits where due:
Of course many more were involved, including QA, Ops, Marketing, IT, URL’s, BeanTrees, janitorial staff, Dr. Pepper, Runts, and Steve Ballmer.
Bravo to All !
There is good coverage of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid on the techcrunch and (obviously) Yahoo! News.
As an employee, I cannot comment on any of these developments. I can however point you to fellow Yahoo! Jeremy Zawodny who outlines what the possible outcomes seem to be:
Microsoft actually does buy Yahoo for $31/share (or something in that ballpark). This is the default case in the minds of many people.
Another large company (or group of companies, possibly including private equity funds) makes a counter offer. This will ultimately only serve to drive the price up. Microsoft will outbid.
The Yahoo Board of Directors decides to outsource Yahoo’s search advertising (and possibly search) business to rival Google. This entails a long-term partnership for a number of years and is sufficient to send Microsoft back to Redmond to continue working on its own search and search advertising business. I imagine this would be a very tough call to make.
As a variation of #3, Yahoo may look to strengthen its display advertising (graphical ads) business and take some significant share of the DoubeClick acquisition as part of the deal. That makes Google the dominant contextual tetx advertising company and Yahoo the dominant display/banner and behavioral advertising company.
The board simply rejects the offer and decides to continue as is. This seems quite unlikely to me. Shareholders will insist that something big happen.