Yahoo!’s Long-Term Strategy: Diversify - Yahoo the Communication Company
(Page 4 of 4 )
Perhaps the best way to understand Yahoo and what it has done lately is to think of it not in terms of its being a search company, but a communications company. It started out as an index to help people connect with information; now, it not only connects people with information, but with other people, as well. This explains why it recently purchased VoIP provider Dialpad, with the idea of adding public-switched telephone networking capabilities to its PC-to-PC Internet calling feature of Yahoo! Messenger.
Speaking of mixed media, Yahoo recently made a deal with Sprint that allows users to download a Yahoo! Mail for Mobile application onto their Sprint phones. The application offers users a PC-like interface for accessing their Yahoo! Mail accounts through their mobile phones. It requires a Sprint PCS Vision handset. Users can even store email on the phone. This is not a free service, however; users pay $2.99 per month, a fee that is tacked on to their monthly wireless phone bill.
Yahoo is not only about communications; it’s about community. It recently made upgrades to MyWeb that provide such a different approach to Web searching that the geniuses at Google are probably kicking themselves for not coming up with it first. Without going into too many details here (since it is covered more completely in another article), MyWeb 2.0 allows users, in effect, to “pool” their search histories to receive even more relevant results.
Here is how it works: when someone finds a Web page they like, they can save that page, tagging it with keywords so that they can find it again easily. That person may be part of a group of Yahoo users and choose to share some or all of the pages they have found with the group. Another member of the group can benefit from what was found by searching within the set of pages that others have chosen to share. In this way, a group of people with common interests, or coworkers, can build up their own pool of community knowledge. They can even assist each other almost without having to do a thing.
Yahoo, in short, is finding ways to penetrate into many aspects of users’ lives, by being more entertaining, more helpful, more convenient, or some combination of these things. Searching the Internet is only one means to that end. The company has found other ways to achieve this goal as well. Diversity can be a good thing. This is a lesson other companies might be wise to heed.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
/ 4 
