After reading about the rumours of Yahoo!’s layoffs, I then came across a screenshot of the new Yahoo! profile page:
Look familiar? If you use Facebook or MySpace, you would be looked a red-tinted-logo mirror image.
By having a Yahoo! account, users can add friend connections from it’s address book and write updates about themselves known as Yahoo Buzz (their activity feed).
This is all that is initially planned, however, Jim Stoneham (VP of communities, Yahoo!) stated that this is the “foundation release” which will then enabled Yahoo! to develop on further.
The Yahoo Buzz activity feed will soon be a widget on the Yahoo! homepage for logged in users to see what’s happening within their social group.
But Yahoo! is looking to make this integration within various areas of its website – for example, if someone reviews a product on the Yahoo Shopping page, it will be added to their activity feed for the user’s friends to take a look at. The same is planned for sections like Finance, Sports, Flickr et al.
This sort of social community could increase user interactivity of Yahoo!’s products and services. Back in September Yahoo had opened access to it’s social API and Yahoo Application Platform for developers to write applications around this framework. Sounds like the following of Facebook, Apple and Google.
I guess Gigaom was right after all – Social Network is just a feature (http://gigaom.com/2007/02/05/are-social-networks-just-a-feature/)
So the rumour goes around that more than 3,000 out of the 15,000 employees are expected to be axed from Yahoo!. But not without a party.
Yahoo! is throwing it’s annual multi-million dollar party in December – themed as a Las Vegas casino. The layoffs are rumoured to be around the 10th Dec, apparently days after the party will be held.
Why have a Las Vegas themed party costing millions – and then lay off your staff? I suppose Jerry wants to gamble that decision (no pun intended)
Not only that, but the rumour also states that the CFO is planning on cutting it’s employees’ severance package (that’s probably what’s paying for the holiday).
Recently, Rojeh Avanesian (Head of Finance, Yahoo! Santa-Monica media group) left and I suppose many more to follow on.
Ok, so this is a bit of a belated wish… but Google turned 10 years this month after launching in Sept 1998.
So what did Google look like back then? Here goes:
Back in the day, Google, like Yahoo, had an exclamation at the end of the name. They still had the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
One thing that is now missing is the index count which said ’25 million pages (soon to be much bigger)’ but today, it contains billions!