The new-look Ajax-powered Yahoo.com homepage goes
live in the US on Monday and will roll out to other regions during the rest of July.
Read/WriteWeb exclusively profiled
the "preview" two months ago and now it is ready to be the default homepage for Yahoo's
500 million users. The new homepage - which utilizes 'Web 2.0' functionality such as
Ajax, personalization and collaborative filtering - will display to US visitors from
Monday and all visitors of Yahoo.com internationally "in the coming weeks".
Localized versions of the new homepage are available in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, UK & Ireland, and Vietnam. Other locations will be added over the coming weeks.
To celebrate, this month Yahoo! is running a homemade video competition. They arranged for students from leading film schools to create video shorts, based on a series of scripts about Yahoo! changing. Also anyone who wants to participate can create and share their own videos - using (if they wish) the Yahoo! logo, yodel and script ideas. People can submit their videos under a new Yahoo! Video category entitled 'New Yahoo! Campaign'. The best of these videos will be selected by Yahoo! to run in ads across its network.
In the press release, Yahoo is calling the new homepage "the most significant re-design of its flagship destination since the site first launched in 1994". Yahoo is the world's biggest Web property (a point they reminded us of recently!), with 500 million users of Yahoo! branded Web properties worldwide.
I said when the preview was released that this new homepage is a big step forward. Indeed I think it marks a turning point in the whole 'Web 2.0' trend. If Netscape.com was a badly managed transition of old-school portal to a Web 2.0 community news site, then the transition of Yahoo from portal 1.0 to version 2 has been done with caution, has not been rushed, and has introduced new functionality subtly. That's the way it should be done - tweaks generally work better than wholesale changes. Kudos to Yahoo for creating a new 'Web 2.0' homepage and managing the transition for its large user base well.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Is it me or is the width of the new homepage much wider? On my Apple PB 12inch (1024 pixel width resolution), I get horizontal scrolling - yuck.
Posted by: Steve O'Hear | July 17, 2006 7:57 AMThere is a link to options on the upper right where you can select a narrower page.
Posted by: Bill Webb | July 17, 2006 12:33 PMI think the new design is great for the company in this crucial time. It will be interesting to see the winners of the video campaign.
-Matt
Posted by: Matt | July 18, 2006 5:03 AMSteve - there's a nice toggle option on the home page which re-jiggs the homepage to a wide or longer layout. I prefer the wider format - but I don't get the horizontal scrolling Steve on my screen - an agreed 'yuck' there.
Posted by: kenobi | July 21, 2006 3:53 AMit sucks...in plain english....i am swtiching my homepage if yahoo keeps trying to jam this down my throat...advertisers please Note
Posted by: tp | July 24, 2006 3:03 PMyes it sucks, if I keep getting this new page then I am switching to lycos or msn.
Posted by: yahoo | July 29, 2006 5:36 PMit is horrible, an altavista clone definetly. I wan t my old yahoo!
Posted by: sauron | August 4, 2006 1:19 PMJust like when Coke messed up and went with the ‚ÄúNew Coke‚Ä?, Yahoo has messed up and tried to improve on their simple to use, plain brown wrapper, but excellent, web page.
Plea to Yahoo Follows:
Please, Yahoo, if you monitor these posts, give us a button to use the old web page as opposed to forcing us to the new. You make enough money to hire a few more web-masters to make two whole front pages. As far as I can tell, that is the only change.
Please, I know most internet users are young and have to experience things to believe it‚Ķbut read up on the ‚ÄúNew Coke‚Ä? fiasco and you will understand why Coke Classic came back.
Drunk Idiot
Posted by: Drunk Idiot Again | August 14, 2006 7:49 PM