Ex-My Yahoo Boss, Now Pageflakes CEO, Responds to My Yahoo Beta
I wondered how long it would take before Pageflakes
responded to the new-look My Yahoo beta, given that the sharing and 'pages'
features in My Yahoo beta are very similar to what Pageflakes has already done.
Sure enough, the following quote by new Pageflakes CEO Dan Cohen was just
emailed my way. And actually Dan is uniquely qualified to discuss this, as
before becoming CEO of Pageflakes in January this year he was head
of MyYahoo. Here is what he said:
"The new My Yahoo is a step forward but misses the mark. It is more about Yahoo! and less about today's users of the Web, who expect more from their personalized page. Their new personalization feature steers you towards Yahoo! services while restricting access to others like Google and MySpace. The new version limits user choice because it isn’t open to developers. Lastly, you can’t publish your personalized page on the web, or collaborate on your page with others."
What it comes down to is that Yahoo obviously has a huge store of content and Web properties it can utilize in its personalized homepage. Whereas Pageflakes is one of the 'little guys' (along with slightly bigger little guy Netvibes), so its strengths and opportunities will be in opening up its platform and encouraging use of content from all over the Web.
Also noteworthy is Steve Rubel's response to My Yahoo Beta. Steve thinks that Yahoo has "abandoned the geeks". I see his point, which is that geeks usually prefer the early adopter apps from Google and, yes, even Microsoft. Yahoo's user base is huge and very mainstream, so who can blame them for focusing on that. But actually I think what the beta My Yahoo is doing is very much in tune with what geeks (like me) want. Also Yahoo has done some neat geeky things of late, particularly with Yahoo Pipes. I don't think they've abandoned the geeks, there's still enough for us to play with. But let's face it, geeks are obviously not their biggest priority.
Update: Greg Linden picks up on the theme of personalization in the My Yahoo Beta, noting that it may also be applied to the Yahoo home page - i.e. both My Yahoo and yahoo.com "may soon adapt to your behavior and try to learn what you might want."
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You know what amazes me? The fact that a multi billion dollar company like Yahoo takes years and probably also millions of dollars to come up with something that smaller, more nimble startups create within a much shorter period of time. And they also seem to do it better. Why is it that a small startup like Pageflakes creates more features and a better interface than an experienced Web Giant like Yahoo. I don't get it...
Rick
Rick - it's an interesting point, but my experience is that bigger companies don't actually apply bigger resources to projects, they simply attack more projects. Y! may have 1,000 engineers, but spread across 200 projects... so that there was probably only 5 engineers working on MyYahoo. With math like that it's easy to see how small start-ups can outperform. One additional issue is simply that big companies with BIG audiences (MyYahoo! is #1 in this space by a LONG shot) have to protect their 'installed' base of users - this makes them less risky by nature. When you're a company like PageFlakes - with 10 users and losing money - you have nothing to lose - so you take bigger risks - you have to upset the apple cart or there's no point in competing with the big guns.
I don't think yahoo is abandoning the geek, just trying to reach an even wider audience (if that's possible)
Bob Hasko
www.TeesMyBody.com T-Shirts
Hi Joe - that makes sense. Still, I wonder if the one of the hottest topics at the moment (web 2.0 everywhere) doesn't deserve more than 5 developers. If I was at Yahoo I'd say, shift some more of those developers to the myYahoo project... but I am not at Yahoo, am I?
Good point also about the size of smaller players - though I doubt that Pageflakes has only 10 users, lol.
Rick
Yahoo is pretty conservative about rolling out 'web 2.0' features, and after seeing the rabid reactions from Netscape users and (to a lesser degree) USA Today - when both unveiled web 2 re-designs - I can understand why Y! is conservative. Can you imagine 50 Million users yelling at you about big changes to their personalized homepage? There's also the scaling issue to consider - delivering ajax and other 'personalization' features to that many users is a big task.
It might've been cool though if Y! had created their own alpha start page, a la live.com, and let the geeks play with that over the past year or so.
@Rick: Don't forget that you generally only ever hear of the successful startups. There are probably a dozen risky ideas that don't pay off for every one that does.
If Yahoo went off pursuing every new idea they had then you would hear about their failure pretty quickly. They obviously wait until an idea is proven, or until there is sufficient demand for a new idea.
Just last week I abandoned my long time homepage of My Yahoo! and went to Pageflakes. I gave Netvibes a try but decided on Pageflakes. Today I switched back to the My Yahoo! beta, and I'm one of the biggest geeks around!
I think Yahoo! offers plenty of choice of content. So what? I can't check Gmail? I use a Yahoo! Mail (beta) account anyway. I am also very impressed with the new Yahoo! bookmarks which integrate nicely into the page.
I wasn't impressed with Google's personalized home page. It restricts the user to the three column layout and doesn't have the same personalization the others do.
The most limiting factor with Pageflakes was, quite honestly, their limited selection of actual "flakes." Sure I can add any RSS feed, but I can do that with My Yahoo! too. The unique functionality in some of the flakes (like sending e-mail, to do lists, etc) is something Pageflakes should capitalize upon. It's what, if anything, that would set them apart from the pack.
Hi Scott - please send me an email at ole@pageflakes.com and let me know what flakes you would like to see published on Pageflakes. Always happy to hear user feedback and develop what you guys are interested in ;-)
Cheers
Ole
Seems like questionable tact for Dan Cohen to speak this way about the efforts of his former team. I'd think a startup looking for geek goodwill would know when to be gracious.
Pageflakes is setting a development center in my country- Malaysia. That is great that an expert from Yahoo joined them. Hopefully, they will open up more opportunity for local talented ppl to join them.
I'd second webgeek - seeing as Dan was leading that team until a short while ago, you'd think he might be responsible for some of the shortcomings? Do you think they bailed on publishing the page to the web after he left - or maybe that's why he left? Hmm, interesting space ...
I wouldn't want to work for Y? It would be like sludging through mud (or something of a similar consistancy).
Yahoo has a history of screwing things up/not getting it and it is because of the vision at the tippy-tippy top not necessarily the project managers. That given...
I've used pageflakes and I have gotten some family members who don't know diddly about technology to share thinks like messages and photos. With its API, I've been playing around and see the potential. Seems Pageflakes can straddle the line between geek and normal.
This is my harshest comment here...hope I don't get banned. The truth is, Dan Cohen should shut up and try to put PageFlakes on the map instead.
If Yahoo has the services why steer people elswhere? In my opinion Dan, justified or not, is just exposing himself.
I agree with John. Dan does seem to be the right person to express the limitations of Yahoo! Beta. He mentions that thing that made me abandon Yahoo altogether: they funnel users to *their* content and services. When I was a naive user, it took me a while to realize that every Y! search sent me to five pages of sponsored links instead of the best link. It's good to hear someone talking about this limitation. Pageflakes is small, but seems open to comments and suggestions from the web community. Send a suggestion to Yahoo, and you'll get a polite "thank you for your comment, we'll send it along to our [five] developers!" ;-)
It seems that Yahoo! is not so much a technology company really anymore in terms of it's heart and soul (not to say they don't have some great technologists and technologies)...but it's a media distribution company with a bunch of technology in their arsenal. I think of it more like a cable broadcaster. I agree with the comment above that while they have 1000 engineers, they're all scattered on so many projects that focus isn't strong. Beyond that, I'm not sure they're really sure what directions they should go--they try a bunch of stuff and see if anything catches fire. The thing about PageFlakes is that their widgets are actually interesting, not just one more piece of a giant something.
Who here has experience inside a large company? There are strong forces toward satisfying existing users and existing assets. MyY! looks like it just caught up to where the puck as *been*. As a geeky user always looking to gain visibility into where it is *going*, my first stop will not be myY! which may have analogies to AoL or Microsoft attempt at releasing products further down the innovation diffusion curve. My innovation migration? myexcite->myY!>google->netvibes->pageflakes. I think that this market area has seen personalization is moving toward how to integrate more of a social feel. Look at the big acquisitions over the last few years in web2.0; they are not from personalization but from applying social dynamics. Pageflakes points the way toward that (dynamic networking) so I am thinking that it is on the right track and (as of now, alone) points the way toward the future in this area best.
To the readers of Read/WriteWeb (including webgeek, Ivan, and Adrian):
I realize that my comments have generated healthy (and polarizing) discussion on the topics of openness, "walled garden" content, and features of personalized pages, and I'm glad that's happened. As you'll note, my comments are directed at Yahoo's product philosophy on this release, and not at the individuals who worked on the team that built it. I heartily congratulate the MyYahoo! team - I worked with them (including all-nighters), they're a great group of talented people, they worked hard on this, and I'm proud of their (and my) efforts on the release. My comments are consistent with the open, user-driven, user-choice statements I've made since joining Pageflakes; in addition to video and written interviews I've given in the past several weeks, here
is my post on the Pageflakes blog the day before the new My Yahoo release came out (I had no knowledge of the release date). I am of course, willing to "put my money where my mouth is," and that's why I'm leading Pageflakes. I am singularly focused and driven to build the community-driven personalized homepage that I believe I, you, and many other people want to use. I welcome your comments and suggestions as to how we can do that, either on
our blog or by email - dan@pageflakes.com .
I switched to Pageflakes from Yahoo and it just makes a better start page with the ways I can set everything up and the truth is they keep adding new stuff all the time.
The important thing to me is if the service is useful. I first tried out PageFlakes, then did more customization, and eventually made it my home page. That is the ultimate test for me because I have had Yahoo! as my home page for years.
This is a little off topic, but I'm curious how Pageflakes makes money.
I know Yahoo! is a large company, so I know they will most likely be around tomorrow.
Being that I see no ads on Pageflakes anywhere, I'm curious about their revenue stream and financial health. Do they rely solely on revenue from search?
If I move to Pageflakes, it's not a light decision. I want to know that I won't have to switch back in a week or month because the joined the .com dead pool.
Hi Scott - I am happy to talk about your questions in detail. I also replied to your previous email. Why don't we connect via phone sometime? Send me your contact number or call me anytime.
Cheers
Ole
Scott-O-Rama, I'm curious about what your decision making process is regarding setting your start page. Must take a long time. Plus, I guess once you make the decision, your pretty much stuck. Yeah, I too got creamed when pets.com went out of business and I had to find a new start page.
Big corporation has resources, pageflakes (pf) has wits and common sense. pf has set its priorities right by listening to user feedback and try to incorporate them into their startpages. I use pf to manage my rss feeds and to-do lists, etc. Great product run by people who gives users what they want. :-)
cheers,
chi howe
I really like the idea of not being limited to the content of one company. Pageflakes seems like they are open to providing the users with the best content regardless of where or who it's coming from. It's interesting to have a home page with a google search box, my own e-mail, cNet news feed, etc. I also like the user community developed "flakes" they offer.